Thoughts on Bullies

[valarltd]

Someone posted on a group that one should ignore bullies until they leave you alone. This, to my mind, is a fundamental misunderstanding of bullies. They do not bully to get a reaction out of you. You are a target, nothing more. If you cry, it makes it better, but if you ignore it, that is permission to bring out heavier artillery.

Bullies don't stop bothering you. They keep it up, until an outside agency steps in, or you are so badly hurt someone MUST step in. Or you die.

Words turn to blows.
But ignore them.

Blows turn to kicks.
It just means he likes you.

Blows become harder and harder until you are being tripped down the steps on a daily basis.
Ignore them and they'll stop.

And then they start hitting you with objects.
Books first. Or shoes. and then heavier books and rocks and chains.
Are we still ignoring it? Are we ignoring blood and bruises?

Fighting back sometimes works.
In my experience, it just means they bring more people to beat you next time. Because no little punk can get away with doing that.
And where you had one assailant, whom you might be able to beat in a fight, now you have three. Or five.

I'm pleased to see adults starting to take things seriously instead of giving the "ignore it" advice.
Or worse, putting bully and victim in close and constant proximity.
I wish it had happened sooner.

Comments

[moons-storm.livejournal.com]

I was a target of bullying all through my school years. In grade school, the boys would trip me on the kickball field and laugh or the girls would pull my hair or trip me as I walked down the aisles between desks. My teachers either ignored it or told me I shouldn't be so shy and introverted.

I remember seventh grade when it was truly driven home for me. Three girls followed me from my school bus stop, along with a dozen other neighborhood kids, saying cruel, ugly things, and when I reached my street, they started pushing and kicking me. My mother had instilled in me from the first day of school that one should always walk away from a fight, so I ran home. I told my mother what happened. They spoke with the parents of the other children, and the other children had told them I'd instigated the fight. At school, because the fight had occurred at the bus stop it was technically a school issue, the vice principal sat all four of us down with our parents and told all of us if something like this happened again, we'd all be suspended.

Even me, the victim, because I had to have done something to antagonize the other girls.

Bullies are bullies, and ignoring them, walking away from them, it doesn't work, and the one being bullied, the victim, is not the problem. The bully is. And it's high time adults stopped this crap, because those school yard bullies grow up to be bullies in other aspects of life, too, because they're taught young that the behavior is ignorable, if not acceptable.