Bullying [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Ifni

2016-01-27, 01:12 PM

For me it was mostly deliberate ostracism - people wouldn't acknowledge my existence, which would've been fine if it was just a couple of kids, but it was a small enough school that a couple of people got together and managed to organize/bully everyone else (in my year) into joining in. Nobody would make eye contact with me, talk to me, or react to anything I said - if I approached them or sat down at their table they'd move away, but that was about it. This started when I was 12 and lasted, on-and-off, for a couple of years.

(During the same period, when they weren't ostracizing me, there was a bit of physical and verbal bullying - being tripped, having colored ink or water smeared on my uniform, loud comments about how ugly I was, being called various derogatory names for (a) a prostitute (because I hung out with the boys), and (b) a lesbian (once they realized I had zero romantic interest in said boys). But that was pretty negligible and easily ignored compared to the ostracism.)

Being treated as if you don't exist is actually surprisingly painful, when it lasts for an extended period of time (typically a couple of weeks, once two months). I'm pretty introverted, I actually like being away from all other people for a few days, but getting a constant implicit message from everyone your own age of "you are beneath our contempt, you're not a person, we don't see you, we don't hear you, you don't even exist" hurts in a way that simple solitude does not.

And it's a difficult approach to resist - attempts to get their attention were just ignored, pretending it wasn't getting to me was what I did, but that didn't stop it. I suppose I could've done something they couldn't ignore, but then I would've been the bad guy as far as the authorities were concerned (and I didn't want to hurt or upset them, I just wanted them to treat me like a human being). And it's hard to complain about - "What are they doing to you?" "They're, uh, ignoring me". (I did try talking to the school counselor, who told me that it was all my fault for being "socially abnormal", and that I should stop acing math tests in order to fit in with the other girls. I mean, she was right about being-good-at-math being the trigger, the two-month episode was initiated by my teacher deciding to announce to the class that I'd just won a medal in an international math competition, but I still rather strongly disagree with her proposed solution...) I talked to some of the people involved after school - they were happy to spend time with me so long as nobody saw them do it, but they were worried about being targeted if anyone thought they were my friend (and were quite open about this). So school kept being a place where everyone my own age assiduously pretended I didn't exist.

I never actually found a solution. At school I just pretended it didn't bother me, which didn't stop the ostracism, but left me some self-respect. Eventually I persuaded my parents to let me leave the school, and did correspondence schooling for a year; then we moved back to a Western country that didn't have quite the same stigma around girls doing math and science, and everything went fine from that point onward.

Bobbybobby99

2016-01-27, 01:38 PM

For some reason I never really got bullying. That isn't to say I was never bullied, but I suppose I just saw no reason to care about the opinions of pubescents, even as one. The common responce to attempts were my very loudly asserting just how why I, in fact, was better than them, and pointed remarks at their grade point averages. The implication of anything physical would involve a reminder that I had no reservations about 'tattling', and that they would inevitably be suspended, resulting in them not making it into college, leading to unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction, and eventual death by overdose.

I was a mean spirited child.

8BitNinja

2016-01-27, 01:43 PM

Bullying had been a huge problem for me, and I would spend many days in the office talking about the problem to the vice principal.

But really, If you want someone to stop bullying you, all you have to do is be confident (that solves a lot of problems)

Sometimes you just have to man up and tell the other person that you aren't going to take crap from them, and if that means fighting, don't start it, but make sure you end it

NOTE: I do not endorse picking fights

Merellis

2016-01-27, 01:48 PM

It only stopped when they eventually grew out of it in high school and then got people to tell that I should just get over it.

Nothing worked, nothing that was ever suggested, nothing that was ever tried, nothing I could do ever worked.

They didn't move on to someone else, they just decided they were done with bullying and I was supposed to accept it with no repercussions beyond the few times they got suspended. Supposed to sit in the same group as them doing schoolwork and pretend everything was fine, because they're over it Merellis, so why aren't you? It was just some roughhousing Merellies, they thought they were playing tag, you're weird Merellis, make some friends Merellis, it takes two to tango Merellis.

Sure as **** didn't take less than six to beat the hell out of me for seven years straight.

EDIT:

Man up and show confidence? HAH. Not like I didn't hear that **** for seven years straight either.

Bobbybobby99

2016-01-27, 02:10 PM

I'm reasonably certain that showing confidence (or biting their heads off) works best if you're cutting it off at the root. If you try to start after it's been happening for a while, it'll have become a habit for the bullies, so it isn't as likely to work.

Lentrax

2016-01-27, 02:16 PM

I was almost killed by my bullies.

The response? No one noticed, or cared. I didn't tell anyone about it. Not because I didn't want to, but because the response to being attacked before was to ignore it, or be better than them.

I was such a favorite target because no matter who did what to who, who started it, or how bloody or damaged I was, I was the one who got in trouble. Not the aggressors. Not the ones who mercilessly hunted me before during and after school. Me. The victim. I was assaulted on a regular basis, regular enough that I have been in pain every day for my entire life since. But I'm the one who got in trouble.

