I find it interesting that the NY Times published this article about bullying at school and then published this one about workplace bullies. I thought that this meant that the Times was doing a series, but unfortunately, they’re not. Which is too bad, because I think bullying is an interesting area to explore. It’s like there’s two worlds in America—the officially recognized one where people are kind and polite, and the one lurking right underneath where bullying happens.
The article about Billy Wolfe from Fayetteville, Arkansas is really the sort of feature story that the Times still excels at. It really captures the essence of bullying. The kid selected is picked for reasons lost to the mists of time, or most likely for arbitrary reasons that were rationalized after the fact. The abuse is back-breaking and non-stop. Most school officials look the other way, because, let’s face it, there’s almost something biological in people that makes them dislike the unpopular even if the unpopular are unpopular for no reason at all.
But what I really liked about the article was that it really clues you in to why bullies bully. Let’s face it; they’re proud of their behavior. Picking on other people to make yourself feel more powerful has this ability to make other people believe that you’re something special, at least for short periods of time. I got bullied in school a lot, but it really petered out in high school, and I think it’s because kids grow up and the social rewards of being brutish start to peter out as kids get more sophisticated. But Wolfe is 15, and so he’s in the thick of it.
A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.
The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.
The aggressor heads to school, to show friends the video of his Billy moment, while Billy heads home, again.
And how the school officials side with the bullies over their victims, a facet of bullying that few people like to discuss:
Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth.
People get better at putting on a more politer, more docile face, but the fact that many people basically love brutality and tend to side with bullies is a little discussed problem, I think. It’s not just the way school officials side with bullies. I think this tendency goes a long way to explain why people gang up on rape victims instead of rapists, why victims of domestic violence find very little sympathy with friends and family in many circumstances, and really even why the Republicans keep winning with childish tactics. And if you are with the stereotypical domestic abuser, who can count on a lot more social support than you’re going to get, that makes it even harder to leave.
The relationship of bullying and sexual violence seems obvious to me, but this workplace bullying article had this sentence in it that kind of made me grind my teeth.
This month, researchers at the University of Manitoba reported that the emotional toll of workplace bullying is more severe than that of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is a form of bullying. What difference there is in the workplace probably has more to do with adults’ higher levels of sophistication than kids, so that many workplace bullies know how to bully someone without making it sexual. But kids don’t obey such fine distinctions, as Billy’s story shows.
It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain sex toy, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy’s mother. The next day the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up…..
In ninth grade, a couple of the same boys started a Facebook page called “Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe.” It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”
Bullying or sexual harassment? Well, clearly it’s the latter, but it’s also the former. I think one thing that’s always driven me crazy about the discourse around sexual harassment is that people think the sexual part is more important than the harassment part. And there’s plenty of blame to spread around about this, but the result has been a lot of confusion about whether or not workplace flirting, hooking up with coworkers, or even talking about your dating life with coworkers are sexual harassment. To my mind, only if someone is being harassed. Which is why the hostile environment standard is so important, because bullies often work, as the Billy Wolfe story shows, by harnessing popular support for the idea that this person you’ve singled out is the scapegoat. And so they create this hostile environment, perhaps with pictures or comments designed to make the target uncomfortable while not directly attacking the target much or at all. If we understood that sexual harassment is just a form of bullying that draws attention to the target’s sexuality so as to make him or her seem even more vulnerable, I think we’d know it better when we saw it.
If my kid came home looking like that, somebody would get their ass kicked.
Possibly physically, possibly in court. It might be a bully, a parent, or a school administrator. I don’t care if a rampage would get me in any trouble myself, because that sort of publicity is the sort the bullying culture doesn’t like.
Then again, I was the moved-a-lot, skipped-a-grade, chubby honor student with a reputation for bully disposal. Break one arm of one of two gang-up attackers in 5th grade and no problems there on out.
Sad that such extremes are what it can take sometimes.
I’ve long believed what you do, Amanda; namely, that people tolerate and even approve of aggression and violence because they conflate it with strength. It seems that any hint of weakness (and that term itself needs to be unpacked) on the part of oneself or someone is nigh-unforgiveable.
Unfortunately, they live in Arkansas. One of the unspoken “Southern Heartland Values” is this deep respect for brainless, brutal authority. They don’t have much recourse—the school, as you see, is siding with the bullies.
I might add that if I found either of my sons involved with any of this shit, consequenses - SEVERE consequences would follow.
Schoolyard bullies teach kids that no one will help them, and that the people in power will side iwth the other people in power—the bullies.
I’m so glad that that bullshit about how the poor little bullies were just tormented sensitive souls has gone by the wayside. They’re popular kids, rich kids, what have you. They like what they’re doing. Why wouldn’t they? It gets them power and pats on the back.
The sympathy people have for bullies is really why lots of people have such contempt for people like Al Gore and John Edwards, who help the victims of bullies. That’s what corporations act like, because they can get away with it—like bullies.
You should see this shit in the military. Complain about something and you’re automatically labeled feminine and weak, a pussy. Real men attack and bully; womanish creatures whine about it. “Better to ask permission than forgiveness” is the credo of a certain kind of soldier; it’s also a rapist’s credo.
One of my most obsessed trolls titled one of his Freudian slip books that and put me in it for revenge because I banned him from bullying female rape victims at my blog. They were man haters and frothing male bashers to him.
The only thing a bully hates more than somebody he can label ‘weak’ is somebody who dares to fight back. America doesn’t value people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps; they distrust and hate them. Some people are supposed to be bully victims so as to serve as punching bags for bullies. What happens when those bullies don’t have an outlet for their macho rage?
Let’s not forget that in Billy’s case, the parents seem to have a naive “faith in the system” that is just prolonging Billy’s suffering.
Some parents don’t seem to understand the nature of bullying or its extend. Part of this, of course, is because their children are too embarrassed to tell them.
It used to be that bullies were thought to be these sensitive tormented souls. Turns out they’re powerful little popular kids with a streak of sadism. They’re happy bullying others. They probably grow up to be shitty bosses and other things.
One of the most awful things about bullying is that it can lead kids to try to find another target to redirect the ugliness that’s being pointed at them. I was bullied emotionally (thankfully, not physically) in 5th and 6th grades, after I’d transferred in to a new school. The other students, most of whom had been together since kindergarten, told me I was ugly, called me “dog,” shunned me, etc. There was one other girl in the class who endured such treatment, since she was considered fat. But instead of trying to be friends with her, I joined in, in the hopes that it would make me more like the rest of the kids; and she did the same to me. One time she taunted me for having divorced parents and suggested that my father didn’t love me; I responded “Well, at least I can see my toes when I look down.” It was a terribly cruel thing for me to say, and afterward some of the others came up to me and congratulated me for being so clever. What an awful, dysfunctional place it was. I still regret that I responded to bullying by trying to bully someone else.
Thank god I got out of there after 2 years and went to a huge, poor, diverse public school where there were enough kids that if you didn’t fit into one group you could just find another. Ironic - i was most miserable at the expensive, private, small Episcopal school; I was happiest and got a better education at the “bad” school.
I’m sure there’s a direct line from the schoolyard bully who beats up the official scapegoat to the college date rapist to the right wing bellicose asshole who obsesses over defending the college date rapist on the internet.
It is also worth mentioning, I think, that several years later, when we were all in high school (that private school only went up to 8th grade) and the subject came up, some of my worst tormentors remembered themselves as people who’d tried to defend me. I don’t think they were lying; they genuinely believed that it was only other kids who were mean to me. Nobody remembers themselves as the bully.
