Bullycide

[Sledge]

I honestly think there are people who only respond to violence or the threat of it. The other option is to sort out schools specifically for bullies, as a children's version of the way we imprison adults.

 

[Darat]

I honestly think there are people who only respond to violence or the threat of it. The other option is to sort out schools specifically for bullies, as a children's version of the way we imprison adults.

Is that not a learned behaviour? And probably learned in early life?

ETA: Out of sincere curiosity - are their studies that have examined whether corporal punishment works?

 

[Wildy]

I will go ahead and reinterate that winning the fight isn't necessary. I lost the vast majority of mine. The point is they learn that you're no longer a free and easy target, and turn their attention elsewhere.

That only works if the bullies don't just run to the teacher and tell on you for fighting because you would fight back.

 

[Chaos]

The physical aspects of bullying, the pushing and shoving and the like, are only a small element of bullying and I suspect most bullying between children is not of this type once they've reached high-school age. And I'm sorry but the bravado of those tales about standing up to "the bully" is misplaced, all it shows is that if you can physically intimidate someone, in other words bully them then they will leave you alone. Which given how our societies work is a terrible lesson to learn going into adulthood since such behaviour in adulthood is not only frowned upon but is often illegal.

And why do we learn such lessons? Because the cowardly scum calling themselves "adults", despite knowing what is going on, refuse to resolve the situation in a legal way.

I´m sorry to hurt your poor little touchy feelings about things that "frowned upon", but in any society worthy of being called civilized, bullying innocent people is also "frowned upon". Anyone who looks the other way when bullying occurs, and then acts all concerned and offended and breaks out phrases like "frowned upon" and "illegal" is not only an appeaser and enabler of bullies, but also a disgusting hypocrite.

It has taken us a long time (in the UK at least) to reach a point where we are seeing bullying for the very serious problem it is and I am hopeful that we will learn how to deal with it better than previous generations.

I do have a slight only concern that some folk dilute the meaning of bullying so much that it means "kids not getting on with one another" - that is not bullying. Obviously kids have to understand that they don't like everyone, that they will not be liked by everyone and that you are often thrown into situations that you have to deal with people you don't like; the lesson they need to learn from that is how to get along with people that they don't like.

Right now kids are only learning that bullying is perfectly okay with adults, and that any attempt to defend themselves in any way that actually works will be punished.

 

[Darat]

And why do we learn such lessons? Because the cowardly scum calling themselves "adults", despite knowing what is going on, refuse to resolve the situation in a legal way.

I´m sorry to hurt your poor little touchy feelings about things that "frowned upon", but in any society worthy of being called civilized, bullying innocent people is also "frowned upon". Anyone who looks the other way when bullying occurs, and then acts all concerned and offended and breaks out phrases like "frowned upon" and "illegal" is not only an appeaser and enabler of bullies, but also a disgusting hypocrite.

I'm struggling to understand how this is relevant to what I've posted or how it addresses anything in my post that you quote.

Right now kids are only learning that bullying is perfectly okay with adults, and that any attempt to defend themselves in any way that actually works will be punished.

That is certainly not the case in the UK - over the last probably 10 years there have been a lot of effort into dealing with bullying, identifying it and trying to stop it. There are attempts to even get the law changed to be able to better address the problem of childhood bullying. There are now charities that are focused on helping those that are being bullied - http://www.bullying.co.uk/ - all a far cry from 10 years ago.

 

[Sledge]

Is that not a learned behaviour? And probably learned in early life?

Yes.

ETA: Out of sincere curiosity - are their studies that have examined whether corporal punishment works?

Don't know. I'm just going from my experience (and apparently that of others) that bullies only respond to violence.

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

So far I have learned that:

* It is perfectly feasible to elevate your own experience to ideal, just as long as you were bullied yourself. If anyone else's experience is different from yours then they are either whining or the solution is not applicable to them and no other solution is proffered. Your experience is the only one that counts. Natch.
* Behaviour that is illegal between adults is perfectly ok between kids or teens.
* Bullies have no responsibility to alter their behaviour and there should be no attempts to try to force them to.
* Anyone trying to address the problem is a whiny bitch and should shut up and let the bullies get on with it. It's only kids, after all, and if they weren't so damn different it wouldn't happen to them, it would happen to some other kid and who cares what happens to some other kid? The problem isn't the bullying. It's that it's happening to X. Once it happens to Y, the problem is solved.
* There is absolutely no way to harrass, stalk or hurt someone over the internet.
* Only the physical part of bullying counts. The slow erosion of self worth, confidence and sense of self is piffle. Being hated by everyone in your known universe has no effect on anyone ever. People don't really need all that once they reach "the real world".
* A state in which a person resides for at least ten to twelve years of their life is not "the real world". Its transitory state means that anything can be endured. Kids aren't really people after all. That's why it's AOK to Abu Graib them until they hang themselves. By this logic, I have still to live in the real world for as long as I existed in that world, but hey - at least I'm a real person and not a kid.