One kid drop kicked me down a flight of stairs and then kicked me again while I was on the ground struggling to breathe, in full view of two teachers. but because I had "a reputation," I got suspended for a week, and he got a warning. I didn't even know his name, but he knew mine, and wanted to set an example to his class.

8BitNinja

2016-01-27, 02:19 PM

It only stopped when they eventually grew out of it in high school and then got people to tell that I should just get over it.

Nothing worked, nothing that was ever suggested, nothing that was ever tried, nothing I could do ever worked.

They didn't move on to someone else, they just decided they were done with bullying and I was supposed to accept it with no repercussions beyond the few times they got suspended. Supposed to sit in the same group as them doing schoolwork and pretend everything was fine, because they're over it Merellis, so why aren't you? It was just some roughhousing Merellies, they thought they were playing tag, you're weird Merellis, make some friends Merellis, it takes two to tango Merellis.

Sure as **** didn't take less than six to beat the hell out of me for seven years straight.

EDIT:

Man up and show confidence? HAH. Not like I didn't hear that **** for seven years straight either.

I'm sorry, that was just the advice I was given, I never meant to offend anyone

It's just that most bullies attack people because they think that person is weak, if you show that you are not, most likely, they'll stop

I never picked fights or anything, but once I did something about it, it stopped

In conclusion, I am sorry for hurting your feelings, I did not know that is what the outcome will be, I will do anything within my power to make ammends

Merellis

2016-01-27, 02:20 PM

It doesn't take much to convince the victim that speaking out is useless. The schools do nothing, parents just tell you to ignore it and be better than them. But day in day out assaults continue, your self esteem is constantly picked at, peers think you deserve it, the school just keeps telling you not to antagonize them as if it's your fault.

Just.

UGH.

@8bitNinja:

I am aware you didn't mean anything by that advice. It's just that, I heard those words so much during it. From all sides, from the *******s themselves, and I am just angry and bitter about the entire experience. I reacted a bit strongly to the advice up there, because it was just so hard to feel good about myself during any of that and it's so hard to fake confidence when you don't know how it's supposed to look like.

But yes, apologies accepted.

Aliquid

2016-01-27, 03:12 PM

You know, the thing that severely pisses me off about this whole subject is the response from the authorities (teachers, or parents, etc.)

Reading some of these posts gets me so agitated.

- I hate the mentality of "boys will be boys", or "they were just having fun". NO it is not "fun" or ok to abuse someone. EVER.
- I hate how a kid gets labeled as a trouble maker by the establishment and then gets blamed for everything.
- I hate how almost every "stop bullying" program seems to be focussed on dealing with the victims, not focussing on stopping the bullies.

At one point, my kid was in kindergarten and I went with the class on a field trip. I was the only dad... all the other parents were moms. The teacher put one of the "problem kids" with me because she somehow figured I would keep him under control (she told me this). During the trip the boy was all over the place, so I did have to work hard to keep on top of him... BUT he was the only kid who said "thank you" to me whenever I helped and he seemed to genuinely mean it. So I told the teacher, "don't go labelling him a bad kid, he may be hyper but he doesn't cause trouble out of malice. He doesn't need a label like that following him around"

hmmm just thought of another thing to rant about...
The other kids witnessing the bullying. THEY need to be confident and say to the bully "dude, stop being such a jerk", rather than just looking the other way and thinking "what a jerk... oh well not my problem, nobody else is saying anything so I will just shut up."

Kid Jake

2016-01-27, 03:26 PM

I never really had to worry about bullying when I was in school; at least not from students. I mean I was a fat kid with Tourette's Syndrome, so you'd think I'd have been an easy target; but I was also 6' tall in 5th grade and had a crappy enough home life that at least once a week I'd show up with a black eye and busted knuckles so most people just thought I was a trouble maker and gave me a wide berth. Most people wouldn't even talk to me, let alone try and provoke me.

Only two times I ever had to deal with other kids ended quickly and violently enough that I almost feel bad about it in retrospect. The first involved two boys two grades ahead of me cornering me off school property, trying to 'teach me a lesson' for telling them to jam something painful up something unflattering in the lunch room. One of them pushed me in the chest, like a stupid kid does, and got punched in the throat so hard I actually thought I might have killed him. While his friend gawked at the completely out of proportion response I tackled him to the ground and beat his face until I couldn't physically lift my arm to throw another punch.

After the above, people pretty much avoided me altogether until I switched schools a few years later; where some kid literally half my size wanted to show everyone how tough he was by putting me in my place...I guess. I'm not really sure what his end game was, because I simply cannot imagine a scenario where a mouthy 120lb rabble-rouser is going to fare well against an angry 280lber without mechanical assistance. He suckerpunched me in the gym locker-room and I just shouldered him off his feet and stomped his solar plexus with way more force than was probably called for, before I realized who it was and was like "Oh, that's it...fight's over I guess."

Looking back, I realize I'm lucky that nobody was seriously (or at least lastingly) hurt, because I seriously doubt anyone would have believed I was just defending myself. The two boys from the first anecdote ended up stabbing the next kid that back-talked them a few weeks later and I can't help but feel like I'm at least partially responsible for the extreme escalation. As I recall the other kid had a severe heart problem that made his unprovoked attack all the more baffling.