So what do we do about this? We can teach our children to not bully or stand up for the bullied, but what else? How does one stop a bully or convince authority figures to take action of they are reluctant?
“They’re popular kids, rich kids, what have you. They like what they’re doing. Why wouldn’t they? It gets them power and pats on the back.”
…
“The sympathy people have for bullies is really why lots of people have such contempt for people like Al Gore and John Edwards, who help the victims of bullies.”
Which is a large part of why we’ve been stuck with George “Bullying Asshole” Bush for the last 7+ years.
His current bullying - making (often nasty) names for people, making threats, kicking “some little country somewhere’s” ass - is all pretty standard, and adult-style, stuff.
I can only imagine the kind of bullying he did when he was a much younger punkass (no offense meant to Marc…!). But I’m sure there was plenty of it. (I see Bush as Draco Malfoy - but without the intelligence and the generous human qualities…)
This support for the bully says a lot about where America is right now…
The only thing a bully hates more than somebody he can label ‘weak’ is somebody who dares to fight back. America doesn’t value people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps; they distrust and hate them.
In my current community, there are people who think that their densly populated inner-ring city suburb is a small town and that they are still in high school and playing clique games.
More than once I’ve been told to “leave it to the people in charge” and that I don’t know my place. Why? Because I’m a female, duh. My crime is that I’m an educated adult female - one with far more childhood working-class background than they could claim. When I speak out it is because I have knowledge and experience well beyond the know-nothing and never left town “people in charge”. Very bad form for a women to know more than her betters and call them out for their ignorance.
In short, I don’t do what I’m told like a good Catholic ewe - something I’ve never been, am not and will never be. If you ever wonder how the priest crisis came about in Boston, it started with this ridiculous, non-Yankee culture of “don’t question authority and keep your place”. So did the organized crime and corrupt political machines, too.
Tyro: I imagine his parents simply don’t know what else to do. School administrators won’t contact the police, and if they themselves called the police — assuming Billy could identify his attackers — the police might not treat it as an actual assault.
The thing that sort of infuriated me about the article on Billy was the part that noted his grades were poor “for whatever reason.” I couldn’t figure out why they felt that detail was necessary. Also, I couldn’t figure out how on earth his grades could be good.
Poor kid. It’s unfortunate that the school district seems to want to do nothing, and the parents have as a commentor above put it “a naive faith in the system.” Billy really ought to not go to school at all. What’s the point? He can get his GED and go on to a junior college where, hopefully, he’ll be better treated.
The larger issue is that someone, somewhere, is TEACHING these kids to be bullies. I blame the parents. After all, this is where kids learn their values. The parents of the bullies are almost certainly bullies themselves, or at the very least espouse devil-take-the-hindmost values (maybe they’re libertarians?). Just as abusers learn to abuse by watching what goes on in their families, so do bullies.
Seeing as I was a total nerd when I was in school (and still am, really - I work as a software developer) I ran into more than my fair share of bullies. While I haven’t run into much of it in the workplace, I’m sure part of that has to do with working with other nerdy folks on IT projects. I certainly have seen it in other adult social groups.
I’m pretty much in agreement with Amanda here - adults may be more sophisticated than kids in how they go about being abusive, but the underlying behavior and motivation is the same. The bottom line is that abusive kids grow up to be abusive adults, pretty much guaranteed. They learn that the behavior works to get them status without any significant negative consequences from authority figures.
I’ve long been of the opinion that if the educational system made an effort to identify these kids and somehow route them into some sort of program that would either (A) teach them more constructive ways to relate to others or (B) even just separate them from the kids who are trying to learn stuff without getting beaten up or harassed, we could improve many aspects of our society. The problem with is in the implementation - how best to do it?
Every time I read stories like this, my blood pressure goes straight through the roof. I swear to god, if this kid were mine — hell, if he were a relative — I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself from going to that school and putting some of those administrators in the fucking hospital. I think I’d be sending cards out afterwards: “Dear school administrators: What happens when you ignore bullying? I take out your spine.”
(And this is why I completely refused to go to my high school reunion — I was getting too much joy imagining showing up with a hatchet.)
Schools only care about violence when it’s the popular kids who get hurt. When it’s the popular kids doing the hurting, everything’s just fine with them.
We as a society have spent years promoting thuggery as a national virtue. We reward talk show hosts for screaming at their guests, we refuse to punish pundits who issue veiled death threats, we shrug when cops taser people for the crime of being handcuffed.
I dealt with bullying and extreme racist abuse from the ages of 8-14. I was under a lot of pressure, as a girl and a minority, to minimize it, ignore it or find nonviolent solutions… none of which worked in the slightest. The only thing that made the abuse abate even a little bit was defending myself with physical violence.
I wonder a lot about the mindset behind the bullying. It’s very atavistic behavior, pack-dog or maybe even reptilian. The group reinforces its social bonds by attacking a different, weaker member. Showing weakness is like rolling to expose your belly. It might work; but it might encourage more attacks. “There’s a dying animal… let’s poke it with a stick!”
It makes me furious when people say that dealing with bullying in childhood makes you a stronger adult. 1) bullying often causes bullying victims to become bullies themselves and perpetuate the cycle 2) bullying gets less and less social acceptable as people get older. So you’re saying it’s OK for kids to suffer pointlessly.
I don’t understand why people tolerate and even encourage this kind of negative animalistic behavior in children.
This is just one of the myriad reasons we homeschool. The Lord of the Flies culture of public school exists nowhere else in society. School leaders hide behind privacy laws to avoid allowing any outside review of their ridiculously poor decision making. They create student peer groups to handle discipline because they are afraid to. They punch a clock and let our kids get victimized. The other beuracracies of authority - like the cops - follow their lead. If the school authorities identify who they say the problem creator is in a situation, the cops line up right behind that decision. So strong/connected kids (bullies) end up running the joint, because the teachers and the administrators are wimpy little punks who are scared. They’re scared - kids get scarred. Nice set up. Pull your kids out now!
Anybody remember Katie Lyle? She was from my hometown and went to my school. She had to sue. Maybe that’s what it takes.
Why do school administrators, facing certain legal action and almost certain defeat in court, so often side with the bully? They punish girls who’ve been harassed beyond endurance, and they punish boys who’ve been judged to be not sufficiently macho or something. Why?
And if there’s one thing I absolutely despise it’s the passive, worthless, piece-of-shit advice to ‘just ignore it, it’ll go away.’ No, it doesn’t work like that. Ignoring it makes it worse. There’s tremendous pressure to do so, though—that way everybody can pretend their precious darling children aren’t sadistic little bastards.
Do bullying victims really become bullies themselves? It seems to me that that’s part of the old stereotype that bullies were once poor tormented souls themselves. My sympathy for them ends once they inflict shit on other people.
Not only that, how is it that a kid can really be expected to do their best in school when they’re scared to walk in the door? If there was some way to wave a wand and magically end bullying, I’ll bet people would quit worrying about America’s “failing educational system.” All the kids would do better in a climate of respect. Even kids who aren’t targets often live in fear of doing anything that might make them one.The Lord of the Flies culture of public school exists nowhere else in society.
I think my comment about the “stuck” people in my community and Ginmar’s comments about military behavior put the lie to your supposition.
Homeschooling is your personal answer, but it doesn’t change the societal dynamic your kids will encounter when they reach the workplace.
That was my whole childhood, exactly like that.
And then my first three jobs, bullied by psychotic people who chose to make others miserable rather than get the therapy they so desperately needed.
That sh*t makes you SO TIRED. Day in and day out, to not be able to sleep because you so dread the next day and the abuse it will inevitably bring.
