First of all, you’re assuming physical bullying from boys to other boys. I was a girl who got verbally bullied and really bad at comebacks. I try and smack another girl around? It’s a totally different world. If she has close male relatives or knows other girl bullies, I’m going to get my ass kicked again and the verbal shit won’t stop. Girls operate on a whole other level.
Secondly, fuck this ‘you hit me and I need to hit back for you to stop’. That gets you fired in the real world. We need to find something the bullies like and take it away. People like paycheques, if you bully someone at a job, you get fired and lose your paycheques. We need to find what will make a particular bully miserable and do it. But because that takes too much effort, no one does it.
I think the response to the problem of bullying needs to be multipronged:
students need to be taught assertiveness and resilience – no doubt about it. However, in the workforce and society in general, assertiveness and resilience often means finding ways of addressing the problem in a greater system (HR, the law, an HOA, etc). No adult must rely solely on assertiveness and resilience, and in fact, becoming a martyr is actually considered immature.
greater awareness of mental health issues and abuse. We need to be more adept at noticing depression and anxiety so that students who are having a rougher time can get the appropriate help. Sometimes, abusive kids are abused at home and mirroring what they see. Sometimes they are just antisocial assholes.
getting the administration’s skin in the game. They’re in charge of minors – neglect is not appropriate
I’ve been watching this thread carefully, trying not to let my personal experiences color my response.
I was tormented. Mercilessly. By a well oiled team of 5 kids, boys and girls. The boys were stronger than me, and hey, you’re not supposed to hit girls. It set back my social development for years, and didn’t get better until I physically relocated to a new school. One that didn’t allow that bullshit to occur.
I’ve been in many different social constructs over the years. Some were permissive and ignored it as ‘boys being boys’ and others were more direct ‘Everyone here matters and hazing/bullying/ostracizing WILL NOT BE PERMITTED’.
Guess which one I preferred? You can have an environment that does not condone this kinda behavior without creating a bunch of entitled milquetoast crybabies. To state otherwise is ‘painting with a needlessly wide brush’.
It’s not an all or nothing problem. It’s not a ‘fight back and they’ll go away’ problem, it’s not a bootcamp-suck-it-up-maggot problem.
“Bullying is nothing more or less than human beings acting like human beings.”
Doesn’t make it right. So is stealing, racism, rape, and pillaging. Doesn’t make THEM right either.
It is totally unreasonable to expect bullying to go away. It is too much a part of human nature. Say someone shows up to school dressed strangely. They may be met with these comments:
Sarcasm: You must have gotten dressed in the dark
Teasing: Those clothes are ugly. Did you get them from the goodwill dumpster?
Bullying: Hey fface. Give me that jacket or I’ll kick the s out of you
It’s reasonable to expect that the bullying situation won’t happen. That is completely unacceptable behavior and the authorities should be brought in as necessary. But sarcasm and teasing are just too common. Kids need to be able to handle those situations in an appropriate manner because they will have to deal with it. It’s unreasonable to expect kids not to have to deal with teasing and sarcasm.
The big problem is that kids don’t know how to deal with it and it escalates. A kid starts to cry from a sarcastic remark and they become a bigger target for bullies. It’s not the kid’s fault that it goes farther, but there are tools the kid can use to stop the escalation. By deflecting or diffusing the sarcastic remark, they can prevent the situation from getting worse.
No, it’s scum acting like scum. Not all people are scum. And if your argument was true it wouldn’t suddenly nearly vanish once you get to the age that the police will start to intervene instead of the indifferent or outright pro-bully teachers.
Garbage. I stood up to bullies when possible. It never got me respect, it never stopped the bullying. And standing up to bullies who outnumber you ten to one, are much larger and stronger or have weapons is stupid, especially when the teachers either don’t care or are cheering the bullies on.
Nonsense. It typically goes away once you get old enough the bullies aren’t allowed license to run wild. I’m not treated now like I was when I was a kid because if I was the people who did so would be arrested or fired, nor ignored or cheered on.