Hell, I can't even imagine the ****storm that would've resulted if either had happened more recently or in a less redneckish town.

Red Fel

2016-01-27, 03:54 PM

I don't know that I ever got truly bullied. I don't recall ever being physically attacked in any way. Even the non-physical stuff was always more insidious than direct. Few people ever insulted me to my face. Most of it was just atmospheric ostracism. And I didn't particularly mind that, because I was an odd child.

There was one incident in middle school where the bully - and his two friends, this was a very Draco Malfoy moment long before Draco Malfoy was a thing - tried repeatedly to intimidate me. Never to do anything, or make me do anything, he never demanded lunch money or my homework or anything like that. He just wanted to belittle me. So finally, I got fed up and challenged him to a fight after school.

Now, this school had two sides - a front, where parents picked up and dropped off their kids in cars, and a back where the same was true of buses. He and I both rode buses. I challenged him to meet me in front of the school. He went there. I did not, and went home on my bus. I didn't get much trouble from him after that.

Beyond that, I think what protected me from bullies was a willingness to embrace crazy. Rather than feeling uncomfortable about my differences - and as I said, I was an odd child - I accepted, explored, and even embellished on them. I think what resulted was a combination of two things. One, potential bullies didn't bother with me, because they couldn't make me feel bad about being different when I didn't seem to feel self-conscious about anything; and two, I was a bit crazy, and even juvenile delinquents know that you do not mess with crazy.

Being able to foam at the mouth on command helped too.

I was also fortunate to have friends who had my back, particularly in high school. If people came up to me with a look that said, "I'm going to start with an innocuous question, but after that it might lead to some snark," I had friends who would jump up and make jokes about illegal drugs. I was an odd child with odd friends. Point is, their insanity (and the fact that one of them wore steel-toed cowboy boots with purpose) helped to defuse potential situations before they ceased to be potential.

Mostly, it came down to me accepting the fact that I was different, understanding the reasons that made me different, embracing those differences, and wearing that acceptance on my sleeve. Where I grew up, bullies were opportunistic feeders, looking for easy targets. One who forced them to think about a plan of attack wasn't worth their time.

THEChanger

2016-01-27, 05:28 PM

Middle school was the worst time of it, I think. By the time I hit high school, I had mostly surrounded myself with people who loved and would protect me, and some of those people were scary, so those bullies that did make their way to me found a rather large wall of snark and muscle. But middle school...

I had just been diagnosed as an Autistic person, which meant that I was in a kind of therapy that emphasized compliance and 'correct' behavior at the time, which made the situation a little strange. But people would ask questions intentionally meant to confuse me, pretend to be friendly and then just stop, and generally work to destroy my sense of reality. The isolation that you mentioned, Ifni, was a big part of it, though not quite to the extreme of every single person in the school, since mine was too big for that. I was physically assaulted a couple of times, but I was very quick to demonstrate that I would not put up with that, so it only happened a few times. I remember in one instance, one of my more constant tormentors tried to rip a rather heavy book I was reading out of my hands. My response was to pull it back, take a spin and slam it into his head. A bit of an overreaction to be sure, but I was done with the crap. But what made it all worse was, because of the particular kind of therapy I was receiving (traditional ABA, which I was already a bit old for), it became very difficult for me to say no. It really made me feel like my tormentors had the right idea, that the way I had been operating in the world up to that point was wrong, and that on some level I deserved the treatment I was getting. That's still something I'm having to unlearn. Bullying by peers is bad, non-action by authority figures is worse. But when bullying and abuse not only comes from authority figures, but is a sanctioned and respected 'treatment' for a disability...that's something terrifying. For me, at least.

Alent

2016-01-27, 05:43 PM

Bullying, the story of my childhood, I wouldn't be surprised if almost everyone here has such a story. :smallfrown:

For me, I was both smart and the tallest in the class, and the shortest kid in the class had bad grades and was already sporting a colossal napoleon complex in 1st grade and had a pack of minions who did the usual grade school name calling and teasing. A few years later we moved to another state and went from living in an upper middle class area populated by engineers, government contractors, and military officers to an extreme low income area where everyone was solidly below the poverty line on account of being active duty US Army or low income factory workers. As you can imagine, the bullying got worse, because not only was I tall and smart, I was now also "rich, sheltered, and naive". My teacher even got in on it, always taking the bully side of any conflict beyond reason and sometimes instigating and encouraging them. (She always rewarded them.)

In just half a year it got bad. Once I finished that grade, my family was pretty much forced to home school me, because things just kept escalating and I didn't really try to defend myself because I thought that violence was wrong- a critical failure of the moral institution I was raised under- and the few times I tried it just made things worse, anyway. Being removed from that situation by home schooling was pretty much the best possible outcome- the area has a fairly high mortality rate. (Drugs, violence, suicide, cancer, etc.) Not participating in that culture at all kept me alive and healthy.