Did I miss anything?

My friend Nika obviously had it coming for not just fighting off the hockey dudes who liked to throw cans at her. Her scoliosis, and the hereditary degenerative disease which caused all the joints in her body to meld and stopped her growth at 4'10" is no *********** excuse not to learn karate. (Actually, she did take Judo as part of her physical therapy. Didn't help much against a 200lbs hockey forward.)

I fought those ******** for her. But do you know what? I shouldn't have had to. And I damn well shouldn't have had to be at the principal's office once or twice a week getting a lecture on why it isn't ladylike to get into fights and how it was no excuse that I was defending Nika - because that meant they weren't mean to me, so I had NO reason. (Well, that resolved itself when they started picking on me for standing up for Nika. Except that it turned out that defending myself wasn't a good enough reason for a girl to fight after all.) I don't think it is acceptable that Nika would have to take a week off from school every spring when I went skiing with my parents, because with no madzer to bite the kneecaps off her bullies around, she was fair game. (And also had no one who thought the fact that she was intelligent and knew **** made her worthwhile, to counterbalance the pure hate from everyone who didn't like people with their arms in weird metal straighteners.)

It felt extremely good to fling her most detested pest into a radiator (didn't aim for the radiator, accident) and strand him at home for two days with a concussion. That time, I got into no trouble because he was bloody well not admitting to being maimed by a 5' girl.

Still shouldn't have had to. Adults should have seen, acted and handled before I had to do that.

So what if sticking out makes you an obvious target? (and I'm not agreeing to that either, lots of cases start out with a normal conflict and the craziest party sets the agenda afterwards) Still isn't OK, and we shouldn't allow kids to think it is.

What we are doing, letting the bullies set the agenda, demanding that the victims modify their behaviour, forbidding people to talk about it later in life, by calling them whiny and scaring anyone still in that situation from telling anyone - what we are doing by that is letting the maddest define reality.

We are a society. Not an anarchic pseudo-Darwinist biodome set up to study ferrets in their natural habitat.

Bullying is by its nature not a conflict. It's abuse. Treating it like a conflict is double punishing the victim. There ARE schools in Norway who have had good results with a zero tolerance on both conflict and abuse - nothing is ever allowed to escalate. The tiniest scuffle leads to a trip to the principal, who does not hand out punishments, but tries to find the root to the conflict and negotiate an agreement. (It's a bit like a punishment though, because it likely bores the **** out of the culprits.) All the grown ups in a school environment need to be a presence in the kids' lives and bullying needs to have immediate and proportionate response. At the best schools (from bullying prevention point of view) I went to, janitors and dinner-staff where as much a presence as the teachers - and the headmaster wasn't hiding in his chambers, but made himself visible all through the day.

A small pet peeve of mine is the architecture of most schools. There are far too many secluded spots and odd corners. It ought to be possible for only a couple of adults to surveil a big area and wtf is up with all these schoolyards with different kinds of thorny bushes as the only green? Do they WANT the bullies to have somewhere thorny to push people? A surveiled recess area for quiet pursuits could prove a haven for persecuted kids. At mine and Nika's school that was the school library, until it was closed over lunch recess when staff was cut from two librarians to one.

They really thought all the librarians did was guard the books? Hell, the librarians were the angels of the bullied. Unlike teachers, they never accepted any bullying in their library, and had the authority to send the bullies packing, as long as there were two of them.

 

[aggle-rithm]

"Bullycide" is a stupid word because it literally means "killer of bullies."

I think it's a great word, and a damn good idea to boot!

 

[Flo]

Don't know. I'm just going from my experience (and apparently that of others) that bullies only respond to violence.

And from mine, bullies respond to adults behaving like adults, which means taking educative measures, including actually protecting their victims and holding the bullies' parents responsible for what their little monsters have been up to. Very often an uphill battle, for sure, but this is what being a parent or an educator is all about.

 

[Flo]

So far I have learned that:

* It is perfectly feasible to elevate your own experience to ideal, just as long as you were bullied yourself. If anyone else's experience is different from yours then they are either whining or the solution is not applicable to them and no other solution is proffered. Your experience is the only one that counts. Natch.
* Behaviour that is illegal between adults is perfectly ok between kids or teens.
* Bullies have no responsibility to alter their behaviour and there should be no attempts to try to force them to.
* Anyone trying to address the problem is a whiny bitch and should shut up and let the bullies get on with it. It's only kids, after all, and if they weren't so damn different it wouldn't happen to them, it would happen to some other kid and who cares what happens to some other kid? The problem isn't the bullying. It's that it's happening to X. Once it happens to Y, the problem is solved.
* There is absolutely no way to harrass, stalk or hurt someone over the internet.
* Only the physical part of bullying counts. The slow erosion of self worth, confidence and sense of self is piffle. Being hated by everyone in your known universe has no effect on anyone ever. People don't really need all that once they reach "the real world".
* A state in which a person resides for at least ten to twelve years of their life is not "the real world". Its transitory state means that anything can be endured. Kids aren't really people after all. That's why it's AOK to Abu Graib them until they hang themselves. By this logic, I have still to live in the real world for as long as I existed in that world, but hey - at least I'm a real person and not a kid.

