Being bullied

[Uncayimmy]

I've never heard anything like this before.

Are there any medical case studies we could take a look at where this has happened?

I know of testicular torsions, (even had one when I was a tyke - most painful thing ever) but I wasn't aware they could be brought on by sudden trauma.

Blunt force trauma can rupture the tunica albuginea. It seems to be rare, and I don't think a "tap" would do it. He's right, however, about antisperm antibodies attacking sperm, which is why we men have a blood-testes barrier.

 

[Radrook]

What can be expected from a society that glorifies violence or makes violence a source of entertainment?

 

[TragicMonkey]

What can be expected from a society that glorifies violence or makes violence a source of entertainment?

Usually the violence glorified is either violence between equals or, ironically, the violence where an underdog defeats a hostile stronger force.

I wonder how many bullies enjoy movies about the weak overcoming stronger antagonists? I'm guessing they lack the introspection necessary to note the irony.

 

[qayak]

Blunt force trauma can rupture the tunica albuginea. It seems to be rare, and I don't think a "tap" would do it. He's right, however, about antisperm antibodies attacking sperm, which is why we men have a blood-testes barrier.

Right now, it is an issue in Canada where high school students play a game they call "Sack Tapping" in which they strike other students in the scrotum.
Sack Tapping has led to sterility and removal of testicles in some of those cases.

It has also come up in America with a case making it to Judge Judy. If you see it on television it must be true.

 

[qayak]

OK. I want to kill a stranger. So I will go out and kill a stranger at random. Or if you think that is too extreme, then maybe break into a house to steal money and things that can easily be turned into money. A crow bar will force open most doors. The people who are impacted by what I do, are they victims? If not what are they?

We are not talking about murder, or robbery, we are talking about bullying but if you must be pedantic, I will change what I said to, "there are no bullying victims until someone decides they are a victim."

 

[qayak]

And, in my mind, all bullies should be dead bullies, all gang members should be dead gang members, (and do not play games with the terms, please, I am pretty certain we both know what I mean by the term). Feel free to assume I am not a nice person, but I am honest and my loathing is clear for certain things.

Okay, here is an interesting story about the "victim" of bullies committing suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn-Marie_Wesley_suicide

You should be happy that this 14 year old is dead because, although she claimed to be a victim of bullying, she was also a bully herself and bullied my youngest daughter for a brief time.

Her mother made the rounds of TV talkshows and speaking engagements for a long time after her death and yet when I went to talk to that same mother several years before the suicide, when something could have been done, she slammed the door in my face. You might be glad this girl is dead but I certainly am not. She was a child struggling to grow up.

What is your take on this situation?

 

[Flo]

We are not talking about murder, or robbery, we are talking about bullying but if you must be pedantic, I will change what I said to, "there are no bullying victims until someone decides they are a victim."

Sure, the bully !

 

[qayak]

Sure, the bully !

The bully doesn't decide if you are a victim, only you can decide that.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Usually the violence glorified is either violence between equals or, ironically, the violence where an underdog defeats a hostile stronger force.

I disagree. A lot of action movies star a main character who is stronger than everyone else -- not an underdog at all -- and spends the movie confirming this fact.

 

[Lithrael]

I disagree. A lot of action movies star a main character who is stronger than everyone else -- not an underdog at all -- and spends the movie confirming this fact.

Yeah but your typical Rambo is fighting everyone else. Which makes him still the underdog. I can't think of any movies where the plot is Rambo beats on some schmo for an hour and a half.

 

[LibraryLady]

I need to offer apologies to everyone who has posted in this thread. I found myself unable to read a lot of it, because old wounds started re-opening. It was a weaselly thing to do (or not do), and I am sorry. I plan to catch up on the and start replying this week on my day off when I can deal with it in an undistracted fashion.

 

[Polaris]

Yeah but your typical Rambo is fighting everyone else. Which makes him still the underdog. I can't think of any movies where the plot is Rambo beats on some schmo for an hour and a half.