I thank the goddess that I have finally found a workplace where this garbage is not tolerated, and an eclectic, open-minded group of friends who do not expect (or respect) conformity.
And the wild thing? In the great scheme of things, I’m not all that weird! Dare I say, I am even quite attractive. But that never stopped them.
Do bullying victims really become bullies themselves? It seems to me that that’s part of the old stereotype that bullies were once poor tormented souls themselves.
When I was growing up, the bullies tended to be kids who were bullied at home - by parents, older siblings, etc. They simply learned the ropes from their bullies, and seemed to not understand it any other way than a stratification scheme of eat dog.
I’m not sure if bullying victims become bullies, but I do agree with the notion that bullying is learned behavior. I’m not especially sympathetic to bullies and I think they definitely need to be held responsible for their behavior, but I think it’s worth contemplating how bullies are created. That might give us some insight in terms of how to stop them.
Seriously, WTF?! Did you not read the whole post Amanda just wrote? Her whole point was that the behaviour displayed by bullies in schools is the same kind of behaviour we see in the workplace, in college, and now as a political strategy …
I think you’re being incredibly naive to think that this only takes place in schools.
SO not a solution. One, this presumes you have the disposal income to allow one parent, or fund a nanny or the like, to teach your children, so awesome display of privilege. Second, it really displays a HIGHLY selfish attitude, in just pulling your kids out and effectively saying “I’ve taken care of mine, no more problem!” and ignoring the way this is a cultural collective issue of our society that is merely manifest in high school in the same way it is manifest in other aspects of society. Schools gain their wonderful strength through collective efforts, not by people merely being out for what is best for them.
And I’m not glamourising schools here, I was a geek, and I transferred between a number of such, so I was an outsider and obviously different. Admittedly, I was also an athlete, so this mitigated things, but I definitely got shit because of it. I would not go back to school if they paid me to.
But this is a cultural problem, so we need to deal with it on a cultural level. Libertarian ideals don’t do shit except make the issue worse by pretending it doesn’t exist or that it’s the actions merely of individuals.
And if there’s one thing I absolutely despise it’s the passive, worthless, piece-of-shit advice to ‘just ignore it, it’ll go away.’
It doesn’t. Kids are absolutely fucking relentless, and in a school where the administration actually punishes bullying, they’re sneaky as well. I say “kids” rather than “bullies” because in my experience - middle schools - the bullied are a small minority and the bullies are practically everybody else.
Yeah, workplace bullying exists. Employees won’t often put up with physical violence in the workplace, but there are other ways to threaten them. Emotional bullying is very big in the workplace.
Y’all ever read the entries in the “Worst Boss in the World” contests? It’s like wall-to-wall bullies there…
I see them as little OJ Simpsons. No big secret as to how or why they become bullies: it works. Not complicated at all. Power works. Sadism works. It gets them the ability to manipulate and terrorize and control people, and that’s all that matters to that sort of person.
Anybody who gets bullied and hten goes on to bully others doesn’t deserve sympathy; they’re worse than a privileged bully who just wants to dominate. The bully who was once a victim knows what it feels like.
Being bullied when I was a frail, ill kid made me hate kids for a good long portion of my life, and made me extremely wary of bullying behavior and patterns. I always used to wonder at the parents of those little shits.
Getting away from the persona created for me by bullies meant I had to move two thousand miles away and re-invent myself. That broke the hold. If you have to stay in that environment, it’s awful. You’re stuck in the same straitjacket your whole life.
My son is a small young eighth grader. He does pretty well socially, but has a few tormenters. Where I live the abuse is more diffuse — all kids are targets to some degree. I think most kids, esp. most girls, expect verbal abuse in middle school and high school. Kids are pretty nasty at that age.
We had a talk at the junior high that included some of the kids as speakers. One Ninth grade girl spoke about the “ho” talk in the hallways and almost seemed like she was apologizing that it made her angry. I resolved then that we as parents have to make sure kids know that this crap they are throwing at one another all day is NOT okay.
As a kid who was (psychologically, not physically) bullied in middle and early high school, I could have told anyone all along that the bullies were the so-called popular kids. “Popular with whom?” was what the 80% not among their ranks used to joke to ourselves. I was an only child, a sort of beta-personality only child with an undisguisable love of learning and an intense need to be liked that is my undoing to this day. I put up with the treatment until the day one of my so-called ‘friends’ from a quasi-popular clique who barely tolerated me basically ordered me to stop my new punk friend from Spanish class from sitting near ‘our’ table to talk to me (”he just doesn’t fit in with us” she explained in earnest tones).
The next day, I came into school in black clothes, white makeup and black eyeliner, and totally ignored everyone to whom I’d formerly tried to suck up or felt I had to suck up. The few times people tried to directly torment me after that, I acted like they didn’t exist, uttered a snappy comeback, or gave them the finger if I was certain no school personnel were looking. When and where I went to high school - central Virginia in the late 1980’s - girls just didn’t get beat up, at least not by the “popular” girls, who were aware they would have looked dreadfully unfeminine and out of type if they wailed on someone in their pom pom outfits or clothes from The Limited. Nowadays, I worry that any girl who showed any defiance such as I did, who wasn’t prepared to physically kick some ass, would get jumped.
Like Billy’s parents, my parents were initially in denial. I always got on really well with adults, and they just didn’t understand why a bright and nice kid would be rejected, when “bright” and “nice” were two traits that were sure to earmark you for torment unless you were really fucking haaawwwwt (read: blond perm, nearly inaudible speaking voice and frosted pink lipstick).
My husband’s brother got it way worse than i did, being a boy and incapable of sarcasm. He was never cured of his desire to be liked, and that was his undoing.
Okeeee….rereading this makes me want to take my 6-month-old son the hell out of NYC and raise him in a cabin in the woods. Nice knowing y’all.
Sarah, you might find it selfish, but my take on it is that the culture is irredeemable, and there are some of us who have the time and patience to try to change the culture and some of us who say, “screw you all.”
I’ve consciously avoided professions where bullying is rewarded. Is that selfish? Sure, maybe. But it’s worked out best for me. Do I feel sorry for the junior associate at a corporate lawfirm or investment bank who has to deal with bullying? Yes, I do. However, I’m not going to join that profession in the hopes of changing it. I feel the same way about a lot of school systems. The only way to defeat bullying in schools is divide-and-conquer: split schools up into as small a granualarity as possible so that bullies can be targetted and isolated. Since that’s not going to happen any time soon, I can’t blame anyone who opts for a private school or home-schooling.
Again, I think we really need to look at what makes these kids become bullies. They sure don’t learn it in a vacuum. Can “good” parents have “bad” kids? I doubt it. I think kids learn from their parents how to treat others. Even if the parents don’t bully the kids, they might see mom or dad acting cruel to others and thus learn that it’s OK to be a bully.
I share the rage expressed by so many in this thread. There is no limit to my contempt for adults that excuse this kind of thing. And sadly, they’re the fucking majority: I bet you anything most people who read that Billy article said to themselves that Billy just needs to “toughen up” and stop being “oversensitive.”
I might add that if I found either of my sons involved with any of this shit, consequenses - SEVERE consequences would follow.
This is something else I wonder about: what kind of parents do these bullies have?
Oh, I’m sure they learn it from their parents. Their parents probably worship power and its advantages and teach their kids that they’re better than everybody else. Look at Alex Kelly; domineering dad, submissive mom, and the kid turned out to be a rapist. (Funny, it’s always domineering moms that arouse the ire of the people who study crooks. Mom wears the pants in the family: bad. Dad does: good. Dad is also an abusive fuck? Even better!)