Yes, I think so. It doesn’t hurt us to learn to shake off life’s hurts because for most of us there will be more than enough.
The victim mentality will only “work” for so long and eventually it becomes self-defeating behavior. At that point a person decides to continue seeing himself as a victim or moving on to growth. That probably means some toughening of the sensitivity and learning some new coping skills.
As I read here about the arguments about the blamelessness of victims it occurs this has become politicized. A party line. Written in stone. And not every situation is so clear-cut.
No blame assigned as it’s a worthless concept. But self-responsibility is a good concept for victims to learn. As mentioned there are things a victim can learn to better protect himself.
So I ask myself, what’s in it for the bully and how can we decrease his satisfaction? People usually don’t continue with behavior that doesn’t have some component of satisfaction.
In an individual case chronic victim can ask themselves what response are they offering which provides satisfaction to the chronic bullier. Not a total solution but certainly a part of the solution.
As when any two people are having a problem it takes both of them to continue to engage in it. Though we rarely can see our part of the problem. Which is a “dang!”
Yes, it does hurt us to do that; it makes us into victims. Problems aren’t solved by people who just sit there and take it.
Useful for the predators that prey on them at most. That’s why people are taught ideas like “personal responsibility” and “individualism” in the first place; it makes them weak, easy to abuse and exploit because they are one against many.
Toss him in an isolation cell for a week, see how he likes that.
In other words you want the victims to blame themselves. If they can’t fight off ten kids bigger than they are it’s because they are weak and deserve the abuse, right?
As for what satisfaction the bully gets; the sheer joy of cruelty.
Garbage; more blaming the victims. Plenty of people suffer unprovoked attacks.
Der Tris, your misinterpretation of my post is so massive that I scarcely know where to start to refute it.
I’ll just say this: If you are a person who only sees two options - to bully or be bullied - then you have a few unexplored horizons.
And just to give you a little validation, I’ll admit that many people live in this two-dimensional world. You may actually be in the majority. It’s expedient, it works and requires little soul searching. But it also does little to advance our human condition.
Don’t distort what I’m saying. At no point did I even imply that your only choice is “to bully or be bullied”; that’s your strawman not mine. I simply find your idea of just letting the predators abuse you and blaming yourself for their actions to be unacceptable.
We don’t ask a rape victim “well, what are you doing that makes people want to rape you?” But because it’s just a little harmless bullying, it’s just boys being boys and girls being girls, different rules apply. That’s BS.
Well, seems like a lot of us ‘misinterpreted’ your post that way. Because it sure seems that you are blaming the victims for being abused (meanwhile ignoring the actions of the bullies).
Well, now you have to define what a “victim” is. In cases of rape and other physical assaults, there is objective evidence of harm committed against a person. No one here is questioning the culpubility of a person who physically attacks another, or that the person harmed is considered a victim.
In the case of verbal taunts, teasing, and other types of non-physical bullying, it is the *attitude *of the person being targeted that determines their feelings about what happened. If I choose to ignore, laugh at, or otherwise redirect what you say to me, I effectively defuse the situation. Conversely, if I become visibly upset, tell myself you cannot be premitted to treat me this way, and continue to obsess about it, well then I guess I can be considered a “victim”. But I have chosen that role, unwittingly or not.
Words only have the power you give to them. Sticks and stones…really. Kids can be taught to deflect or reframe negative comments made to them in more healthy way. Enlisting the help of adults in a mission to “punish” the bullies only teaches the child that they cannot solve problems on their own and perpetuates the victim role. Not to mention the headaches that crop up when administrators, teachers, parents try to recreate events, place blame, and mete out “just” punishments. It doesn’t work.