But as for means to solve it? That isn't your responsibility. Your responsibility is to get away from it and learn how to function as an adult. (Honestly, I don't know why we send kids to school to learn adult behavior from other kids when kids only know how to act like monsters.)

Jay R

2016-01-27, 06:20 PM

In sixth grade, I was bullied regularly, by several people, but the worst of them was Mark. Once, on the way back from P.E., I lost my temper and jumped at him.

Mark was bowled over, and I was sitting on top of him.

He knew that five seconds later he'd have me on the ground permanently, and I knew it, but evidently Mrs. Brashear didn't know it. I got in trouble for "fighting" (so did Mark), and we both had to stand in the corner for half an hour in our classroom and in Mrs. Brashear's classroom. It seemed so unfair to me.

It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Her class had most of the kids I'd been in class with the year before, and in both classrooms, I heard incredulous whispers behind me, saying, "Jay was fighting?" The amount of bullying I had to put up with dropped to almost nothing for the remainder of my time in that school.

I suspect that Mrs. Brashear knew exactly what was happening, and exactly what she was doing.

Cristo Meyers

2016-01-27, 06:59 PM

It only stopped when they eventually grew out of it in high school and then got people to tell that I should just get over it.

Nothing worked, nothing that was ever suggested, nothing that was ever tried, nothing I could do ever worked.

I hear you. That was my situation too. This was the heyday of the 'Just Ignore It' phase, so that's what I got told day in and day out and when I pointed out that it wasn't working it just moved to the old standbys of 'get a thicker skin' or 'try and get along.' In other words, 'it's your fault.' Needless to say, it didn't take long before I realized 'Just Ignore It' really meant 'Stop Complaining About It.'

'It Gets Better' came on the heels of me graduating college, and honestly that one bugged me even more though by that time I didn't have to deal with the bullying like I did in High School. That's all you've got? I can understand the sentiment, but it's pretty damn cold comfort for the person that's hurting now.

'Get thick skin' is a valuable lesson, to be sure, but throwing kids into a bullying situation in order to teach it is a lot like throwing green recruits directly into a live-fire situation to teach them to duck.

They didn't move on to someone else, they just decided they were done with bullying and I was supposed to accept it with no repercussions beyond the few times they got suspended. Supposed to sit in the same group as them doing schoolwork and pretend everything was fine, because they're over it Merellis, so why aren't you? It was just some roughhousing Merellies, they thought they were playing tag, you're weird Merellis, make some friends Merellis, it takes two to tango Merellis.

I'll admit, I loved it whenever my old tormentors said that and I'll tell you why: it meant my holding them in contempt was justified. You want to deny any responsibility for what happened and the effect it had? Fine, thanks for letting me know ahead of time that you're still too immature to realize just what you were doing. I can Move On and still not want anything to do with you. The look on one's face when I told her, in no uncertain terms, that we were not friends despite the fact that 'it was the paaasssst' was priceless.

Ifni

2016-01-27, 07:18 PM

But when bullying and abuse not only comes from authority figures, but is a sanctioned and respected 'treatment' for a disability...that's something terrifying. For me, at least.

Yeah. I only really got the "it's your own fault, because there's something wrong with you" message from one adult in an authority position (the school counselor), and it still hit me really hard. I think the only reason I pushed back against it* was that my parents were super supportive, and very ready to tell me that the counselor was full of crap, and I was close to them and trusted them pretty much absolutely. If I'd been getting that viewpoint supported by adults who loved me and the medical establishment... I don't know how I would've coped. THEChanger, I'm glad it got better for you and best wishes for you in unlearning those messages.

*To a degree. I did think it was unfair that she expected me to lie about my abilities to stop people from treating me as a pariah, and so I refused to do it (which was a really good call since now my career depends on those abilities), but I thought she was right that it was my own fault I had no friends, because I was just terrible at social interaction. I was really shocked a couple of years later when I moved and realized that I could make friends easily as soon as "smart and good at math" wasn't a disqualifying factor.

EDIT: Re "It Gets Better" - that message would actually have helped me as a kid, if I'd believed it. Much of the hopelessness was the feeling that it was going to be this way for the rest of my life. But it shouldn't be a reason to avoid helping kids who are going through the same thing right now. I think it also does have value in demonstrating that kids who are bullied often grow up to be adults who do pretty amazing things; I've met people who think that the only kids who get targeted for bullying have something "wrong" with them.

Tvtyrant

2016-01-27, 07:37 PM

I was bullied all of my life until I started just attacking the people who bullied me as soon as no one was looking. By that time I knew the school did not care as long as it wasn't public, so locker rooms and backrooms became a staging ground. Eventually a guy attacked me at a party and I threw him into a fireplace. That was the end of being bullied, no one tried me again.

Lentrax

2016-01-27, 07:52 PM

I'll admit, I loved it whenever my old tormentors said that and I'll tell you why: it meant my holding them in contempt was justified. You want to deny any responsibility for what happened and the effect it had? Fine, thanks for letting me know ahead of time that you're still too immature to realize just what you were doing. I can Move On and still not want anything to do with you. The look on one's face when I told her, in no uncertain terms, that we were not friends despite the fact that 'it was the paaasssst' was priceless.