Did I miss anything?

My friend Nika obviously had it coming for not just fighting off the hockey dudes who liked to throw cans at her. Her scoliosis, and the hereditary degenerative disease which caused all the joints in her body to meld and stopped her growth at 4'10" is no *********** excuse not to learn karate. (Actually, she did take Judo as part of her physical therapy. Didn't help much against a 200lbs hockey forward.)

I fought those ******** for her. But do you know what? I shouldn't have had to. And I damn well shouldn't have had to be at the principal's office once or twice a week getting a lecture on why it isn't ladylike to get into fights and how it was no excuse that I was defending Nika - because that meant they weren't mean to me, so I had NO reason. (Well, that resolved itself when they started picking on me for standing up for Nika. Except that it turned out that defending myself wasn't a good enough reason for a girl to fight after all.) I don't think it is acceptable that Nika would have to take a week off from school every spring when I went skiing with my parents, because with no madzer to bite the kneecaps off her bullies around, she was fair game. (And also had no one who thought the fact that she was intelligent and knew **** made her worthwhile, to counterbalance the pure hate from everyone who didn't like people with their arms in weird metal straighteners.)

It felt extremely good to fling her most detested pest into a radiator (didn't aim for the radiator, accident) and strand him at home for two days with a concussion. That time, I got into no trouble because he was bloody well not admitting to being maimed by a 5' girl.

Still shouldn't have had to. Adults should have seen, acted and handled before I had to do that.

So what if sticking out makes you an obvious target? (and I'm not agreeing to that either, lots of cases start out with a normal conflict and the craziest party sets the agenda afterwards) Still isn't OK, and we shouldn't allow kids to think it is.

What we are doing, letting the bullies set the agenda, demanding that the victims modify their behaviour, forbidding people to talk about it later in life, by calling them whiny and scaring anyone still in that situation from telling anyone - what we are doing by that is letting the maddest define reality.

We are a society. Not an anarchic pseudo-Darwinist biodome set up to study ferrets in their natural habitat.

Bullying is by its nature not a conflict. It's abuse. Treating it like a conflict is double punishing the victim. There ARE schools in Norway who have had good results with a zero tolerance on both conflict and abuse - nothing is ever allowed to escalate. The tiniest scuffle leads to a trip to the principal, who does not hand out punishments, but tries to find the root to the conflict and negotiate an agreement. (It's a bit like a punishment though, because it likely bores the **** out of the culprits.) All the grown ups in a school environment need to be a presence in the kids' lives and bullying needs to have immediate and proportionate response. At the best schools (from bullying prevention point of view) I went to, janitors and dinner-staff where as much a presence as the teachers - and the headmaster wasn't hiding in his chambers, but made himself visible all through the day.

A small pet peeve of mine is the architecture of most schools. There are far too many secluded spots and odd corners. It ought to be possible for only a couple of adults to surveil a big area and wtf is up with all these schoolyards with different kinds of thorny bushes as the only green? Do they WANT the bullies to have somewhere thorny to push people? A surveiled recess area for quiet pursuits could prove a haven for persecuted kids. At mine and Nika's school that was the school library, until it was closed over lunch recess when staff was cut from two librarians to one.

They really thought all the librarians did was guard the books? Hell, the librarians were the angels of the bullied. Unlike teachers, they never accepted any bullying in their library, and had the authority to send the bullies packing, as long as there were two of them.

Nominated !

 

[Chaos]

I'm struggling to understand how this is relevant to what I've posted or how it addresses anything in my post that you quote.

Then I suggest you read the quoted part and my post again. And again. And again. Repeat until it finally sinks in.

No bullying victim resorts to "frowned upon" or "illegal" behavior because they think it´s so much jolly good fun. They do it because the ******** who bully them think it´s so much jolly good fun to bully them, which apparently is not sufficiently "frowned upon" or "illegal" for any of those spineless, cowardly, hypocritical "authority figures" to do anything about it.

I´ve punched bullies in the face twice. It worked. Before that and after that I´ve tried to be a good little bullying victim. I´ve tried to do what appeasers and enablers like you have told me. I´ve tried to ignore it. I´ve tried to be nice to the bully. I´ve tried to simply not react to it. In short, I´ve tried to give people like you every goddamn excuse possible to not get off your ass and do your *********** duty, which is to STOP THE *********** BULLYING, not to punish the victim.

