Bullying

[The Succubus]

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]

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]

Hey, I like you, man. 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 And still friends.

[valadil]

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]

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]

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

Always worked for me. Bullies are cowards, and they want an easy target.

[Kalmageddon]

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.

[Jay R]

The best advice I ever got was from my father. He said, "Hit him in the nose. Make him hurt. Even if you lose the fight, if he hurts, he won't pick on you again. You'll get in trouble at school, but so what? He won't pick on you again."

[8BitNinja]

The best advice I ever got was from my father. He said, "Hit him in the nose. Make him hurt. Even if you lose the fight, if he hurts, he won't pick on you again. You'll get in trouble at school, but so what? He won't pick on you again."

Your father is a wise man