Bullying, a way to spread awareness

[beastro]

Violence, or rather, the threat of violence always worked growing up. It's been almost two decades in a more sane time when it came to bullying, but it was effective.

Bullies are cowards and opportunists. Make yourself too much trouble to mess with, even if you fight like crap and they back off. It's just not worth the trouble of getting your face smashed.

Like I said, sane time. Back then I'd get my required punishment but the school faculty knew me enough (and knew the bullies enough) to know I wasn't the aggressor and read between the lines as much as they could get away with when it came to being suspended.

In Junior High things weren't always that way, but I took my punishment with pride. I knew where I stood and it was the right thing to teach that trash a lesson.

You're lucky, many aren't. I had the particular breed of bully that also got 4.0 grades and was on the football team. They would harass the hell out of me, and when I eventually punched one, I was suspended for a week and nearly expelled because he took the punch, wiped the blood from his nose, laughed, and told the head football coach who alerted the principal and the school board.

It didn't stop him, because he knew that he was stronger than I was, and that I would have to wail on him for a while to actually hurt him.

You lost the mind game and punched first.

 

[Angie7F]

You cant stop bullying but you can help someone get through it. As many people mentioned, giving the person a hug can do much mich more than storminig into schools and making more stupig policies and laws.

 

[Mr.Cynic88]

I'd have to say I agree with most of the previous posters on this topic. Before the advent of "cyber-bullying" my middle school teachers would use their homeroom class for speakers on the subject, so I have always been quite aware of bullying.

Thinking about my educational childhood, I don't think I was ever heavily bullied, so my views may be skewed, but I'm not sure if I wasn't bullied because I was too self-absorbed to notice, developed a pretty sharp tongue, or if I was a bully myself.

I never picked on the weak kids or anything, but my defense against others bullying me was to make a mental note of the most offensive thing I could say to each person I interacted with in case they tried to bully me. For example: when somebody was making fun of me after I spent a week in a mental hospital saying that I should "just slit your wrists and be done with it," I brought up his recently diseased father and brought him to tears. When a black girl was making fun of my speech impediment, I quickly responded by mocking her urban pronunciation of the word "ask." I was never bothered by either of those two again.

School is a learning experience, and I think that trying to effectively sterilize natural human interaction will lead to more harm than good. I know that my generation all thought we were gonna go to college and then go straight to making 40k a year, and I really would have preferred that my teachers were more honest about the world with me as opposed to the "you can be anything" attitude that currently prevails.

The same applies to bullying. Instead of trying to stop a verb, they should be teaching kids to stand up for themselves and learn from experience rather than making the already bad phenomena of bullying seem even worse.

I fought off potential bullies with my own skill-set and without ever being some kind of tattle tale to a school official. Like most, I was miserable as a teenager, but those trial-by-fire years have allowed me a confidence today in the big bad world that I wouldn't have earned if I told a teacher every time somebody said something mean to me via AIM.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

To be honest, I'm a little bit fucking sick of awareness. Everybody knows it happens. It's the victim's job to report it. If they're just going to shut up about it and not communicate how dire their personal situation is, then nothing's going to happen. We don't need awareness, we need communication, then support and competence. You think the cunts who instigate it are going to see a video and go "Well I'm a bit of a **** aren't I"? You think people not involved are going to see a video and do anything beyond thinking "What a terrible thing for those poor people"? We need accessible systems in place for victims and follow-up that has actual consequences.

 

[Something Amyss]

To be honest, I'm a little bit fucking sick of awareness. Everybody knows it happens. It's the victim's job to report it. If they're just going to shut up about it and not communicate how dire their personal situation is, then nothing's going to happen. We don't need awareness, we need communication, then support and competence. You think the cunts who instigate it are going to see a video and go "Well I'm a bit of a **** aren't I"? You think people not involved are going to see a video and do anything beyond thinking "What a terrible thing for those poor people"? We need accessible systems in place for victims and follow-up that has actual consequences.

Except we don't have this systems. We do have reported problems that are swept away. We do have instigators who are challenged and walk off scot free. We have a system that dissuades reporting and a society that looks down upon the bullied.

If you are still blaming people for "shutting up," then we really do still need awareness.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

To be honest, I'm a little bit fucking sick of awareness. Everybody knows it happens. It's the victim's job to report it. If they're just going to shut up about it and not communicate how dire their personal situation is, then nothing's going to happen. We don't need awareness, we need communication, then support and competence. You think the cunts who instigate it are going to see a video and go "Well I'm a bit of a **** aren't I"? You think people not involved are going to see a video and do anything beyond thinking "What a terrible thing for those poor people"? We need accessible systems in place for victims and follow-up that has actual consequences.

Except we don't have this systems. We do have reported problems that are swept away. We do have instigators who are challenged and walk off scot free. We have a system that dissuades reporting and a society that looks down upon the bullied.

If you are still blaming people for "shutting up," then we really do still need awareness.

Well in a roundabout way I sort of said communication is half the problem and lack of competence and support is the other. Sorry for not being more clear. One will follow the other, when there are systems in place and when there are real consequences, victims will find reporting it more effective.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well in a roundabout way I sort of said communication is half the problem and lack of competence and support is the other.

You also directly undercut it. So don't act like you weren't being clear. You were being thoroughly contradictory and the thrust of your message veered towards the "shut up" side.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Well in a roundabout way I sort of said communication is half the problem and lack of competence and support is the other.

You also directly undercut it. So don't act like you weren't being clear. You were being thoroughly contradictory and the thrust of your message veered towards the "shut up" side.

What can I say, I think while I post. Generally speaking the beginning is going to be a knee-jerk unfounded reaction if I haven't already thought about the topic before and I get more thought-out as I go. So fair enough, I have stupid and contradictory behaviour.