Bullying

[Misty Avich]

Let's discuss bullying in this thread.

I know teasing can be a form of bullying in some contexts but I think that just light teasing in the playground or workplace can be resolved by either laughing along with them or ignoring them. With more intensive bullying, simply ignoring them usually doesn't stop the bullying. When you're ignoring bullies they still know that you can hear them so they'll keep doing it, waiting for you to crack one day. And you usually do crack. It happened to me. I started getting bullied at age 11, when I started high school. Not badly bullied, but just where kids I didn't know would try to get my attention in an unkind way, then when I reacted by turning around to look or whatever, they'd snicker and walk away. That sort of thing.
I just ignored it at first, but being humiliated like that carried on on and off for the next 5 years, by different kids I didn't know. It usually occurred on my way home from school, because I was a Billy No Mates so had to walk to and from school alone a lot of the time and that's when I became an easy target.
When I was 15 I became sexually harassed by boys younger than me and I hated it. Then one day when I was walking home from school, I'd just turned 16, and there were these two boys walking very closely behind me. They were chatting amongst themselves but I felt one of them keep touching my butt.
After 5 years of being targeted or harassed by other kids, I suddenly reached my limit. I told him to stop but he wouldn't, so I turned around and lunged into him, pummeling him all over. I didn't hurt him but I know he wasn't expecting that, and was rather upset.
Sorry, but that's what could happen when you take the advice of "ignoring" bullying or harassment for 5 years. Ignoring is just another way of putting up with it. In some cases, the more you ignore bullies, the madder they can get and not stop until they have hurt you in some way.

I do sometimes feel bad for attacking that boy, even though it's many years later and I hadn't seen him since. My high school was so huge with over 1,000 students, so we didn't seem to recognise each other since but I knew he was a year or so below me.
To this day I do worry that he might not have been touching my butt on purpose and that maybe it was just his bag knocking as he walked, but then by the way he didn't take my reaction further by trying to recognise me or telling a teacher or anything, I could tell he knew why I attacked him and what he'd done to deserve it.

It wasn't even like me to lash out at anyone but it all just got on top of me. It's why I feel really angry and upset whenever I'm picked on in the street by random strangers, because it takes me back to my schooldays when I was a weak, pathetic loner, and would just take crap from other kids and put up with it. I feel that if I'm targeted in public now as an adult it makes me think that they're picking on me because I still look as weak and pathetic as I did when I was in high school, and I don't want to give off that vibe.

 

[Jumpinbare]

Being bullied definitely sucks. I did reach a point in my late teens or early adulthood where I had the epiphany that people like that really didn't have a clue about me, while I knew my strengths and weaknesses. I literally stopped caring what people thought of me. I'm an adult version of the nerdy, clumsy kid I used to be. No doubt people at work and in stores, etc have ridiculed me and maybe even tried to engage me in their nonsense. If they have, I have literally missed it because I am very focused when I'm around people. Like I'm on a mission. Get in, transact what is needed, and head back home. I have to tune out peripheral distractions or I will get overloaded. So what is not right in front of me when I'm out in public gets tuned out. If someone else calls me names or insults me, I just am aware of irrelevant jabbering going on. I'm not listening to it. I only communicate with the person I am dealing with at the time (cashier, receptionist, etc). Someone would have to literally get in my face to get my attention. So far, I haven't had adult bullies do that.

 

[Neia]

I still am the Pressure Cooker type.

I'll take lots of "funny" jokes, and rudeness, and meanness. Pushing and hair pulling, and having people light their cigarettes near me...

I'll say nothing and try to be patient, not to make trouble. Till one day I suddenly explode. And then whoever is closest gets the shrapnel.

There were these kids in my neighbourhood when I was growing up, they were younger than me, but spoiled bullies.
One day someone died and my mom went to the wake and took me with.
Those kids were there alone and had spring loaded guns that fired sticks, they started shooting at me. A stick hit me right in the eye and it really hurt, so I snatched the gun from the kid's hand and went to their home to tell their mom what they had done.
My eye was swollen and she saw it when I complained, with her two kids mocking me right behind me, and she just standing there like she couldn't care less.
I grabbed the kid who had shot me in the eye, gave him a good beating while the kid screamed and the mother shouted "Hey, hey..." then I turned to her and said (cold as could be) "If you don't educate them, someone will have to do it for you!".
Then I went and told my mother what had happened.
My eye was all swollen, so my mom sided with me on this one.

 

[Cryptid]

These things I've learned through experience and observation.