Okeeee….rereading this makes me want to take my 6-month-old son the hell out of NYC and raise him in a cabin in the woods. Nice knowing y’all.
Seriously, you are probably better off in NYC.
While there is a healthy whallop of townie stupid going around the Boston area, we aren’t in geographically and economically isolated situations. Even balkanized urban areas have to deal with far more diversity, and that results in higher awareness.
My son’s middle school has been set up to disrupt the tendency toward self-segregation that leads to cliques and bullies emerging. They mix things up, create limits and expectations of behavior, and enforce them. This is partly due to the high level of diversity in the school system, particularly in the city-wide schools, that can build to racial and ethnic tensions if kids don’t have to work together on a rotating basis. They separate the grades, too, which helps with the heirarchical issues between sixth and eighth grades.
There are still some incidents on the bus, but some kids have started taping them with their phones and also report nonsense because they know people will listen. Parents in urban areas are less hog-tied by local ties (particularly us “outsiders” who didn’t go to school here and don’t depend on local ties for our jobs) and thus may be less afraid to sue school systems that don’t effectively deal with these problems.
Sorry, not going to work. What smaller groupings produce is clique-ish control of identity and appropriate behaviours, as all smaller groups do develop a tighter reign on individualism and diversity; it’s simply part of group dynamics.
What this means is that smaller groups will be MORE likely to allow bullying behaviour, as it will be merely an adjunct to such identity policing.
You cannot take yourself out of culture, we are all invested in it, whether we are a hermit in a log-cabin in the woods, or living in an apartment in a downtown urban space. I view merely taking care of yourself as, yes, selfish, and I do wish more people would pony-up and take responsibility for our culture.
LOL. Me, too. How sad is it that I’m 45 and would still, if given half a chance, take a shovel and beat the living shit out of some of the jerks I went to high school with? Between a bully of a father and a brutally clique-ish junior high/high school, my teen years were a living nightmare. Did the bullying make my stronger? I’m sure it did, but it also did serious emotional damage. I still struggle with chronic depression.
And that would explain my intense desire to grab a shovel whenever I see his face on my television. Here I was thinking that I just wanted to get some gardening done…
there are some of us who have the time and patience to try to change the culture and some of us who say, “screw you all.”
The problem is that you do your own child no favors with your central digital salute to society, if that is the only reason you would homeschool (there are a lot of reasons to homeschool that depend on your situation, but i don’t think this is a terribly constructive one in and of itself). You may opt your kid out for a time, but what happens when that same sheltered kid has to make a living, go to college, etc.?
What I would like to see: a Student’s Bill of Rights passed by Congress that would guarentee every student a right to attend school and learn in a secure environment, with rights of redress for those who just think kids will be kids and nothing can be done about it.
I spent most of my school life being bullied. It started in kindergarten, and I wound up suffering a near-breakdown at university level because I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the victimisation to start all over again. I can still remember the intense anger I felt about the whole business, because I *knew* there hadn’t been some massive change in me over the twelve weeks between the end of high school and the beginning of university - I hadn’t suddenly become more popular, or changed personality. The only thing which had altered was the expectations of the people around me. The sort of crude bullying which had made my schooldays a misery wasn’t tolerated at university level.
Being fair to the teachers and other students at my schools, I have to admit the bullying never had a physical component. It was emotional bullying, which I found completely soul-destroying by the age of fourteen because of factors internal to myself (chronic depression manifesting in the middle of the rest of the adolescent hormonal insanity). It wasn’t the sort of thing which could be easily spotted, or easily stopped by a teacher. It’s the sort of silent bullying which is particularly the province of teenaged girls - the destruction of the reputation through words.
My parents weren’t much help. I don’t think my mother had ever been bullied in school (she was a tomboy who played cricket and similar, and the impression I get is she would have been one of the popular kids in her school) and while my father might have been bullied, I don’t know whether he got angry about it. The only advice I got was “ignore it and they’ll get bored”, which is probably the worst advice known to mankind. If you ignore bullies, they don’t get bored, they get challenged, and they work harder to get a reaction. They go further, they make nastier comments, and they push harder at the painful spots they know of already, while looking twice as hard for new ones.
About the only thing I ever found which would make a bully shut up and stop bugging me was blowing up at them in public. I did this with one particular boy who’d always sneered at me and treated me as though I were something scraped off the bottom of a rock. On this occasion, we’d been put into groups, by the teacher, by surname. His was Smith, I’m Thornton, so we wound up in the same group. The comment of his which set things off “why do I have to go into the bad group?”. When one of the other guys took issue with this, asking why our particular group was a “bad” group, young Master Smith replied “it’s got Meg in it”. At which point, I lost it rather spectacularly, and made a number of comments, the gist of which boiled down to not only was he being rude, but he wasn’t doing it well, and my younger brother could do a better job of insulting me and save me the train fare. This was followed by me stomping out of the classroom. I later heard from a classmate my telling off Master Smith had been regarded as a Good Thing overall. It certainly knocked down the amount of torment I received from that particular group of classmates.
You don’t have to live in Arkansas for the school administrators to side with the bullies. Any school, anywhere will display the same characteristics — it’s all based on the socioeconomic status of the victim. As to where the bullies learn it? At home. Bullies tend to breed bullies.
http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/queerlaw-edit/msg03126.html
Katy Lyle’s case. This case made precedent, so you’d think school administrators would be more aware of it.
What does help with school bullying - and again, this is just based on personal observation - is to have all the adults on board with anti-bullying actions. That is, there has to be consequences, they have to be known to all, and they have to be seen to work. The consequences can range from juvie to enrollment in compulsory anger management classes (kids hate those).
Then you need a high adult-to-child ratio so the kids are under observation all the time, and if something happens, there’s an adult handy to intervene. No intervention policies work if there are too few adults to supervise the kids, and adults who don’t care are worse than no adults at all.
Sorry, not going to work. What smaller groupings produce is clique-ish control of identity and appropriate behaviours, as all smaller groups do develop a tighter reign on individualism and diversity; it’s simply part of group dynamics.
Actually, “granularity” does work if the school is set up to remix kids each class period, each year, etc. and you know you are going to have to work with just about everyone at some point. That’s what my son’s classes do - he is not with all his friends all of the time all day, and no one else is either. Group work is valued, but your group changes constantly - class to class, project to project, etc. Don’t like someone in your group this time? Tough. Make it work.
Oops: Better to ask forgiveness than permission, should be the phrase.
I spent most of my school life being bullied. It started in kindergarten, and I wound up suffering a near-breakdown at university level because I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the victimisation to start all over again. I can still remember the intense anger I felt about the whole business, because I *knew* there hadn’t been some massive change in me over the twelve weeks between the end of high school and the beginning of university - I hadn’t suddenly become more popular, or changed personality. The only thing which had altered was the expectations of the people around me. The sort of crude bullying which had made my schooldays a misery wasn’t tolerated at university level.
Being fair to the teachers and other students at my schools, I have to admit the bullying never had a physical component. It was emotional bullying, which I found completely soul-destroying by the age of fourteen because of factors internal to myself (chronic depression manifesting in the middle of the rest of the adolescent hormonal insanity). It wasn’t the sort of thing which could be easily spotted, or easily stopped by a teacher. It’s the sort of silent bullying which is particularly the province of teenaged girls - the destruction of the reputation through words.