I’m going to be perfectly honest and say that in my experience with bullying, the ONLY THING that ever worked to get the bullies off your back was to flip a shit and attack them. All the mealy-mouthed shit adults told you (“They’re just jealous of you!” “Sticks and stones…”) were mocked by bullies, and if you were provoked and picked on and called names every day, your options were to withdraw into yourself and become a hollow shell, or snatch 'em up by the hair of their head. Until the parents AND the teachers take bullying seriously, kids are going to resort to violence.
Yeah, if a kid is called “fag”, “wimp”, and “pussy” all day and doesn’t like it, it’s his attitudes that are the problem. He should just laugh and redirect it.
His response to those words will defintely make a difference in whether the comments continue or not, one way or another. I don’t mean to say it will be easy.
You can’t change mean people very often and you can’t take away their freedom of speech.
Bringing a third party in to take care of the problem creates more problems than it solves. And we know where other forms of revenge can lead.
No, it won’t. Bullies are well aware that your proposed “solution” is a fantasy; insults and teasing DO hurt and you can’t just choose to be unaffected. Nor is it realistic to expect children to act like little Vulcans and not visibly react when that’s a hard thing for even adults to do.
Folks are forgetting that kids are not quite fully developed adults. There exists a type of person that is sadistic. Pulls wings off flies. Kills kittens. There are people out there that beat wives, pick bar fights, BREAK the law.
They were all young once. You’re assuming a logical solution to something that in certain cases can only be solved by a direct and irrefutable application of Disciplinary force. And even then, if there’s a sadist-in-development involved, that may not solve the problem.
Sure, some have glass jaws and will run when confronted, but why should any kid that didn’t ask for it HAVE to do that? Where are THEIR rights?
I think a lot of people (children AND adults) just don’t think of their behavior as bullying. At least for the verbal stuff, they euphemise it as being “brutally honest” or “bringing the snark” or whatever. And because people around them reward them with positive attention when they fling their insults around (or at best, shrug their shoulders as if to say “that’s just how so and so is”), these pathetic jerks keep at it. Having a bitchy persona is something they take pride in because it what earns them the most praise.
Which means it’s not just the bullies who are the problem. It’s everyone who pats them on the back or comes to their defense.
Bullying may be on the spectrum of normal human behavior, but that doesn’t mean we must hopelessly accept its existence. Right now, being mean to people is all too often portrayed as cool and funny. Being nice and empathetic is too boring, not edgy enough. Until we change these values around, yeah, bullying is going persist. Which is sad.
Tackling homophobic bullying doesn’t tackle all bullying, but does it ever claim to? One battle at a time, then the war.
A few videos I’ve seen on the ‘it’ll get better’ meme have made me wince, however. You have to bear in mind that the audience you’re supposed to be aiming at is teenagers who are trying to come to terms with their sexuality and finding it difficult - they’re as homophobic as the next teen.
They want Portia De Rossi, not a 45-year-old transwoman who still looks like a man in drag talking about her 30 years of trauma, which is one of the main videos I’ve seen posted online; to me now, that’s a woman who’s experienced a lot and come out strongly and has decades of self-fulfilliment left, but to me aged 15 it would have been ‘if I’m gay, do I have to be like that?’
OK, so this show was explained more later on, but this post dd remind me of something:
I recently talked to a friend about a student I had seen being bullied (verbally). My friend was aghast that I wasn’t in favour of the idea that we should call a whole-school assembly and say ‘OK, everyone who’s been bullying Chris, you know it’s hurting her, right? You need to stop now.’ But in a thousand more words. She really didn’t understand that this would also be like bullying Chris and would make everything 100 times worse.
Even if you tried to disguise the student’s identity, what you’d achieve is Chris and a few other kids in that class all being extra bullied. Being picked out as a victim is part of what being bullied is about.
I did work on lots of other methods and also offered the child refuge when things got bad, but I wasn’t at the school long and her parents didn’t care in the slightest.
It’s the same as when I was a kid: lots of the worst bullying actually happens outside school or at least where the teachers can’t possibly do anything about it. We’re not really talking about kids being picked on audibly in class or even in full view in the hallways.