I was in my old middle school years later for a concert my brother was doing for the school because I was his ride. At the time I desperately needed to study for my physics final, and so I found myself sitting in the old cafeteria, a place I hated, and still remembered having my lunches dropped over my head, or down my clothes, or slammed around or into me.... Anyway, as I was sitting there reading, I was asked what I was doing, and looked up to see my old assistant principal standing there. When he remembered who I was, and realized just what I was doing, he apologized for the hard time I went through years ago.

Gee, thanks for acknowledging my torture. Thanks for the belated sympathy. Thanks for believing me. But seven years is a little more than a day late and a dollar short. I didn't even say anything, just packed my books up and left.

TL;DR: It may be "in the past," but for those of us that had to endure it, the effects are ever lasting. But hey, thanks for letting me know you sleep soundly at night.

druid91

2016-01-27, 08:08 PM

As far as social abuse went, mostly I simply didn't realize they were trying to upset me until later in life. It just seemed like random outbursts at the time.

Since I was big enough that nobody really tried anything physical, that kinda put a stop to bullying. Or at least vastly reduced it's scope so that the worst it got was petty theft.

Ifni

2016-01-27, 08:34 PM

TL;DR: It may be "in the past," but for those of us that had to endure it, the effects are ever lasting. But hey, thanks for letting me know you sleep soundly at night.

Not everyone who's bullied has lasting knock-on effects, which is a good thing. But that doesn't make those effects less real or less painful for those who have them. It sounds like you were treated horribly and betrayed by the people who should have been protecting you, and I'm so sorry. And yeah, an apology way after-the-fact doesn't really cut it in that case. (I have more sympathy for "I'm sorry I was so awful to you as a kid", because kids do not yet have fully developed brains, but an adult in a position of authority who watched abuse and did nothing about it...)

One of my dear friends was severely physically bullied in grade six (and maybe earlier, but that's when I saw it) - and not just by the students. I watched as our teacher kicked him hard in the side for refusing to leave the classroom. (Sequence of events: he asked a question about the book we were reading, the teacher told him to be quiet, my friend laughed and asked why we were reading the book if we weren't allowed to ask about it, the teacher told him to go to the principal's office for being disrespectful, he refused to budge, the teacher came over and kicked him.) I told my mother, who told his mother, who told the school... who did nothing. Much later my mother told me that at this point my friend had been coming home from school every day with fresh bruises (his mother had told her). And still the school did nothing. Eventually his parents pulled him out of that school and sent him elsewhere. He was another very bright kid, very good at math and computer science, shy and socially awkward; those were his only crimes as far as I could tell (besides expecting intellectual honesty from his teachers).

For me, it took about five years before I could talk dispassionately about the isolation and its impact on me, and feel myself largely healed. But I had a lot of advantages - no physical injuries to remind me, it was only bad for a couple of years, and I had my family's support throughout. For me it really did Get Better, albeit it took quite some time. But I'm one of the lucky ones, I think.

Rain Dragon

2016-01-27, 08:39 PM

Well, I can't contribute much to the discussion due to context, but I was only bullied at school during primary school. I fully agree most anti-bullying rules and such are typically quite ineffective.

It's strange, but in high school I was respected for the very same reasons I was harassed in primary school.

One time in highschool, there was one person who decided to poke fun at me. I'm not cool or tough or anything, but I really didn't care and it really didn't affect me. A few months later, a person with dyed black hair and cool clothes came up to me outside of school and thanked me. I was rather confused. They were the very same person who tried and failed to make fun of me. They'd been a victim of peer pressure and trying to be cool, popular and accepted because they feared being disliked and pressured. They saw me being me and not really caring about that jazz and took that as inspiration to just be who they wanted to be.

It would be great if more could be done about the issue of bullying in schools. It is an important issue which seems to have been consistently poorly addressed for years. At least where I grew up anyway.

Cristo Meyers

2016-01-27, 08:52 PM

EDIT: Re "It Gets Better" - that message would actually have helped me as a kid, if I'd believed it. Much of the hopelessness was the feeling that it was going to be this way for the rest of my life. But it shouldn't be a reason to avoid helping kids who are going through the same thing right now. I think it also does have value in demonstrating that kids who are bullied often grow up to be adults who do pretty amazing things; I've met people who think that the only kids who get targeted for bullying have something "wrong" with them.

It is a sight better than Ignore It, to be sure and I agree that it has value, but it seemed (to me at the time) like half a solution. Focusing on the final outcome that's years in the future for these folks isn't always going to help. It can just as easily reinforce that hopeless feeling.

Evandar

2016-01-27, 09:27 PM

I was just nerdy in high school. The bullies and 'cool kids' didn't really go in for very much physical abuse. I'd get upset at times when they were being jerks.

The weird thing was, I came from a public school. However, I had met the single most popular guy at this school when I was six. He came over every weekend and we were absolute best friends. When I arrived, everyone was expecting me to be awesome (I didn't know he was so popular) and were just hugely disappointed. He didn't spend much time with me in school for very obvious reasons. I didn't swear, used bigger words than almost everyone there and was bad at sports. I also became very arrogant about it because no one was involving me in stuff, and it was a defence mechanism.