My parents weren’t much help. I don’t think my mother had ever been bullied in school (she was a tomboy who played cricket and similar, and the impression I get is she would have been one of the popular kids in her school) and while my father might have been bullied, I don’t know whether he got angry about it. The only advice I got was “ignore it and they’ll get bored”, which is probably the worst advice known to mankind. If you ignore bullies, they don’t get bored, they get challenged, and they work harder to get a reaction. They go further, they make nastier comments, and they push harder at the painful spots they know of already, while looking twice as hard for new ones.
About the only thing I ever found which would make a bully shut up and stop bugging me was blowing up at them in public. I did this with one particular boy who’d always sneered at me and treated me as though I were something scraped off the bottom of a rock. On this occasion, we’d been put into groups, by the teacher, by surname. His was Smith, I’m Thornton, so we wound up in the same group. The comment of his which set things off “why do I have to go into the bad group?”. When one of the other guys took issue with this, asking why our particular group was a “bad” group, young Master Smith replied “it’s got Meg in it”. At which point, I lost it rather spectacularly, and made a number of comments, the gist of which boiled down to not only was he being rude, but he wasn’t doing it well, and my younger brother could do a better job of insulting me and save me the train fare. This was followed by me stomping out of the classroom. I later heard from a classmate my telling off Master Smith had been regarded as a Good Thing overall. It certainly knocked down the amount of torment I received from that particular group of classmates.
This contiues on and on because the parents of bullies refuse to take responsibility or to make their children take responsibility for their heinous actions.
A bunch of my friends are teachers and they complain that they’ve given up telling parents the truth about their children at parent/teacher conferences; the parents insist their kids are perfect and that’s that.
Oh yes, I agree, but that is in spite of the granularity, not because of it, ie it’s mitigating the effects of small-group behaviour. Such a technique would also work at the larger scale I would think, though it would take some wrangling
Another horrible aspect of bullying is that it creates a “shit rolls down hill” effect, for lack of better words.
When I was in elementary school and junior high, I was bullied by those who were higher up on the popularity scale. But I wasn’t just a victim, I was also a victimizer. I would end up bullying kids who I deemed to be below me.
When I was in junior high, there was this one annoying, slow-witted kid that I constantly harrassed. Thinking about it today, I feel horrified at the way I treated him. I failed to feel empathy for others who went through the same thing I went through. However, it is a lesson I intend to instill in my own children.
I was a fat kid, and very smart–which made me a double target. Life was hell for a while–my parents were obviously working with the school officials, who came up with a solution that worked.
They skipped me a grade.
It worked: they pulled me out of the group that contained the bullies, put me in another where I was a curiosity–and work was more challenging, though not by much.
This was back in the 60’s, and skipping is now frowned upon–but it worked for me.
Sarah, the other advantage to the smaller environments is that it makes it easier for the parents to leave in favor of a better environment, if the first one becomes highly dysfunctional.
Cultures don’t change. Cultures are only defeated. Since there’s little hope of “winning” a fight with an entrenched culture that favors bullying, the best thing to do is walk away from it. If bullying cultures are that toxic, they will fail. My cynical opinion is that they’re self-sustaining and the best you can do is find a place where the bullying culture isn’t valued and encouraged rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
I know, since, you know, women still can’t vote, or own property, and blacks are legally 3/5ths of whites, and gays and lesbians aren’t able to live lives as gay in the slightest.
/snark
I’d be the first person to say our culture still has a LONG way to go, but good-grief, this just reeks of post-hoc justification. The way we change our society is by people getting involved and taking responsibility, not by running away from issues.
Just want to say I’m glad to see this issue brought up here.
I was viciously bullied for two years in the 4th and 5th grades and no one ever believed me even when I was being choked in school classrooms. Something triggered two girls to threaten me with homophobic comments simply because I was different looking or more intelligent than them (being a “genius” does suck sometimes). Either way, no one believed me and it took me years to come to terms with my sexuality when I came out as bisexual after all those years of being teased because “lesbian” was the most disgusting, horrible word 4th graders could come up with. /sarcasm
Some bullied kids learn to survive by hiding and becoming invisible. I did that for too many years until as an adult a few years of therapy finally sorted me out.
As a teacher, this is one of my pet causes to stop bullying and implement effective programs at all educational levels.
As for the (main) bullies…Katherine Beckley and Brigid McGrath…I still hope you’re rotting in hell somewhere.
So, do no teachers read this blog? Let’s hear from them. (I guess they might be at work.)
in my experience - middle schools - the bullied are a small minority and the bullies are practically everybody else.
Yeah, this was my experience in middle school too. Unfortunately.
After reading the article, I’m a little disappointed to see focus on the physical aspects of bullying when it is much more than that. They also fail to touch upon the differences between girls who bully, who most often use ostracizing tactics, and boys who bully, more often with physical threats. The article raises awareness, but not of the myriad forms bullying takes…which Amanda touches upon in her response.
NYT: so, what’s w/the lack of NAMES in that story? Billy’s parents are suing, so aren’t the respondents (?) names part of the public record?
What’s the principles’ names? The names of the administrators? The school superintendent?
Weak journalism.
God this topic just brings back horrible grade school memories. I cried myself to sleep for about a year, with my dad sitting beside my bed rubbing my back. I was most afraid of a boy in my class, who lived up the street and was on my bus route. He tormented me. And being picked on by alleged “friends” (girls) just hurt and confused me so much. I never bullied anyone because I had compassion for other people and my parents would have nipped it in the bud anyway.
Truly, I blame parents who don’t instill good values in their kids.
One of the worst bullies in my small-town junior high was the mayor’s son. He often cut in line and threatened anyone who challenged him, and attracted a ring of thugs who liked to be his enforcers.
In the middle of high school, this same guy has a car accident and winds up paraplegic. We had a big school assembly about it, little poems in the yearbook about poor Mayor’s Kid, weepy testimonials from school administrators about his courage in the face of adversity.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I laughed out loud when I found out the bastard was crippled and would be miserable for the rest of his life. I couldn’t help smiling when someone would feign sadness over the little shit’s predicament, and I suspect that most people in the school had felt the sharp end of his stick at least once, so it’s likely that everyone was faking.
What sucks is that nothing has changed. Generation after generation gets bullied and in adulthood they find themselves in a position to do nothing about it. Or they choose not to.
My observation even as a student was that many teachers were former dorks who were now being Eddie Haskelled by the cool kids, and they loved it. Same with the McCain barbecue contingent. The world is full of outgroupers trying to get ingroup, and they care not a shit if some kid just like them gets the fuck beat out of him on their watch.
Why yes, I’m a misanthrope. Why do you ask?
“It’s not just the way school officials side with bullies. I think this tendency goes a long way to explain why people gang up on rape victims instead of rapists, why victims of domestic violence find very little sympathy with friends and family in many circumstances, and really even why the Republicans keep winning with childish tactics.”
It’s true. People are sheep and will bleat submissively for those in authority, even if that authority is gained by sheer brutality.
I think another big part of why rape victims are often blamed is what social psychologists call “belief in a just world.” The nature of the crime is such that it is hard to prove; consensual sex and date rape can be difficult to distinguish with physical evidence. Rather than acknowledging that they have acquitted based on insufficient evidence, juries have to convince themselves that the woman is lying or she deserved it. They do not want to believe that an innocent woman was raped but that they are bound by the standards of evidence to acquit her attacker. In a universal sense it seems unjust.
God, I still have the scars from bullying. Literally and figuratively. I had fantasies of walking into gym class with a suicide bomber’s vest on. Ho shit is it that I can say that HIGH SCHOOL was actually a good time for me, compared to the shit that Jr. High put me through? Thank god I had a healthy family life at home.