Single-post derail: Rambo is the ultimate underdog. I'm not talking the image people (who haven't actually watched the movies) get when they hear "Rambo", but the original character from the novel and first movie (and also somewhat in part 4, though in the sequels he's more the guy who sees bullying going on and disembowels the bully). He's the weird, quiet guy who wants to be left alone and makes those who don't leave him alone very, very sorry they didn't.

 

[JoeyDonuts]

I'm still not sold on the "instant sterility from the nut shot" thing. From the links UY provided it is a legitimate medical phenomena, but from personal anecdotal experience - for what it's worth - I've been both sacktapped and full-on kicked in the pills more times than I care to count in both the military, grade school, and martial arts training and as far as I know, I'm not sterile.

Of course, I don't have any kids. Maybe it's because I'm either lucky or good at pulling out.

 

[qayak]

I'm still not sold on the "instant sterility from the nut shot" thing. From the links UY provided it is a legitimate medical phenomena, but from personal anecdotal experience - for what it's worth - I've been both sacktapped and full-on kicked in the pills more times than I care to count in both the military, grade school, and martial arts training and as far as I know, I'm not sterile.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/sack-tapping-boys-punch-testicles-game/story?id=10762563

No one said "instant" sterilization.

 

[bookitty]

* slingblade;6050303 waits for someone to show up to tell the most recent posters A) What they did wrong, B) How they could have done it better, C) How they must have exuded some aura that attracted it, D) What he'd have done it it had been him, and E) How his kids will be uberly soooo much better than them, because he's the perfect parent with all the answers.

and F) What they experienced as a child is completely analogous to a grown man on an anonymous website who has the option to ignore or report.

 

[rjh01]

<snip> It's not like Qayak and myself are the only ones in the world who believe that victims can be empowered.

http://www.strongfamilies.us/children-bullying.php
http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/children/bullying-prevention.php
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying
http://books.google.com/books?id=K4...onepage&q=empowering victims bullying&f=false

That's just a few. The above sites are written by psychologists and educators. They are saying the same things that a few of us here have been saying. Do they lack empathy? Are they "blaming victims" when they talk about self-esteem issues or point out that bullies select what they perceive to be easy targets?

You know, if you're just pissed because some of us chose to address this thread as a social issue because it's in Social Issues and Current Events rather than engage in a community hug because it's not in Community, that's on you. Go start a thread in Community and commiserate all you want. If you see me pissing on your parade, by all means, speak your mind.

In the meantime, stop pissing and moaning because some of us look at it like the social issue it is.

Just had a look at some of these links. The impression I got is that children (and others) can be trained to stop bullying. I got no problem with that. However without this training (and maybe with no help from others), it can be very difficult for the person to deal with habitual bullying that may have been going on for years from various people. Even your post says "victims can be empowered." Your post does not say "victims can empower themselves."

 

[JoeyDonuts]

I got bullied incessantly. Small, sickly kid giving off the "submissive" vibe I suppose. Bullies can sniff you out of a crowd in a second. Sociopathic tendencies, maybe. I don't really know.

I tried assimilating, and just taking it for a few years I guess.

Then in seventh grade, something snapped and I went all "Ralphie" on a kid in the locker room. Cracked him in the head with his own football helmet on one of the rare occassions when he'd corner me alone.

It didn't stop. If anything, I think it encouraged him and the bullying increased as a result.

But I wasn't just turtling up and "taking it" any more, I was trying to awkwardly do as much damage as I could until I inevitably got stuffed into a trashcan. No better than three-on-one odds usually makes any other outcome an impossibility for an eighty-pound skinny kid after he gets picked up off his feet from behind..

Granted, I could have gotten out of probably most of these if I'd just ran like hell and told someone, but in some weird way I was more concerned about what everyone around (including the bullies) thought of me. In the beginning, being seen as a punching bag rather than a running sissy was more preferable. After I started flailing away at my tormentors, being a punching bag that occasionally got a lucky hit was more preferable to being seen like a coward.

I didn't feel as much like a "victim" anymore, but maybe that was pushing all of the paralyzing fear down under a layer of unfocused and antisocial rage. The net result was that I got sent to the principal's office for fighting right alongside the guys who threw the punch. As I got to know some of the other kids that hung around the "leader" of the bullies, I came to learn that all but one of them became his friends by going through exactly what I was going through until one day someone new or smaller came along.

