More thoughts on bullying
Feb. 22nd, 2003 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI've been inspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hermione_like to post about this.
What got the ball rolling for a lot of this discussion was this article: Why Nerds Are Unpopular.
hermione_like was also appalled by this post written by some girl I don't know. At least, I assume it's a girl, I could be wrong, but the username seems to be female. It's beside the point, anyway. Reading that post made me seethe with anger and resentment, but I've slept on it now, and I think I can respond more rationally now.
I'd also like to heartily recommendhermione_like's insightful post on the topic.
First off, I'd like to make an important distinction: being unpopular will not necessarily make you be a victim of bullying, but if you are bullied it necessarily means that you are unpopular.
Let me clarify: in my last three years of high school/CÉGEP, I was unpopular, but I was not bullied. I was simply left alone/ignored by most of my classmates (except when they needed my help with assignments, but that's a rant for a different day). I had a very small group of friends (three to be exact), and we kept ourselves to ourselves, and quietly we despised the popular kids because all they could think about was their social lives.
However, this was not the case earlier in my life, when I was unquestionably the victim of bullying. Bullying is not the occasional barb directed at you when you trip at a dance, or derisive laughter when you get smacked in the head by a ball in gym class.
Bullying is systematic. It's a daily occurrence that stretches over a long period of time. Contrary to popular belief, bullying doesn't "stop by itself." You can't ignore the bullies, and "standing up" to them only results in worse beatings. Bullying is being tripped at the dance, and having the ball whipped at your head in gym class because other people think it's funny. It's being teased and mocked all day long every single day, or being shoved into lockers, having your head pushed into toilet bowls, having your hair pulled, being kicked, pushed, punched, knocked over, bitten, scratched and humiliated on a daily basis for months and years on end.
Bullies hang out in groups as a rule: the stereotype of the one huge guy who picks on the little guy because he has self-esteem issues is bullshit. At best it's a rarity. Bullies need an audience, and in my experience it's not so much the will of one individual but a group effort that feeds on its own energy.
I've already discussed my own experiences in a separate post, and I'm not sure that it'll help anything for me to go into more gruesome detail than I already have. I'd just like to say that that post barely scratches the surface of what I went through in those days.
I'd just like to secondhermione_like's opinion that this isn't something you can "just get over." Most people who are bullied also don't "whine about it" either. Mostly we just become very quiet, put our heads down and just try to make it through the day. Then we go home, cry ourselves to sleep, and wake up the next day with knots in our stomachs because we know it's going to start all over again.
When you live in fear for (in my case) eight years, it's very, very difficult to get past the survival techniques you develop. You wouldn't think that being bullied could result in serious problems like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: that kind of thing only happens to soldiers in war and to concentration camp survivors, right? Wrong. It happens to people living in violent and abusive relationships. It happens to children who are abused, both at home and at school. It happened to me. It's something I still live with now, even though I mostly have it under control now.
It's been nine years since the bullying of which I was a victim eventually petered out. That was mostly because I changed schools and stayed out of everyone's way. Even today I don't like physical contact with anyone unless I initiate it. Someone coming up behind me and startling me can still send me into hysterics if I'm having a bad day. I'm hypervigilant, I have trouble trusting people who say they're my friends until I've known them for several years. A single event can shatter my trust in a split second, and after that it's almost impossible to rebuild. I still suffer from insomnia, and flashbacks in times of extreme stress.
Until I was fifteen I didn't really talk that much. I was sixteen when I made my first real friend, and that turned out to be a destructive, one-way friendship because this friend was more screwed up than I was and constantly put me down in order to make himself look better. It never occurred to me that this behaviour might be wrong: I'd been programmed to think I was worthless by eight or nine years of repetition.
Pain is one technique used by brainwashers. Say the wrong thing and BAM! you get hit, or electrocuted, or something. Until you start saying what they want to hear just because you can't take the pain anymore. You figure if you scream it loud enough, they'll stop hurting you. Except with bullying it doesn't work that way: they don't want anything from you except to take pleasure from seeing you hurt.
I'm still extremely bitter about this, as you can see. I don't talk about it much, because most people don't really understand. I'm not trying to say "Poor me, I'm alone and misunderstood!" Really. I'm not in this for your pity, or anyone else's. I'm beyond pity now. I don't pity myself, because I came through it and in spite of the hardships, I'm pretty much okay. It took a long time for me to be okay, but I am now.
It's funny, though, how some people are quick to jump to the conclusion that because most kids grow up and are okay as adults after being bullied, that the behaviour should be allowed to continue. Why should someone after me have to suffer the same thing? Why should they have to spiral into depression, develop destructive coping mechanisms (mine was self-injury, but others do drugs, drink, develop eating disorders, and a host of other problems), and be screwed up for years? Surely this is something to be avoided, rather than merely accepted with a shrug of the shoulders.