I repeat: as long as society and authority figures continue to do their darndest to make bullying easier for the bullies, I will continue to piss on "frowned upon" and "illegal", and instead do the only thing I know how to do that stops bullying. And if you don´t approve of it, that´s too *********** bad.


@whatthebutlersaw:

You rock. I wish I´d had half a classmate like you.

 

[Darat]

Then I suggest you read the quoted part and my post again. And again. And again. Repeat until it finally sinks in.

No bullying victim resorts to "frowned upon" or "illegal" behavior because they think it´s so much jolly good fun.

And I never said that they do.

They do it because the ******** who bully them think it´s so much jolly good fun to bully them, which apparently is not sufficiently "frowned upon" or "illegal" for any of those spineless, cowardly, hypocritical "authority figures" to do anything about it.

Which was part of the point I made.

I´ve punched bullies in the face twice. It worked. Before that and after that I´ve tried to be a good little bullying victim. I´ve tried to do what appeasers and enablers like you have told me. I´ve tried to ignore it. I´ve tried to be nice to the bully. I´ve tried to simply not react to it. In short, I´ve tried to give people like you every goddamn excuse possible to not get off your ass and do your *********** duty, which is to STOP THE *********** BULLYING, not to punish the victim.

You need to re-read my post - you have totally and utterly failed to understand it.

 

[sgtbaker]

Cyber bullying is a new thing. I have no problem coing that term. But bullycide?

Also parents need to be way more involved with their kids online. I'm so shocked to see the pictures that girls put up on their facebook page. My son has them as friends and they are very hyper sexualized pix. I can't imagine that a parent would allow their daughter to use a pix like that.

Sorry it took me so long to respond. I really can't agree with you more about lack of parental involvement. The saddest part about it is how easy it is to track online and cellphone communications.

 

[commandlinegamer]

There ARE schools in Norway who have had good results with a zero tolerance on both conflict and abuse - nothing is ever allowed to escalate. The tiniest scuffle leads to a trip to the principal, who does not hand out punishments, but tries to find the root to the conflict and negotiate an agreement.

I wish more people could see the importance of this: rather than condemn, condone or fight back, find out why the bullying occurs in the first place.

 

[Darat]

I wish more people could see the importance of this: rather than condemn, condone or fight back, find out why the bullying occurs in the first place.

This is what is starting to happen in the UK and it has apparently shown good results but I think it has to be done cautiously. That would mean it is done only after it has been established that there is bullying and I certainly don't think there should be any pressure on a victim of bullying to face the people they are being bullied by - their behaviour is not the problem. (Also since most serious bullying is not limited to a single bully it may not be practical.)

 

[3point14]

@whatthebutlersaw:

You rock. I wish I´d had half a classmate like you.

This.

The bottle to do what's right. There's not enough of it.

 

[sgtbaker]

I will go ahead and reinterate that winning the fight isn't necessary. I lost the vast majority of mine. The point is they learn that you're no longer a free and easy target, and turn their attention elsewhere.

The problem is, the fight isn't necessarily in the hallways anymore. Kids have phones with video capability now and it's easy enough to snap a shot of the odd person and put it up on a dummy account. You know someone put it up but you don't know who. What I find odd is that schools were practically jamming tolerance down our throats since kindergarten. How is it that my generation of parents raised even worse monsters than the ones I went to school with?

 

[Flo]

@whatthebutlersaw:

You rock. I wish I´d had half a classmate like you.

Yes, she does. But it shouldn't have been her job and her responsablility in the first place. Adults have failed both her and her classmate.

If we want to see bullying eradicated, we as adults must determine and face our responsabilities towards both victims and bullies.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Bullying is by its nature not a conflict. It's abuse. Treating it like a conflict is double punishing the victim.

...snip...

From my reading this is behind the change in the UK - I think bullying used to be one of those things that kids have to put up (and indeed adults in many a workplace) but it is now being seen as much more than that.

Mind you when children are driven to suicide (and attempted suicide) because of bullying surely that should always have been a big red flag that this isn't about kids not getting on with one another. Why people haven't seen it for what it is astonishes me.

As I mentioned earlier I knew someone who was driven to attempt suicide at the age of 12 because he was bullied, just imagine that a 12 year old driven to end his life - all because of bullying. Like all serious abuse that can leave someone with a lifetime of problems and issues which they never should have had to deal with in the first place.

 

[Darat]

The problem is, the fight isn't necessarily in the hallways anymore. Kids have phones with video capability now and it's easy enough to snap a shot of the odd person and put it up on a dummy account. You know someone put it up but you don't know who. What I find odd is that schools were practically jamming tolerance down our throats since kindergarten. How is it that my generation of parents raised even worse monsters than the ones I went to school with?

I think it is probably more about the technology being available than any one generation being more monstrous that another.