It takes a lot to fight that programming where the peer pressure not to tell is tremendous, and the administrative efforts are virtually non-existant.
The only way my friends and I managed to stop the bullying, and even then only temporarily, was to get violent. No-holds bared violent. Dislocated ribs, cracked skulls, kicks to the balls kind of unexpected violent. Don’t fuck with us, we will HURT YOU. It works, but only for you, and only temporarily. The bully doesn’t change, they merely go to another target. And I live with that dark little core of violence that I have to clamp down on when I get seriously angry. Unfortunately, wen it comes to “physical humor” that doesn’t take much. My friends know very quickly that I don’t accept that sort of behavior.
That should never be a viable lesson to teach a child in a civil society, and yet it was the solution. And unless we manage to fix the culture so that bullies are promptly and proactively dealt with by the school authorities, that would continue to be my advice.
“Like Billy’s parents, my parents were initially in denial. I always got on really well with adults, and they just didn’t understand why a bright and nice kid would be rejected, when “bright” and “nice” were two traits that were sure to earmark you for torment unless you were really fucking haaawwwwt (read: blond perm, nearly inaudible speaking voice and frosted pink lipstick.”
I hear you Wishy Washy. My parents meant well and so took me to a child psychologist to see what was wrong with me…by the suggestion of the school (who thought I was the problem and not my bullies.) Sadly, my parents weren’t even aware of how badly I was being bullied until I asked them a year ago how they felt about it. They both said they had no idea. They just knew the school wasn’t going to be good for my education.
Some time ago I was forced to check out some “traditional values” websites for work. One of the things that I unexpectedly discovered is how much they support bullying. They try to cover themselves slightly by saying “of course bullying is wrong..” but then they’d explain that some anti-bullying program was wrong or more insanely “anti-Christian” because it suggest that people should tolerate differences.
It was clear that they were relying on youth-peer violence to uphold their homophobia, so in their view, bullying was wrong but for the correct cause it’s OK. Or just that bullies are wrong, but gays and lesbians are worse.
Presumably race, politics, or religion/non-religion could also be an “acceptable” use of peer violence, but even they weren’t demented enough to openly suggest that.
Or, worse, blame and punish the victim. I’ve seen some parents and others go nuts at the “zero tolerance” policies because they treat a victim defending him/herself exactly the same as they treat the thug.The Matthew Show, my male bully shot himself in the head after high school. Fucker.
Sounds like my experiences in school, both in TX and New England. First it was non-sexual, then graduated to sexual-harrassment in HS. The dynamics of the school is ALWAYS blame the victim, side with the bullies. I’d be frankly shocked if I heard of it going the other way - I used to have Columbine-style fantasies decades before Columbine. Several kids the next town over who were bullied killed themselves, and one left, during the same time frame, but their school claimed no systemic problems.
And surprise, surprise, conservative pundits ALWAYS turn up complaining about the few schools that have or start anti-bullying intiatives…making our boys unmanly, donchaknow.
It seems to be something in our primate nature, to turn the evolutionary thing back - kiss up, kick down is the Middle Monkey way.
I think it’s wrong to blame Billy’s parents. It sounds like they are doing everything they can to help their son. I blame the parents of the bullies and most of all the school. Maybe we don’t have the whole story, but I am reading a high level of tolerance for bullies. There is no excuse for that.
School does not have to be that way. My own child attends an excellent public elementary school and one of the many things I value is the diversity that she experiences at school. I am a middle class white woman and the truth is that I do not know very many African American people. Most of my friends are white women like me. Because my child attends a public school with an English as a second language program, she interacts with and makes friends with children from around the world including children of visiting University professors from Korea, children of Mexican laborers, as well as African American children from our own community.. If we home schooled, she would mostly meet people just like herself.
Sniper: I say “kids” rather than “bullies” because in my experience - middle schools - the bullied are a small minority and the bullies are practically everybody else.
Everybody else? They are and they aren’t.
When we had that rash of school shootings in 1997-98, I gave the subject a lot of thought, as part of the greater “what leads a kid to do this?” question. I get one-on-one revenge, but it took me a while to grasp how a mass murder attempt becomes acceptable to someone.
I see school society breaking down into five categories. The victim, the victim’s friends, the bullies, the enablers, and everyone else. The first three categories are self-explanatory. The enablers are all the kids that laugh, point, and otherwise encourage and reward the bullies. Everyone else stands by and does nothing. They may not approve, they may even find witnessing those events painful. But they don’t stand up and do anything about it.
I place a ton of blame on the enablers. It’s their approval that perpetuates bullying. I’ll place a little blame on everyone else, but it’s hard to take that very far. I get it, not everyone has it in their personality to stand up and object, especially when it brands you as a new target. I get not providing an account to administrators, when Ms. Kate’s “people in charge” often side with the bullies. But at the very least, you have to be able to go home and say to your parents, “This crap is going on, and they let it happen!”
All that’s required for evil to win, and all that…
I had my own bully in 7th grade. She threatened to beat me up almost daily. I was lucky—I don’t think she ever actually hit me. I got a lot of stomachaches that year, usually in 6th period so I could go home just before school let out. It was the only time in my life where I ever contemplated suicide, and I wasn’t even being bullied physically.
At the workplace, we had a bully. She managed to corner bits of power and control for herself, but eventually it was discovered that she was not actually doing her job. She got canned, but sadly, the entire rest of the department had to pick up the slack and play catchup for all of her publications, which were months behind schedule.
Good connection, Amanda, on the sameness of bullying and sexual harassment. I’m gonna remember that one.
For anyone who wants to read more on Bully-Victim research and prevention just look up anything written by Dan Olweus: http://www.clemson.edu/olweus/history.htm
He’s one of the lead researchers on the subject.
One of the problems with fighting back (physically) is that bullies tend to have a finely tuned understanding of what they can get away with, while the victim does not. That means the victim can be painted as the aggressor when the violent incident was entirely due to the bully, and all the victim did was fight back.
My various schools had the following attitude about bullying:
-if it happens to you, shut up
-if you complain to a teacher then you’re in trouble
-you deserve it anyway for being so different/poor/nonwhite/gay/otherwise nonstandard
-the administrators don’t want to hear your worthless whining over the abuse you deserve for the above reasons.
Oh, and:
-bullying is good for kids. It toughens them up and gets them ready for the real world!
I got kicked around for being bookish and smart whilst female, but never got the real crap because there were so many juicier targets around. In my middle school, a gay boy was driven to suicide in the 8th grade. He took an overdose of pills. The day after it was in the news, his tormenters were giddy with joy over it. It was soooo cool, they said. They were such godly badasses- they KILLED someone! wowee wowee. After that, I hammered at my (rather indifferent) parents until they granted a transfer to a new school. That atmosphere was just too toxic.
I agree completely that our culture loves bullies and despises their victims. I’m sure it’s some ape troop thing, but you’d think we could overcome it- if we wanted to. Naturally we don’t want to. Bleh.
Mrs Nice Guy here. When my kids were bullied (and the school didn’t care, beyond calling *me* into the office regularly to complain about *my* kid) I went looking for self-defense classes. There were none for kids, but there was a self-defense-for-women class, so I went to it, and took my kids with me. Surprise! every woman there had one or more kids standing behind her. The adults would copy what the teacher showed, and the kids would copy the adults.
Later, I went into the office at my son’s school and I detailed the problems he’d been having, ending with “he spent all of Xmas break on crutches, because a classmate deliberately broke his foot by jumping on it.” Then I said, “I got the kid some attack training, and the next time I’m in here, it will be because someone else got hurt. Just warning you.” Apparently, that got his attention, because there were no more incidents.