There are three main types of bullying:

1) Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
• Hitting/kicking/pinching
• Making mean or rude hand gestures
• Spitting
• Taking or breaking someone’s things
• Tripping/pushing

2) Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone's reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
• Embarrassing someone in public
• Leaving someone out on purpose
• Spreading rumors about someone
• Telling other children not to be friends with someone

3) Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
• Inappropriate sexual comments
• Name-calling
• Taunting
• Teasing
• Threatening to cause harm

It is not bullying to:
• Ask for clarification or explanation of what someone said.
• Correct someone's factual errors.
• Dismiss a claim that is hypocritical, racist, sexist, or based on erroneous assumptions.
• Express opinions that oppose or differ from the opinions of another person.
• Fight back after being attacked.
• Give instructions on how to do something correctly.
• Point out faulty reasoning.
• Refute a claim by using know facts and principles that have been successfully demonstrated over and over again.

 

[Misty Avich]

Um, is that aimed at a couple of people here, by any chance?

 

[Cryptid]

Um, is that aimed at a couple of people here, by any chance?

No. Although I am expecting random people to claim that it is directed specifically at them. It happens.

 

[Misty Avich]

No. Although I am expecting random people to claim that it is directed specifically at them. It happens.

It's just you did state the same sort of thing in one of Markness's threads.

 

[Misty Avich]

But I'd rather focus on offline bullying otherwise the conversation may become about online bullying that I experienced, and then it'd become political. So I'll just focus on bullying that isn't related to political correctness.

There is a paradox about bullying that I'd like to explore. Say a child is being bullied by their own parents, and then that child goes to school and bullies your child, and your child happens to be the kind, placid sort of child who wouldn't dream of bullying anyone else. As a parent it's difficult to feel sympathy for the child for bullying your child, even though the bully is really just a frightened child living with a dysfunctional family. But I suppose that isn't your problem. Your problem is your child and their wellbeing.

But not all bullies come from dysfunctional families. Some are just bullies by default. Some bullies are popular, and when you're friendless and you are being picked on by respected kids who have friends, it's hard to think "oh well, they're probably more miserable with their lives than I am, I shouldn't be hurt by their behaviour against me." Bullies aren't always miserable. Some children who are spoilt or have well-meaning parents can have so much self-confidence and be so popular that they just choose to bully others who they see as lesser than they are, and they know they'll get away with it socially because they have that way about them and are literally at the top of the social pecking order.

 

[Angular Chap]

Weirdly, I have never in my life ever been the target of peer bullying. People around my own age and younger always seem to leave me alone. I can barely recall any incidents at primary school, high school, at work or even walking down the street. Any small incidents were one off and isolated and never happened again, so I wouldn't call that bullying.

I have however, always been the target of authoritative bullying. From teachers at school and managers and supervisors at my first job, people on the street. I eventually learned about and got the workplace bullying under control by reading a book about it (Bully in Sight by Tim Field, which I've posted about on here before.)

But despite reading that great book cover to cover may times, I'm still not 100% sure why I only get targeted by authority figures. I have some answers thanks to that book and I still learn a few things here and there. Maybe one day I will fully learn why this is.

On the bright side, at least I know with a high degree of accuracy where I will have problems with bullying in future, who to be wary of and who I can probably safely ignore.

 

[Misty Avich]

I think a lot of the bullying I received at high school was due to my emotional immaturity and lack of friends. Like I said in my OP, I got targeted by kids on my way home from school because no friends wanted to walk with me.

But I also got bullied by kids I knew too. There was a narcissist-type girl in my class who always liked to make sure I was excluded and left on my own. She was actually weak, socially awkward and insecure like me, but had a higher ego and would sort of emotionally manipulate the other girls and pretend to be this really nice person when really she wasn't at all.
Also I got bullied by my sister's friends. I was disheartened that my sister stood back and let them bully me, but that was because she was a little bit afraid of her friends, even though one of them invited her round to her place every other weekend and they did stuff together. But in school sometimes they'd talk down to me, call me names, mock me, and just turn on me maliciously.
Being stupid, I didn't know how to deal with it, so I just cried. My sister was then like "oh, stop making her cry, it's embarrassing!" (meaning it's embarrassing for her to have me openly crying at school at my age, never mind how I was feeling). So they just picked on me more, knowing I would start crying like a baby. They liked seeing me cry.

 

[Jonn]

I don't have much to say about bullying.
What I experienced as a child was kid stuff compared to what happened later.

Most of my experiences went way past bullying into harassment, and at times put me in psychical danger.
In one instance, I ended up in hospital due to an "arranged" accident.

 

[Misty Avich]

I've been bullied by both NTs and autistic people, and both bullying felt the same. The autistic people knew what they were doing, so I didn't pass their autism off as an excuse for their behaviour.
If an autistic/ADHD person means well but is just being impulsive or overly honest, I can pass it off as just part of their condition and I understand. But if people with these conditions continuously demonstrate bullying through emotional manipulation or animosity, then there is no excuse. They're just as bad as any bully, whatever their neurology is.