Bitterness, bullying, and breaking the circle.

This post is wonderful. Thank you for it. (gentle hug)

But I wish you hadn't been in the position of being able to write it from first hand experience :-( And that so many other posters here hadn't had almost the same experiences :-(

I also wish that more of my children's teachers hadn't exploded in outrage when they heard me tell my children to defend themselves against physical bullying. I totally agree that hitting people is wrong - but, in that case, why is it OK for the bully to do it?

I tried very hard to be supportive of my children through school, and I think we were aware when there were (thankfully few) problems. At least my children knew I would support and help them, no matter what.

And I remember what the Headteacher of my sons old Primary school said, when we went to see her after he had moved to Senior school and was being bullied on the way home from the bus by some of her pupils. I had suggested that maybe she couldn't do anything since it was happening outside school time and off school premises ... and she said "They are my pupils, and we teach the children here to behave in the community. I will see that this behaviour stops!"

It didn't stop immediately, but it did stop.

GAH BULLYING GODDAMIT RRRRR

I was a weird kid. But I was also a weird kid who was lucky enough to have a number of equally weird friends at all the ages that mattered. I still had guys two years older than me physically try and beat me up in a train carriage while squirting shaving cream into my eyes; guys in my grade who tackled me down flights of concrete stairs because they didn't like that I beat them at cricket or dated their friends; guys two grades above me from different schools who egged my parents' cars and glued tampons to them and sent me letters calling me a dyke because I wore riding boots with my uniform and read books and had "saggy tits" (I was thirteen); guys who tied me to a telegraph pole and threw rocks at me until I wriggled out of the knots, picked one of them up by the throat and slammed him into a car; girls who called me dyke, butch, bitch, slut, who stole my money and laughed at me; girls who pretended my father had come to school looking for me on the day that my mother went into hospital for major surgery, so that I thought she'd died on the table and ended up sobbing in the library. But I was lucky enough to have friends, and they told me: fuck those people. We've been bullied by them, too. Fuck them, and we'll go over here and have our own parties. We don't even care that you're the only girl in the grade with hair above her ears - in fact, have the entire Sandman collection burned on CD, and come listen to Dreamtheatre with us. We'll play Risk and Munchkins and wear corsets to parties, and when those guys to come to bully us again? There'll be ten of us instead of nine, and we'll call them troglodytes, and they'll have to get a dictionary, and by then we'll be drinking cider at someone else's house, and they'll still be dumbasses.

And I was LUCKY. Lucky as shit.

Possibly I have now written an angry blog about all this, too: http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/man-fuck-high-school/

Thank you for this.

I was bullied, but not that bad. My daughter had it much much worse in Jr. High. It was hard to get her to talk about it, to try to pull the problems of the day out of her. Once she was home she was safe and she didn't want to talk about it.

Among other things we did - this was my best. I stopped asking how school was. I know the fake 'fine' and I was done with it. I started asking instead, "who deserved to be punched in the face today."

This worked. Now, I know advocating violence is bad, blah blah, but as a fierce parent I wanted nothing more than to take down those kids who were tormenting my child. She is essentially a pacifist, so she was never going to actually punch anyone in the face.

But this opening let her talk about it. She could smile, and tell me - and someone almost always needed to be punched in the face. It kept us close - it kept the info flowing.

High school is much better. It is a rare day now that someone needs punching in the face. Now we talk about other things (boys with controlling behaviors, her friends trying drugs or getting pregnant...)

If I'm ever a mom, I hope I'm like you. That's awesome. :)

The part that bothers me the most is this one:
"That if I just ignored the bullies, they'd go away and find an easier target."

As if that somehow makes it better. It's okay if they switch to someone who won't complain?

But... this isn't something that stops in school. It doesn't go away when you get to the real world and out of that sick social stew that is our school system... and you've got people who learned that when faced with great injustice, they cannot rely on authority figures to do anything at all. Because those charged with helping and protecting others would rather not have to deal with it, would rather have it quiet and hidden, and be able to pretend it doesn't exist. And how many crimes go unreported? How many people conclude it's jsut their lot in life to be shit on, and hurt, and trodden upon, because those who should help won't?

I've just read all of this thread - every comment, every link. I know that all I'm doing by writing is a form of "me too", but I think it's important that everyone speak up.

For me, junior high was the worst, and it started to get better in high school. And even the worst wasn't too awful. I had a couple of equally weird friends, I was never subjected physically to anything worse than some shoving in the hallways, I never seriously contemplated suicide. And these days, I have a life, a family, and a set of friends that make me very, very happy.