(Also, despite being locally schooled in a country where English isn't the first lanaguage, I crushed the entire year of international students in English in the exams two weeks after I got there. I've since realized the average western student doesn't actually speak English nearly as well as I had imagined at the time, a view I've had reinforced at university back in Melbourne.)

That's a slight digression, but I guess I thought it was relevant because it turns out the most popular guy in school was nerdy as all hell, and just hid it because of social pressure.

More importantly, all the bullying that happened was generally making fun of the students with clear mental disabilities or girls they didn't find physically attractive. The latter had it so utterly bad. They'd never be able to so much as speak without someone throwing out a horrendous nickname. They're all smoking hot now and seem pretty confident, but it has been six or seven years. I imagine those self-esteem issues are still there/were there for quite a while. I also never really stood up for them because I was nervous. I've found them all and apologized -- some admitted it was a big deal, some of them didn't.

I guess the tl;dr is please stand up for the victims of both physical and verbal bullying (although also please be safe) whenever you can, even if you'll be ostracized for it. There's a high chance that at least someone will know you're doing the right thing and step in once you've spoken up. But that's in the case of verbal abuse, I remain unconvinced that physical violence is an effective measure in many instances.

Traab

2016-01-28, 02:15 PM

You know, hearing all these stories about schools that were complicit in bullying really makes me happy now that im seeing all these news stories about schools being sued over this crap. Because only by making it a public relation nightmare does anything ever get done. Even then it doesnt always help.

danzibr

2016-01-28, 02:19 PM

This is an interesting and saddening thread. Me, I wasn't bullied much. But I also have a son who is 5 years old, and I have to think... what will I do if he gets bullied? What will I do if he is a bully?

It (hopefully) helps that I'm a teacher where he'll be going to school.

8BitNinja

2016-01-28, 02:26 PM

The Succubus

2016-01-28, 03:07 PM

This...stirs up a lot of bad s*** for me. I was bullied by quite a lot of people at school and isolated by quite a few others. The worst part is that it starts to twist who you are as well. Sometimes I'd actually seek out my bullies because I'd want to get them in trouble and because it got me noticed by people who would show concern and care for me. The thing was, I started to realise what I was doing and how messed up it was. So when I started getting bullied again in secondary school, I kept quiet because I didn't want to end up in that f***ed up cycle of abuse and power. My sense of self worth and sense of identity were almost destroyed in the process. It's something I still feel like an a**hole for, even over 20 years later.

I've tried to do good with my life since then, maybe out of some sense of seeking atonement. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you describe something as "bullying", it's dismissed as kids being kids. Irrelevant. Inconsequential. The same behaviour in an adult would be described as "physical and psychological abuse". Would that be so trivially waved away?

thorgrim29

2016-01-28, 03:28 PM

I was never really physically bullied (once or twice but then they realized picking on the kid who has half a foot and 30+ pounds on you is not the brightest idea so once I hit 15 or so that never happened again). I was however teased pretty mercilessly in primary school and early in high school. I was the tall awkward annoying teacher's pet who was always leagues ahead of everyone academically so.... And skipping a grade didn't exactly help. It's not nearly as bad as some others here of course but I vaguely remember (I don't have many memories of being less than 10 which is wierd since I otherwise have an excellent memory) being a very sensitive kid at one point until I sort of shut down emotionally for a while in my early teens to protect myself and escaped in books and video games. It took me a while to come back from that to any extent and I'm not confident I ever fully will. I think I'll always have that feeling that people don't really like me in the back of my head and I'll never be great at dating.

Evandar

2016-01-28, 09:03 PM

Hey, I like you, man. :smallbiggrin: It is factually incorrect no one likes you now. Eat that, pessimism.

And yeah, on whatever everyone else is saying, anti-bullying rhetoric is utterly ineffective. It's like the people putting it out have generally forgotten what students in high school in primary school are actually like, particularly the bullies. I think good teachers can really help the situation, but I've yet to visit a country that has managed to field good teachers with enough consistency to substantially stamp out the majority of bullying. (Though I know individual teachers from the U.S that manage pretty well.)

thorgrim29

2016-01-28, 09:25 PM

Oh I know it's not true. Doesn't keep me feeling blue and wondering if all my relationships are just a sham once in a while.

Evandar

2016-01-28, 09:32 PM

Just think back on all the terrible puns you've ever told, and recall that true fortitude and caring was required for people to stay around you after them.

Frontier

2016-02-01, 11:53 PM

Ugh. Hated it and it seemed like the world at the time but now it's nothing but a distant memory. It DOES get better like they say but it's hard when you're in the thick of it.

RandomNPC

2016-02-03, 11:31 PM

I had a dude show up about once a month to where friends and I would hang out before class. Once I knew I was being singled out and my friends were getting it because of me I asked a teacher for help. She shut me down, said no teachers would be in the hallway at that end of the school until class started, and even though it was near my first class and my locker, I wasn't supposed to be there either. So I decided to fight him, knowing there'd be no teachers, wore my steel toes, carried my bag so I could swing it and toss it, marching up to him ready to start fighting, and someone pops up out of nowhere and cracks him in the back of the head. It was like a scene from a cheesy b-movie where the hero has an assassin best friend.

