Comment by PaulHoule 4 days ago
The principal always told me "just walk away" and I said, "You fool, the bullies have legs".
The key thing that enables bullying is your being confined in a space with them. Bullying can leave scars that last a lifetime that will affect your employment, your relationships, your children, everything. Not least hearing complete crap from authorities primes you to distrust authorities unconditionally.
There is more than one kind of charisma.
Some people have a positive charisma that comes out of treating people well. I'd expect this from the captain of a sports team.
I knew someone who had a negative charisma, who was criminally minded. He was popular among drug users at my school because he would take more chances and thus have the best supply. He got caught on tape selling 3 kilo of cocaine to a cop after I'd graduate. He had a talent to motivate other people into criminal activity and became the leader of a gay bashing gang that seemed to mainly target straight allies because this was the 1980s and folks like that were probably scared about getting AIDS.
I don't picture the elementary school bully as being particularly popular, but he certainly gets deference from the other students. I think of the popular kids in school as being genuinely likeable even if they didn't take a stand against bullies.
I’m not sure if I agree with this essay, but have you heard about the theory that Ender’s Game is pornography? ( There’s lots of other theories about the book, but this is my favorite ) https://archive.is/JtbIY
Having the emotional maturity to deal with things you don’t like happening has a major influence on how tough being bullied feels like. It’s rarely much time or physical pain, but some kids obsess over it even if they aren’t the major target they often feel extremely persecuted.
Adults can watch something happening and think nothing particularly significant is going on while some kids are experiencing extreme internal distress.
The typical case of physical bullying is not just "things happening that you don't like"; it's wanton, unprovoked assault and battery. Even lesser forms of bullying generally involve some kind of unambiguous threatening, menacing or intimidation. The "emotionally mature" way of dealing with such things in any sane society is not to just walk away, but rather to acknowledge that such actions are inherently an outrage to their fellow students' basic human dignity, and demand that those responsible face meaningful consequences. The fact that "it's rarely much physical pain" (and that merely because kids are involved as opposed to adults) is completely irrelevant.
That may be your memory, but in the typical day it’s intimidation and emotional abuse. Especially in terms of girls who make up half the population, they rarely get punched in the face but arguably have larger issues to deal with.
I’m not accusing you of misrepresenting the situation, just trying to convey what’s objectively going on can feel very different from what people’s lived experience is. Someone with older siblings can barely register being bullied in some situations that really are traumatic to others.
In elementary school I had a girl in class who the other girls made fun of. There was nothing physical. Boys kind of made fun of her as well, but what really stuck to her was the other girls. She did therapy, but even her therapist told her that she is a hopeless case. Which is obviously extremely unprofessional and terrible. She ended up taking her life in her 20s. It was just mental bullying by peers. It is very sad to think back at the time. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her to deserve this bullying, and peers did it as some sort of self esteem popularity type of thing.
I do remember school being this survival of the fittest type of thing as well. Some were naturally good at it, others not so much, different people handled it differently.
Certainly it was the most common for me (also California public school). That does not mean I would not bring up the physical violence as the first item in the list! It's the one least open to interpretation.
>The "emotionally mature" way of dealing with such things in any sane society
If my children lived in a war zone and were suffering constant (high risk) of being killed or mutilated, the mature way of dealing with that wouldn't be to teach them to take cover, or survival skills, or medical triage and first aid... it'd be to just leave and never go back. Get one million miles away from it. Normalizing it, saying "what are you gonna do, we live in a war zone" is strange. But it's just as bizarre to say "you should become an anti-war activist and demand that the diplomats make a lasting peace".
No, just get the fuck out as quickly as is humanly possible, and never look back. Later, when you're someplace safe, maybe you do therapy for the PTSD (I have my doubts that it works), but the first and most important step is to put distance between yourself (or your children) and the threat, enough distance that makes it impossible for the threat to follow.
> Adults can watch something happening and think nothing particularly significant is going on while some kids are experiencing extreme internal distress.
I think because that is also often because they regard it as normal for kids. A lot of people say things like "bullying toughens them up".
They would not think its OK for the same things to be done to adults. I wonder what the toughens them up lot would think if I showed up at their house with a few friends and gave them a light beating - I think calling the police would be a more likely outcome than thanking me for teaching them to be tough!
There are levels to this stuff too.
I got picked on all the time as a kid in school. I did not like it, but it did develop several traits that I learned to appreciate later in life. First and foremost, I am not the slightest bit bothered by anyone mocking me anymore. I don’t get easily embarrassed at all.
At the same time, I also learned to fit in a lot better. Getting picked on for things I said or did create some social conditioning about what was and wasn’t acceptable.
This type of bullying was helpful in hindsight.
Physical bullying is different ballgame and I don’t understand anyone that thinks it’s acceptable.
Cyberbullying is on a whole other level of publicly humiliating a developing child in front of everybody they know, often by anonymous people who will take steps to make sure it never goes away if they want to.
The latter 2 are totally unacceptable and dangerous.
The first getting lumped in with bullying creates bullying apologists I think, because there can be beneficial side effects of helping kids learn social norms.
A lot of adults have the same experience. They are perpetually persecuted.
> The principal always told me "just walk away"
I think the root of this problem is the principal-agent problem.
It literally doesn't matter to teachers (a) if you get bulled at school (they are not being bullied themselves) or (b) if you have problems later in life.
Maybe a bullied kid will completely lose it as an adult and murder a bunch of people. But does the teacher who completely failed to help them get arrested? No, therefore it just doesn't matter to them at all.
The only thing that would prevent this is teachers actually caring or being kind. And of course there are some that do and are. But relying on that isn't enough. There need to be right incentives set in order enable the majority of teachers to put in the effort to act in the right way.
(I don't know what that incentive structure looks like I'll admit.)
I can see why an adult who's never dealt with these difficulties in childhood would give that sort of advice, but it's bewildering how school administrators weren't (and probably still aren't) trained on the reality that "just walk away" is a platitude in the context of an environment where bullies have a captive audience.
It reminds me of how we were told "stick and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me", which is easy to say as an adult with autonomy and other sources of fulfillment; in reality, words not only hurt, but have lasting social consequences. If some turd of a kid has the charisma to humiliate you in front of everyone, even when only verbally, that can lead to a permanently damaged sense of self and lack of respect from peers.