This all continued until ninth grade when I was befriended by a guy who was a second-degree black belt at age sixteen. (His dad ran the place and he'd been learning since he was a kid.) This was the only guy in the whole school that the bully went out of his way to avoid, since two years before he'd tried to pick on him the same way he picked on me and got his jaw broken for the trouble. (I later found out that my friend's dad took him out for a nice dinner after the school called him to inform him his son had been suspended for fighting.)

I didn't have any trouble after that, and haven't since. Tae Kwon Do, for everything it is and is not, was what I needed at the time, and helped me out tremendously. I never got in a fight with those guys again after I started training with my friend at his dad's school. I guess I didn't carry myself the same afterwards.

Just my two bits.

 

[Belz...]

And the anger doesn't go away, either. We are told that when we grow up we're supposed to "get over it", acknowledge that they were just stupid kids, and probably they had horrible home lives that explain why they were such little ****s and we should forgive them and move on.

I don't think so.

I do. I was bullied in high school for 3-4 years and I got over it.

I think.

 

[Cainkane1]

I got bullied incessantly. Small, sickly kid giving off the "submissive" vibe I suppose. Bullies can sniff you out of a crowd in a second. Sociopathic tendencies, maybe. I don't really know.

I tried assimilating, and just taking it for a few years I guess.

Then in seventh grade, something snapped and I went all "Ralphie" on a kid in the locker room. Cracked him in the head with his own football helmet on one of the rare occassions when he'd corner me alone.

It didn't stop. If anything, I think it encouraged him and the bullying increased as a result.

But I wasn't just turtling up and "taking it" any more, I was trying to awkwardly do as much damage as I could until I inevitably got stuffed into a trashcan. No better than three-on-one odds usually makes any other outcome an impossibility for an eighty-pound skinny kid after he gets picked up off his feet from behind..

Granted, I could have gotten out of probably most of these if I'd just ran like hell and told someone, but in some weird way I was more concerned about what everyone around (including the bullies) thought of me. In the beginning, being seen as a punching bag rather than a running sissy was more preferable. After I started flailing away at my tormentors, being a punching bag that occasionally got a lucky hit was more preferable to being seen like a coward.

I didn't feel as much like a "victim" anymore, but maybe that was pushing all of the paralyzing fear down under a layer of unfocused and antisocial rage. The net result was that I got sent to the principal's office for fighting right alongside the guys who threw the punch. As I got to know some of the other kids that hung around the "leader" of the bullies, I came to learn that all but one of them became his friends by going through exactly what I was going through until one day someone new or smaller came along.

This all continued until ninth grade when I was befriended by a guy who was a second-degree black belt at age sixteen. (His dad ran the place and he'd been learning since he was a kid.) This was the only guy in the whole school that the bully went out of his way to avoid, since two years before he'd tried to pick on him the same way he picked on me and got his jaw broken for the trouble. (I later found out that my friend's dad took him out for a nice dinner after the school called him to inform him his son had been suspended for fighting.)

I didn't have any trouble after that, and haven't since. Tae Kwon Do, for everything it is and is not, was what I needed at the time, and helped me out tremendously. I never got in a fight with those guys again after I started training with my friend at his dad's school. I guess I didn't carry myself the same afterwards.

Just my two bits.

Good for you Buddy.

 

[Cainkane1]

LibraryLady just described my entire school career from 5th grade on through high school. The absolute worst part is that even when you are literally bleeding, the jerk-ass teachers and principals won't do jack about it.

TragicMonkey, stay out of my mind. I'm a horrible self-isolated misanthrope for a lot of unrelated reasons, but a bunch of the seeds were planted by those experiences.

When I was in highschool a punk picked a fight with a weaker student and gave him a black eye which was bleeding from a cut. Not a damn thing was done about it. The same guy spit on me but I knew reporting him was useless and quite frankly dangerous. The Principal apparently wasn't interested.

As an aside this guy is in prison for murder and he has no chance for parole. I could give you his anme and you can see him at Georgia Inmate locaters.