The teacher who told me I was on my own threatened me with detention if she ever found me down that hallway. She also kept me from dropping the tutor program when I was getting high grades, (Turns out getting a blow to the head and dying for 2 or 3 minuets on the operating table means you get a tutor regardless) I've recently found that's because tutors get paid per kid, not a set rate, still hate her for that. Whenever someone asked for help she'd shut them down, the one time I pointed out the rules were against her and offered to take it to her boss I was told to shut up, then... I made some threats I should have been arrested for and she backed down without a word.

Now, I'm a bit bashful about having done that, but at the time I was furious at her for always belittling kids she was supposed to be helping and I thought I was the Big Darn Hero. I know I should have taken it to her boss instead of making threats, but even now to this point in my life, years later, I've never gone to an authority figure with a problem and actually gotten it fixed.

Velaryon

2016-02-05, 08:23 PM

I was bullied some in grade school and junior high, but looking back it wasn't as much as it felt like at the time. Nobody ever beat me up (though a couple of people tried, for reasons I never understood). Most likely I had less trouble than I otherwise would have because I was one of the bigger kids my age - never the absolute tallest but usually only 2 or 3 other kids were significantly bigger than me. Probably didn't hurt that I started taking martial arts classes when I was 10 either.

For the most part, everything I got was verbal other than a few times someone would knock books out of my hand, or grab something of mine and toss it to friends to keep away from me. There was one kid who walked up to me during recess one day and started shoving me for no reason (I didn't even know who he was). I ignored him until he threw a punch at me - then I went after him, and got pulled off by a teacher. Meanwhile, the obnoxious kid started bragging to all his friends that he'd kicked my... well, you get the idea. And it wasn't even true, he hadn't hurt me at all despite his pretty pathetic efforts.

I still came out of junior high with a lot of emotional scars and very low self-confidence, which it took me many years to start to overcome. But a lot of that was me being thin-skinned, interpreting things way more personally than they were most likely meant, and above all giving far too much weight to what a bunch of random jerks thought of me.

And it's a difficult approach to resist - attempts to get their attention were just ignored, pretending it wasn't getting to me was what I did, but that didn't stop it. I suppose I could've done something they couldn't ignore, but then I would've been the bad guy as far as the authorities were concerned (and I didn't want to hurt or upset them, I just wanted them to treat me like a human being). And it's hard to complain about - "What are they doing to you?" "They're, uh, ignoring me". (I did try talking to the school counselor, who told me that it was all my fault for being "socially abnormal", and that I should stop acing math tests in order to fit in with the other girls. I mean, she was right about being-good-at-math being the trigger, the two-month episode was initiated by my teacher deciding to announce to the class that I'd just won a medal in an international math competition, but I still rather strongly disagree with her proposed solution...) I talked to some of the people involved after school - they were happy to spend time with me so long as nobody saw them do it, but they were worried about being targeted if anyone thought they were my friend (and were quite open about this). So school kept being a place where everyone my own age assiduously pretended I didn't exist.

That's awful. Any authority figure, especially a counselor, who tells you it's your fault you're getting bullied should be fired. And probably blackballed from working with students ever again.

I guess the tl;dr is please stand up for the victims of both physical and verbal bullying (although also please be safe) whenever you can, even if you'll be ostracized for it. There's a high chance that at least someone will know you're doing the right thing and step in once you've spoken up. But that's in the case of verbal abuse, I remain unconvinced that physical violence is an effective measure in many instances.

I agree with this absolutely. Unfortunately, I didn't always live up to it myself. When I started junior high, there was a new kid in school who got relentlessly bullied for the horrible crime of being new in school and being a recent immigrant from Poland with a thick accent. Absolutely everyone else was horrible to him for no good reason. I was the only one in class who was even remotely nice to him. I didn't go out of my way to befriend him or anything, but when I talked to him I was polite and friendly because I knew how he must have felt and I didn't see why people should treat him that way.

There was this other kid named Sam, who I never liked because he was a jerk, but he was good friends with one of my best friends so I tried to get along with him. One day after I'd been nice to the new kid, Sam asked me if I was just pretending to be nice to him as a joke. I wanted this jerk to think well of me (mutual friends, remember), so I said yes, even though it wasn't true. Somehow it got back to the kid (probably Sam's doing) and he was crushed. I felt horrible, but I couldn't bring myself to deny it because I had said it.

Fortunately, once he wasn't so new anymore he made a few good friends and that was the end of it all, as far as I know. But I still feel bad about it when I think back on it.