I recommend self-defense classes, if they are available, and if not, then martial arts classes of whatever kind.
I was under a lot of pressure, as a girl and a minority, to minimize it, ignore it or find nonviolent solutions… none of which worked in the slightest.
Yeah, it was always kind of funny how it was the kids getting bullied got told to deal with shit nonviolently. Like hey, maybe fuckin’ tell that shit to you know… the bullies?
And if there’s one thing I absolutely despise it’s the passive, worthless, piece-of-shit advice to ‘just ignore it, it’ll go away.’
I agree: this hands down the worst advice to give a child who’s a victim of a bully, because it blames the victims for circumstances beyond their control. (Hmm…sound familiar?)
When I was growing up, I was bullied by nearly everyone, but it was mostly emotional/psychological bullying, at least. I was basically told three things:
1) “if you didn’t cry, they’d leave you alone” (i.e., it’s all your fault)
2) “they are just teasing” and/or “they are just jealous because you’re smart”(i.e., you are such a whiny baby for getting your feelings hurt: grow up and get over it and/or you should be flattered)
3) “you’re the youngest of a large family: it’s just the pecking order” (i.e., bullying is completely normal behavior, and it just sucks to be you)
That third one is the most revealing, I think: what that told me was that bullies are acting according to the natural order of things. In other words, it is right and proper for “the strong” to bully “the weak”. (Even more telling, I was raised in a very Catholic family and went to Catholic schools: in my religion classes, we were taught to be good to the poor, to stand up for the weak, etc.; outside of my religion classes, though, not so much. Although this may have been what spared me from actual physical bullying most of the time.)
With sentiments like this, we as a society actively encourage bullying because that’s how things are supposed to work. Bullies aren’t just allowed to bully: they are entitled and expected to.
As far as victims turning around and bullying other kids, some of that may be because it’s difficult to relate to other people if you grow up thinking that bully behavior is “normal” or even worse “flattery”.
It starts when kids are very young and it’s insidious. I’m teaching my son to verbally stand up for himself already at age 4. Now I have to figure out how to teach him to stand up for other kids without being a tattle-tale.
I think about that myself… I’m not sure there’s a clear black-and-white answer to it. On the one hand, I don’t think there’s always necessarily an absolute link between bullies and coming from situations of being bullied… at the same time, some of the most violent psychopathic bullies I knew growing up came from really, really shitty homes, where abuse was almost certainly a facet of their homelife.
Pulled out a paper from later in the semester in one of my Psych classes - “Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of Self Esteem.” The premise is that “violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism-that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance.”
I think this is why bullying shows up so viciously in late elementary school/middle school. It’s the stage where kids are becoming aware that the greater world will not love them as much as their parents do. One of the best arguments against homeschooling that I’ve heard is that the function of schools is not only to educate the child, but for the parent to learn that their precious child is only one among many. That is what the parents of bullies who condone their actions are refusing to accept.
In a different class, we talked about bullying, and how the most effective intervention is not with the bullies or the victims, but the bystanders. Part of bullying is the audience. Cutting off that oxygen seems to be effective.
But humans are pack animals and highly hierarchical, so this will probably never fully go away. The worst bullying I’ve ever seen - a hospital where I temped for two weeks. The frozen glee with which shit was flung downhill amazed me. I left after some items on my desk “disappeared,” which amazingly enough happened right after one of the doctors asked if I would be willing to stay on full-time if the woman I was filling in didn’t come back from maternity leave. And she said this in front of the woman’s friends. Nice place.
Addendum, before I have to run off here:
I agree that violence is the ONLY way to stop a bully. I believe that most are deep-set cowards. They want a target without teeth. But as soon as they get their asses handed to them, they back off REAL QUICK.
However, others have mentioned that a bully is a seasoned manipulator who knows exactly how much brutality s/he can get away with. They’re also excellent at painting the victim as the evil evil aggressor.
I’d like to add to that:
In my experience, there is so limited tolerance from bully-lovers for boy victims who fight back. There is however NO tolerance for girl victims who do so. A girl who uses this tactic- the only one that works at all- is suddenly an evil insane monster.
After all, any woman who fights back physically is an unnatural evil jezebel psychopath demon, to our culture.
So yeah, needless to say, I’m 100% on board with the intersection of bullying and sexual harassment/rape. If the victim fights back, SHE’S the criminal. The rapist was just having a little fun!
NY Times — This month, researchers at the University of Manitoba reported that the emotional toll of workplace bullying is more severe than that of sexual harassment.
Amanda — Sexual harassment is a form of bullying.
Of course it is. But women are more likely to be the target of sexual harassment, while men are more likely to be the target of “plain” bullying. Therefore, since the emotional well-being of women is FAR less important than the emotional well-being of men, it’s OBVIOUS that sexual harassment doesn’t have as much effect as workplace bullying. Q.E.D. [/sarcasm]
Ginmar:
Yes, the same way that victims of abuse often go on to become abusers themselves. I think one of the key elements is experiencing bullying or abuse but still having an underlying feeling of entitlement arising from some form of privilege.
A pretty good example is the “nice guy” phenomenon. These are people whose behavior is influenced by their experience of emotional abuse in the past (inflicted for failing to live up to the bullshit patriarchy standard for masculinity and “strength”) but who nonetheless believe that they’re entitled to sexual attention from women — so as their ability to leverage their privilege as men increases, they apply it to duplicating the same abusive behaviors towards women who won’t give them what they “deserve.”
The middle ranks of bullying supporters, too, are often made up either of previous victims or potential victims who are trying to stave off bullying by sucking up to the person with the most power — much like some of the women who offer up the “rape victims deserve it” line in order to curry favor with the patriarchy.
This absolutely doesn’t excusing bullying in any way; I think it really just points to how horrible the problem really is. Like the way that patriarchy turns different victims of oppression against each other, the cycle of bullying and violence pushes people who are victims into becoming victimizers, which just ensures that more people suffer in total.
thematthewshow: I wasn’t bullied per se, but when I learned one of the lowlifes who gave me shit in jr. high died by electrocution from falling on a lamp while sniffing glue, I laughed out loud.
high-five!
/hangs head
I did that too. I was the #3 dork in school, so making fun of #’s 1 and 2 or just not helping them was a way to tell myself that I wasn’t the worst loser around.
All the people I knew (one girl, a bunch of guys) who were bullies were real macho, beer and football type kids who were the children of fathers that beat them. I know that’s not always the case, but that was my experience.
It is amazing to me how young the bullying starts. 7 and 8 year olds being emtionally abusive. It is also an example of the value of being a bully in our culture that parents (not just teachers) turn a blind eye. Of course the parents are the role models for the little bullies.
Unless she was somehow intimidating a/some coworkers, she hardly qualifies.
Don’t broaden the definition to the point of uselessness .
Something my husband, a substitute teacher, has noticed is that some students will defend their bully. Especially girls being harassed by boys. He has tried to step in when this happens and has often been told by the girl, “it’s fine, I don’t want your help.” I think there is a fear of beeing tormented more if the girl “allows” a teacher to help her.
I think parents, and teachers need to praise kids who treat fellow students (and people at large) with respect. If kids start seeing being kind to people will be met with praise and admiration, and bullying is scorned maybe we can start to see a reversal of this behavior. An example is a boy who was harassing an autistic boy by making noise he knew bothered the autistic kid. My husband handled it by telling the bully “You have the power to be this kid’s hero today by being kind to him”, and it worked. It might have only been for that day, and it will not work with every bully, but if we can start teaching children this lesson from their earliest days maybe a lot of bullying won’t take place later in school. I know some schools try to incorporate “No Bullying” lessons, but I don’t know what they entail.
i>Seeing as I was a total nerd when I was in school (and still am, really - I work as a software developer) I ran into more than my fair share of bullies. While I haven’t run into much of it in the workplace, I’m sure part of that has to do with working with other nerdy folks on IT projects.