But I know that even today, at age 54, bullies are a hot button for me. News stories like Tyler's sicken me. Characters who are bullies and get away with it make it more difficult for me to enjoy fiction, be it book, movie, or TV show. (Latest example: Sue Sylvester.) The very notion of helplessness is enough to bring a rush of adrenaline, a flash of rage. I can promise this much: Whenever I see an opportunity to speak out against bullies, to support someone who's being bullied, to tell a bully to stop, I'll grab that opportunity.

Two random thoughts to close:

I know that there are exceptions to every generalization (yes, yes, I know that's an inherent paradox), but I do wonder, after reading everything here, is it usually somewhat less awful for straight males like me?

Seanan: If memory serves, when you first posted the lyrics to "Causes and Effects" (aka "Fractal Butterfly") on LJ, I commented something to the effect that it's one of your songs that will be remembered twenty years from now. This issue, this shared experience of being The Other, of wanting to believe that things will get better, is why.

Is it usually somewhat less awful for straight males like me?

I think every individual situation like this has its own particular charm.

As another straight male, I guess I'd say it must be easier. I'm just talking here, but in my experience, there are simpler rules to those kinds of games when straight boys are the only players. The bullies goad the victim; if the victim tries to escape, the bullies follow if they feel like it. To resolve things, there needs to be a payoff, a demonstration of power: theft, or violence if there's nothing easily stolen. The violence generally involves the victim being proven helpless or pathetic, without anything much worse than cuts, bruises, tears and terror, since actual maiming of the victim might have real consequences. The worst instances of bullying for me came when it took days, when I knew the bullies' payoff was coming at some indeterminate point in the future. Anyway, once the confrontation is over, the point's been proven, and the victim can at least go home and pretend until tomorrow that nothing happened, since to do anything else would be weak.

I think maybe that's one thing boys might have worse. No asking for help, no crying, no letting it get to you, no talking about it. Certainly, downplay it. Make your beating sound like some kind of moral victory if you can. I know that's BS, but even now, writing about this, I have a hard time reading my own words here as anything but whining. (Especially that last sentence.) Certainly much better to just be silent and beaten than perpetually on the verge of suicide for years.

Girl bullies... from what I've seen, they don't even let you just lose. They make sure you always know you're losing, make you feel like your whole life is one big payoff for them. And just because girls don't have socially approved mechanisms for resorting to violence doesn't stop them from using it when no one's watching. That story of Seanan's about getting pushed into traffic... I've been concussed by thugs multiple times, but no one's ever intentionally tried to kill me. And up to now, I thought the library book episode was the worst thing I'd ever heard.

Man, people can suck.

Fortunately, as often proven around here, they can also rule. Without being all oppressive about it, even.

*HUG* Thank you so much for sharing.

"I was years behind in the areas of "giving things up," clinging to My Little Ponies and imaginary friends long past the point where it was 'cool.'"

ME TOO! Especially because the alternatives at school were not at all better.

"I can't stand the thought of getting a library card, because they stole my library books, leaving me with a fine my family's welfare-level budget couldn't pay."

1) Why is it that every bully has to mess with books? I had a similar experience when I was about 5 but my mom made up an avenging angel in the form of The Book Spider who would creep up and scare the shit out of the kids who threw my books into the swimming pool. and 2) why the hell did the librarian fine you if it wasn't your fault? stupid librarian.

Honey, just... I am so glad you are here and now.

When I was getting my teaching degree, about ten years ago, there was a fad in the field for what they called Character Education. Basically, teaching ethics and empathy in class, as actual, formal lessons, up there with math and spelling. It was a big thing.

In practice, the public school system and its teach-to-the-test didn't usually allow for it; there was too much else to do, and if it wasn't being supported as a school-wide thing, then you pretty much had to be an exceptional enough teacher to find time and space for it on your own.

And then the trend moved on... fads in education are just like fads in the world of fashion. Someone looks at falling test scores and complaining parents and decides they need to Make a Change, the more visibly the better.

I wish they'd go back to Character Education in schools. I sometimes think empathy is a skill like math or drawing; some kids are naturally good at it, but most need to be taught, and *can* be taught. Some parents teach it-- a lot of them without even consciously knowing they're doing it-- and other parents don't realize it needs to be taught. Some kids eventually learn it through experience... but some never do, and grow up to be the college students who video their roommates having sex, or the adults that harrass or rape or... I can't even finish that sentence. The assholes are coming from *somewhere*, and it's long past time we start teaching everyone from *childhood on* not to be them.