Jaycemonde

2016-02-05, 11:54 PM

The only times that really stick out in my mind were when kids in elementary school would make fun of me for knowing how to read, kids in high school when I was still in elementary thought I was full of **** when I said I also played Half-Life, I got beat up for no reason by some dip**** kid from New York after school in my first year of middle school (he moved back to New York after my grandmother followed him in an undercover car from work, which I thought was seriously to catch him at the time but in hindsight was probably just to make me feel better and psych him out), and another time in seventh grade when this kid would do everything he could to try and make me lose my ****, like pulling things out of my hands or shoving me in the hallway. One day he did exactly that and asked me what I was going to do about it, on account of me being a little ******, so what would I even be able to do?

I rammed into him from the side and pushed him into a classroom window with enough force to crack the glass. After that I threw him onto the floor and showed him what my shoes looked like up close, but then somebody grabbed me and a random kid I'd never seen before slapped me in the face and sent my glasses flying. I don't know if they were friends of his or if they were just joining in because it was a fight.

Either way, nobody really bothered me after that, and I was honestly surprised I didn't get in trouble with the school. There were plenty of instances of emotional abuse and plenty of threats of physical violence, especially when I came out as being pansexual and was experimenting with my gender expression at the time. Surprisingly, I never got any **** for being a furry. My circle of friends (none of whom are still friends aside from one guy I only hung out with outside of school) would act awkward and uncomfortable any time I brought any furry stuff up (though one guy did RP with me over email for a while), but that was it.

Crow

2016-02-06, 04:54 AM

Now that I have kids, I have taught them to stand up to bullies, because by backing down it only becomes worse. I have also taught them that if they see someone else being bullied, they need to intervene on that person's behalf.

If everybody did that last part, the world would be a far different place. Nowadays we have too many people willing to watch things happen so long as they aren't happening to them.

Seto

2016-02-08, 05:47 AM

and two, I was a bit crazy, and even juvenile delinquents know that you do not mess with crazy.

Haha, yeah, I picked up an axe one time and threatened one of my bullies with it. (It wasn't school, it was the boy-scouts - well, the cub-scouts-, there were axes to cut branches and set up camp and stuff). I had of course no intention of using it, but I played the angry guy who was losing it. I scared him enough that they stopped bothering me for the rest of the camping trip. I wouldn't do that today, but what can I say, I was nine years old and overdramatic.
Then I moved up to the boy-scouts, and I was bullied again by older kids (I was 11 and they were like 14). I didn't really know what to do. I mostly took in it passively (or sometimes passive-agressively). At one point I fought back, but I was no match. The following year, as I was mentally getting ready to fight back again, they said "no, he won't defend himself, that's no fun". I was kind of upset about that (I was itching for a fight), but not crazy, so I let them go and didn't provoke them. From that point on it got better.
Thankfully it never got really bad (I wasn't badly beaten up, they didn't take money or important stuff), it was mostly intimidation, belittling, shove-your-face-in-the-mud and overall dominance.

I never got positively bullied in school, but a bit ostracized, as I was a marginal kid and hung out with marginal kids. But I kept in touch with them to this day, and I'm proud to say all of us finally blossomed (generally towards the end of high school) and we're now successful (socially and intellectually) and happy :smallsmile: And still friends.

valadil

2016-02-08, 11:56 AM

I got picked on a lot, but never bullied. By the end of high school I was 6'2" and around 280, which I thought was a good defense. Turns out it was part of what aggravated the other kids.

At some point senior year one of the alpha male jock types was picking on my for not playing sports. It turned out he was basically just jealous that he thought I was better equipped for them than him and was frustrated that I was wasting potential. Height's great and all, but I never had the speed or coordination to be useful in a sport.

8BitNinja

2016-02-11, 01:26 PM

Most people will tell you that fighting is never the answer, but really, if it is physical bullying, giving the snotwad a bloody nose might not be a bad idea

Will you get in trouble at school? Maybe. Will they mess with you again? Not if they have 2 brain cells

Crow

2016-02-11, 02:55 PM

Kalmageddon

2016-02-11, 03:18 PM

Ah, yes, bullying.
I remember I was the victim of a most peculiar form of bullying.
You see, I was always tall and strong, so you'd think people would think twice before pissing me off. Nope. Because cruelty and xenophobia knows no bounds.
I wasn't only tall and strong. I was also the outsider, the weird guy who didn't like soccer (in a country where people go MAD about it, unfortunately), who was very prone to anger and agression.
So what happened was, I was the bull, they were the matadores and school was one big Spanish bullfight.

They would provoke me, kill animals in front of me, do anything in their power to piss me off. And when they did piss me off, I would react strongly. I would tear those mother****ers to pieces, I'm talking broken teeth and bones. And of course, I got into trouble. Because the teachers cared nothing for the huge amounts of psychological suffering I was feeling. No, they saw a rich kid reduced to a bloody pulp and they suspended me. They called social services on my parents and tried to get me taken away from them (without any reason, as my behaviour wasn't due to an abusive household, it was due to being put into a class of sociopaths).
What they did not see whas the twinkle in their eyes while they bled from their nose. Their smile of broken lips. Because the pleasure of making me suffer, of making me feel like I wasn't meant to be, was stronger than any pain I could cause them.
And what is a few animals tortured and a black eye compared to making someone different suffer? Apparently it was more than a reasonable price to them.