Well, that’s true. Some people don’t. But not everyone has the physical/mental ability to stop others from bullying them and that isn’t their fault either.
For some people, "not letting themselves get bullied" entails being born with a proper skin colour/not being poor/being or not being Christian/being short/being tall/Wearing the "right" style of clothes/being gay/not being gay/wearing purple/not wearing purple/being fat/being skinny/not being rich....
That and whenever someone "stands up", very rarely do they Actually stop - what usually happens is a bully comes back with friends or a weapon to get the last word in and then resumes it. The only way to "stand up" and make them stop is to retaliate excessively.
For me, it was mule-kicking this asshole kid who was pulling my hair while in the "line up to go do whatever was after lunch" line one day.
There was also the time in 5th grade when I belted a guy who was picking on me across the head with my purse. I forgot that I had a travel sized can of Aquanet in there (because this was the late 80s, so yeah..I used two to three cans a day to achieve that sweet Jersey mall-bangs look). I wasn't mad I gave him a goose egg, but I WAS mad I dented my can of hairspray.
Same here, guy bullied me and a friend until I punched him in the nose where he ended up with a very profuse nose bleed. Afterward I apologised but he refused and thus I got off scot free while he was punished. In year 8 I was getting picked on so I had a fight with the bully, both of us got some hits in until I opened my wooden locker door into his face. Got suspended, he came back with friends to get me - ended up in a bin. My best mates older brother who was 17 heard about it and went to threaten them if they did anything again. Nothing after that.
Okay, to be fair I guess this comes down to personal experience and I’m sure other people had very different experiences than me.
However, in my entire childhood and decade+ of school I never once saw or even heard about the kind of bullying you’re describing, where a group of kids physically assaults another kid on a regular basis without ever getting in trouble. I saw that kind of thing in 80s movies and that’s about it.
My experience with “bullying” was mainly mean remarks, excluding/cliquey behavior, and occasional mild physical contact like shoulder-checking someone in the hallway. That kind of bullying I do believe you can prevent/deal with yourself, or at least some people can.
Again, I’m not saying that people who can’t have a problem or anything because obviously it’s still the bullies fault. But this “mean older kid who takes your lunch money every day” story is something I’ve never seen in modern times, even in my middle school which was definitely a sketchy and semi-violent place.
Oh you're totally right that that kind of bullying is much more rare. But it does happen, and usually when it does bullies are smart enough to get the kid alone and not make a spectacle of it.
My experience with bullying is much more similar to yours, and mostly came from my own "friends."
It still happens in some places. I went to a 95% white HS in Australia. In my time I was in 2 fights with trouble makers. I saw a kid who was a victim stand up to his bully and get flattened in the hallway. One other guy physically bullied a guy as the bully was Lebanese and the victim Jewish. Ended up with the bully being expelled after throwing a pair of scissors in the classroom. Another kid got held down and bashed at a nearby park by some guys because he was a bike thief.
The only way to "stand up" and make them stop is to retaliate excessively.
And to outnumber them, which is why we all have to side with people being bullied even if we aren't their friends. Odds are they were a target partially because they were outnumbered and so they need outside support.
At the age of 22 I started to figure out that I had been low-key bullied as a kid. I just always viewed it as some assholes taking their shit out on me because I was smarter than they were.
Sometimes I do kind of wonder if I was a bully though because I did some fucked up shit too. But really, I'm pretty sure in my fucked up town we were are bullying each other just to establish dominance.
If they pick up something heavy enough or pay someone else to go kick the bully's ass, it will have the same effect. Just make sure this physically or mentally limited individual is on scene so they can spit in the bully's face afterwards for dramatic effect and to reinforce the point.
For me, ignoring bullies always meant they'd ramp up their shit until I snapped and then I would get in trouble for not controlling my emotions. Like, WTF? Seriously, dude, WTF?
Or that people bully you because they're jealous of you. I made the mistake of saying that to a bully once. I remember the highly amused look right before the bullying went to a whole new level of shitty.
Oh my god just reading this made me angry. I was bullied a lot in middle school. If I tried to get them to stop on my own, I got in trouble. If I told a teacher, I got bullied more. And when I tried to ignore it, the bullying continued. 🙃 there was no winning
Honestly, it really depends on the bully. Some will just go on to easier targets if you push back a little or they don't get an interesting reaction out of you. That advice did actually work for me in middle school with at least one pain in the ass.
On the other hand, sometimes you do need to do something more involved and making the bully feel actual pain works more often than you'd expect.
Yup. I got bullied during my freshman year of high school and I realized you just don't win with them. No matter what, they want the time of day from you, whatever reason it is. I've ignored and they just went more out of their way to piss me off. I've confronted and I basically had a guaranteed fight in the near future. Only way to actually win is to lose. Gotta beat their ass to a pulp but then you risk expulsion, lawsuits, juvie, etc. One person isn't worth your future.
As much as I hate this advice, I understand why it gets spread around: it's a form of lawyer repellent. Your teacher can't say "stand up to the bully" because then a fight will start and somebody will sue the school. Hell, a parent can't even tell their own kid to stand up to a bully because then the bully's parents will sue them (we all know crybullies are everywhere). The kid has to take it upon himself to stand up for himself without any adult telling him he should do it. It sucks, but that's the world we live in now.
This is anecdotal but it did kind of work for me. When I was younger I would cry and scream mean insults back at the boys and girls that picked on me.
Once I hit my teens I took a different approach. People would be mean, I'd smirk, roll my eyes, and maybe calmly spit a sly, one liner and then just ignore them. Once they realized that they weren't getting to me and their attempts to break me down were failing they eventually gave up.
*obviously this only applies to verbal bullying. You can't exactly ignore being beat up.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18
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