Don't ask me how to solve this problem. If I knew how, I would have already. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
hermione_like to post about this.What got the ball rolling for a lot of this discussion was this article: Why Nerds Are Unpopular.
hermione_like was also appalled by this post written by some girl I don't know. At least, I assume it's a girl, I could be wrong, but the username seems to be female. It's beside the point, anyway. Reading that post made me seethe with anger and resentment, but I've slept on it now, and I think I can respond more rationally now.I'd also like to heartily recommend
hermione_like's insightful post on the topic.First off, I'd like to make an important distinction: being unpopular will not necessarily make you be a victim of bullying, but if you are bullied it necessarily means that you are unpopular.
Let me clarify: in my last three years of high school/CÉGEP, I was unpopular, but I was not bullied. I was simply left alone/ignored by most of my classmates (except when they needed my help with assignments, but that's a rant for a different day). I had a very small group of friends (three to be exact), and we kept ourselves to ourselves, and quietly we despised the popular kids because all they could think about was their social lives.
However, this was not the case earlier in my life, when I was unquestionably the victim of bullying. Bullying is not the occasional barb directed at you when you trip at a dance, or derisive laughter when you get smacked in the head by a ball in gym class.
Bullying is systematic. It's a daily occurrence that stretches over a long period of time. Contrary to popular belief, bullying doesn't "stop by itself." You can't ignore the bullies, and "standing up" to them only results in worse beatings. Bullying is being tripped at the dance, and having the ball whipped at your head in gym class because other people think it's funny. It's being teased and mocked all day long every single day, or being shoved into lockers, having your head pushed into toilet bowls, having your hair pulled, being kicked, pushed, punched, knocked over, bitten, scratched and humiliated on a daily basis for months and years on end.
Bullies hang out in groups as a rule: the stereotype of the one huge guy who picks on the little guy because he has self-esteem issues is bullshit. At best it's a rarity. Bullies need an audience, and in my experience it's not so much the will of one individual but a group effort that feeds on its own energy.
I've already discussed my own experiences in a separate post, and I'm not sure that it'll help anything for me to go into more gruesome detail than I already have. I'd just like to say that that post barely scratches the surface of what I went through in those days.
I'd just like to second
hermione_like's opinion that this isn't something you can "just get over." Most people who are bullied also don't "whine about it" either. Mostly we just become very quiet, put our heads down and just try to make it through the day. Then we go home, cry ourselves to sleep, and wake up the next day with knots in our stomachs because we know it's going to start all over again.When you live in fear for (in my case) eight years, it's very, very difficult to get past the survival techniques you develop. You wouldn't think that being bullied could result in serious problems like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: that kind of thing only happens to soldiers in war and to concentration camp survivors, right? Wrong. It happens to people living in violent and abusive relationships. It happens to children who are abused, both at home and at school. It happened to me. It's something I still live with now, even though I mostly have it under control now.
It's been nine years since the bullying of which I was a victim eventually petered out. That was mostly because I changed schools and stayed out of everyone's way. Even today I don't like physical contact with anyone unless I initiate it. Someone coming up behind me and startling me can still send me into hysterics if I'm having a bad day. I'm hypervigilant, I have trouble trusting people who say they're my friends until I've known them for several years. A single event can shatter my trust in a split second, and after that it's almost impossible to rebuild. I still suffer from insomnia, and flashbacks in times of extreme stress.
Until I was fifteen I didn't really talk that much. I was sixteen when I made my first real friend, and that turned out to be a destructive, one-way friendship because this friend was more screwed up than I was and constantly put me down in order to make himself look better. It never occurred to me that this behaviour might be wrong: I'd been programmed to think I was worthless by eight or nine years of repetition.
Pain is one technique used by brainwashers. Say the wrong thing and BAM! you get hit, or electrocuted, or something. Until you start saying what they want to hear just because you can't take the pain anymore. You figure if you scream it loud enough, they'll stop hurting you. Except with bullying it doesn't work that way: they don't want anything from you except to take pleasure from seeing you hurt.
I'm still extremely bitter about this, as you can see. I don't talk about it much, because most people don't really understand. I'm not trying to say "Poor me, I'm alone and misunderstood!" Really. I'm not in this for your pity, or anyone else's. I'm beyond pity now. I don't pity myself, because I came through it and in spite of the hardships, I'm pretty much okay. It took a long time for me to be okay, but I am now.
It's funny, though, how some people are quick to jump to the conclusion that because most kids grow up and are okay as adults after being bullied, that the behaviour should be allowed to continue. Why should someone after me have to suffer the same thing? Why should they have to spiral into depression, develop destructive coping mechanisms (mine was self-injury, but others do drugs, drink, develop eating disorders, and a host of other problems), and be screwed up for years? Surely this is something to be avoided, rather than merely accepted with a shrug of the shoulders.
Don't ask me how to solve this problem. If I knew how, I would have already. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-23 02:59 pm (UTC)All that saved me was changing highschools on a yearly basis. That allowed me to adapt myself, to avoid the bullying by changing myself with every new school.
I got lucky. I still feel for all those that had to stay with the torment year after year.
*hugs*