I follow you — I am a former bookworm bully victim and now I’m in academe. But what’s really sad is that I figured academe was the one place it’d be safe to be bright. Not so. I was realy distressed by thid article because it described my workplace so perfectly, and here I am, two decades later, still hiding from bullies.
At least these guys are not allowed to grab at my crotch or repeatedly slam my head into the surface of my desk. In a way I almost wish they would, because at that point, under the law, I’d be within my rights to hurt them a very great deal, and as an adult I’m physicially capable of doing so. But alas . . . all they do is glare, sneer, gossip, and threaten.
What I was always told was ‘they only tease you because they like you.’ Even if that were true (and it isn’t), why is their sick inability to express their feelings my problem?
I was about second to bottom on the social ladder at my junior high and I was an asshole to people on the bottom rung, for the same reason.
I observed, as a victim of bullying, that a lot of people won’t participate in the bullying, but they’ll avoid the victim as much as they can — because they don’t want to be “tarred with the same brush.” They may remember this as “being the good guy”.
I still have issues related to the years of bullying and social isolation. People from my junior high school, and people who remind me of my more powerful junior high classmates, bring out the absolute worst in me — the misogyny, the fatphobia, the Schadenfreude. I lord over them whatever I feel that I have. I’m a huge clotheshorse/makeup junkie, more than is healthy, and I know it’s because I spent so many years being told I was ugly and I’m not over it.
Teachers can BE some of the worst bullies, as well, is my experience. I went to an extremely academically competitive junior high/high school (David Frum went there, if that means anything to anyone) and I had teachers who absolutely tormented me. It still enrages me that people who teach 12-year-olds can do things to them that adults would NEVER be expected to tolerate.
I’m really saddened to see so many people offering violence as the only solution to this problem. In a space where people are usually full of wonderful ideas and often convey sympathy for other commenters the joy mentioned at the misfortune of past bullies, whether sarcastic or not, is disturbing.
Dude, we’re only human. We all have dark sides. Being angry when people hurt you badly and wanting to hurt them back (or see them hurt) is normal. I don’t get the sense that anyone here is particularly proud of feeling that way, but it’s not “disturbing.”
Some bullies never quit. My spouse had a boss who was a bully. Until the boss left for illness, it was hell on skates for my SO.
The local school district has a general low tolerance for bullies and when I teach, I have no pity at all for them. Bullying can cost a student academic and sports privileges. Strictly on my sayso. They might do it elsewhere, but never in front of me…or anywhere I might see them.
Part of the success is that I don’t care who your parents are or if your absence form the team costs the ability to attend states’.
He has tried to step in when this happens and has often been told by the girl, “it’s fine, I don’t want your help.” I think there is a fear of beeing tormented more if the girl “allows” a teacher to help her.
At our school teachers are taught to actually say something along the lines of “It doesn’t matter if you’re not bothered by it, this kind of behavior is completely unaccaptable in a school.” Then the bully is marched off to the office.
But that doens’t mean our policies work all the time - far from it. Like I said earlier, sometimes the kids just get more subtle and sneaky - cases of cyberbullying offer good examples here. Sometimes the parents condone or even encourage bullying! They’re proud of their big strong kid (or pretty, popular kid) for running the show. Or they don’t understand why a teacher is calling about this “petty crap” instead of just beating the kid with a big stick like they do at home.
I was bullied, but it’s difficult for me to write off the bullies as subhuman or irredeemable. They were kids, too, and I knew two of them - they were former friends - well enough to know that they had issues of their own, like bullying parents. I wouldn’t say they were misunderstood lambs, but no one really is.
In situations like this kid’s, I lay the blame at the feet of the adults. The parents of the kids, the teachers and administrators at the school - they have a responsibility to protect those kids, both from each other and from their own worst impulses. They’re not doing either and they deserve to be held responsible for it.
The parents of this boy, I feel for them, too. It’s so easy to say, “I would raise hell.” That’s what they are doing, and it’s not doing them any good. No one cares. Even if they moved, or moved their son to another school, there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t become a victim again; and then he wouldn’t even have the friends I’m sure he has here. They’re totally powerless. It’s scary.
“Do bullying victims really become bullies themselves? It seems to me that that’s part of the old stereotype that bullies were once poor tormented souls themselves. My sympathy for them ends once they inflict shit on other people.”
If you’re a kid who’s being bullied, you don’t have to bully other kids, but sadly, you might have to become a little like them to make them stop.
When I was in the sixth grade, I was bullied relentlessly by one of my female classmates, until I decided I’d had enough, and pushed her down a flight of stairs. No more bullying after that.
I’m really saddened to see so many people offering violence as the only solution to this problem.
I wish there was a better solution. But I have never seen anything else work. Trying mediation doesn’t work- the bullies like and are proud of their behavior. Trying to get the administrators to give a flying fuck is impossible. The only thing that shifts the situation at all IS blowing up at the bully and breaking their nose. Brutality only understands brutality. I wish it was different, but I have never seen anything else work.
Sniper - that’s good advice and I’ll pass it along to my husband.
Elinor - Yes we are only human, but it’s that kind of thinking that allows bullying to continue. “We are only human” is essentially “kids will be kids and bullies are just a part of childhood.” How can an adult who finds joy in someone else’s misery teach children to be kind? I know not all people have children, but for those who do we are their biggest influence and the best method for teaching is by example.
I had teachers who absolutely tormented me. It still enrages me that people who teach 12-year-olds can do things to them that adults would NEVER be expected to tolerate.
Total word to this. Once I told a teacher, in 7th grade, that I thought the way he was yelling at this other girl was inappropriate. I have never heard such a shocked silence in my life–and then I got sent to the guidance counselor’s office.
Tangentially, this is one reason I could never get into the Harry Potter books: Professor Snape is clearly a vicious bully, yet Dumbledore keeps him at the school, and J.K. Rowling defends this in an interview as Dumbledore preparing kids for the reality that “life is unfair” or something like that. Far too many adults take that attitude in real life.
Yes, it is disturbing and I’m one of those people who still, on occasion, wants to inflict some physical damage on the bullies in my past. Would I hurt them, if I were actually given the chance? No, not really. I’d walk away. But I think it speaks volumes about the amount of pain inflicted upon us as kids that we’re still so angry. This is not an issue that should be so easily dismissed by any adult.
No one yet has brought up the idea that some of the school shooters were bullying victims who decided to take matters into their own hands. Does anyone know if this is true or urban legend / MSM baloney?
Olivia, I agree. While I understand the need to punish anyone who bullies your child or tolerates the abuse, the way to do it is not to (as a parent) turn vigilante and physically attack (bully) the administrators or the bullies. That’s the mindset that leads to a cycle of violence. Laws, courts, and persistence to teachers and administrators and bosses, combined with activism to force them to acknowledge the victims has to be a better answer than more violence.
Okay, if some kid walked up to my kid and punched him in the head, then filmed it, that would be the end of the world.
If the local DA wouldn’t prosecute, I’d launch a civil suit, against the kid and against the school for failure to adequately protect my kid. Also, no way on God’s green earth would I send my kid back to that school.
If that didn’t work, I’d leave town. And, later, I wouldn’t leave fingerprints.