I sometimes think empathy is a skill like math or drawing; some kids are naturally good at it, but most need to be taught, and *can* be taught. Some parents teach it-- a lot of them without even consciously knowing they're doing it-- and other parents don't realize it needs to be taught. Some kids eventually learn it through experience... but some never do

YES YES YES. I was not an empathetic child, and part of that was the reason that I was not generally bullied--they could see that they weren't going to get an expected or reliable response out of me, and so mostly left me alone. (I was also as tall or taller than a lot of my peers, which may also have had something to do with it.) I got in one playground fight (me protecting another kid; shocked -everyone- and netted me some grudging respect) and there was one group of girls who called me names until they realized I didn't care, and that was the general sum of my negative experience in early grade school. I was kind of cool in that 'Uh, she might bite us or brain us with her book if we mess with her.' kind of way. However, my mother had what one might very politely call "anger management issues", one end result of which was me examining the feeling of -being- a bully in the seventh grade.

I went to a rough middle school (we had one teacher have a nervous breakdown because the kids were seriously out of control, and several others who were clearly trying to be as non-confrontational as possible), in what was, twenty years ago, a pretty bad neighborhood. There were a few more incidents than there had been prior to middle school, but mostly I kept to myself and was fine. The second year, there was one girl, white and very prone to saying very unfortunate things, some very racist, in a school with a black majority and a fair amount of gang activity, and a thus a very, very easy target. I spent a few months alternating between privately trying to be nice and friendly in a vague way (she lived near me) and publicly being a complete monster towards her, and I learned from that experience like you would not believe. I learned that it felt -horrible- when people cried because you'd hurt them. I also learned that you can go very easily from bully to bullied when the peer group as a general whole decides that you're not quite on their side anymore. I learned that cruelty is not any kind of solution for anything and made the active choice not to do it again. (Of course, I also made the decision to not make an attempt to protect anyone again, largely because I was beginning to be smaller and weaker than most of my peers. Not the best of lessons to learn, but useful when you're used to being ignored/respected and suddenly coming under fire as a target.)

Kids can learn and can be taught empathy, and I wish I'd had it be a part of my school life. It could have saved one person from at least one part of a horrible story, and possibly prevented a lot more.

Anyway. Thank you. I wish that fad hadn't vanished.

Thank you for this post. I'm glad you made it through the bullying.

I remember being bullied in middle school. I used to cry every morning because I didn't want to get on the bus. I dreaded each day.

But I'm one of those people who just buries it all and tries to forget about it. If repressing your emotions were an Olympic sport, I'd be a gold-medalist. I've blocked almost my entire middle school experience out of my memory, but I know that the bullying has affected me more deeply than I will ever realize.

Thank you for reminding me. I hope I can hold on to the past, no matter how painful it is, if only so I can tell my future kids what I went through and give them hope that it gets better.

Wow, I just realized that my profile animation perfectly describes my emotional state in middle school lol. But seriously, the subconscious mind is a scary, scary thing...

Though I wasn't suicidal, a lot of this reminds me of my own story. Thank you for sharing it and speaking out. It breaks my heart that this is common to so many people.

(via various places.)

If you've got kids, let them know they won't get in trouble at home for defending themselves or others; I spent a ton of time in detention because I was more interested in protecting others from assholes than I was worried about getting in trouble with my folks. I also didn't give a shit what kind of reputation I was building for myself, altho in the long run my reputation won me more battles than anything else did ;)

And if you're curious, I was bullied - once. Th protector thing started 3 years later, when my brother (he was in second grade) came back to school after spending the summer in the hospital havng a tumor removed from his skull and some idiot 4th grader started picking on him.

Thank you for sharing this and believing this and just...being. I was one of the 'neither' kids for most of my grade school career (I occasionally wonder how*, as otherwise we have a lot in common; I still have all my Ponies.), and my one major slip off the path of Neutral Avoidance proved your words exactly true--try to defend the weaker kids, and you become the target, and the only way to repel that fate is to become the attacker in turn.

I thought that feeling was horrible, which I suppose, contrary to what people have occasionally said about me, means I'm not a sociopath. I stopped at one life damaged at my hands, which is one too many. It really is a cycle; I learned from my mother, but I ended up rejecting those lessons once I found out what the results were.

*Probably my Ultra-Scary Battle Aura™. True fact.

Seanan, your post brought up a lot of memories I've tried for years to forget. Mostly successfully. I was bullied. Life wasn't hell, admittedly I thought it was at the time, but there were some good things in there too. When I started to think about it, most of the kids that bullied me were themselves bullied as well. I don't have an answer and I wish it never went on anywhere or happened to anyone. I'd like to thank you for the post, because it made me think and I'd also like to thank you for sharing what are some very painful and personal memories with us. I like to think if we'd grown up together we may have been friends, because you don't sound all that much different to how I was at the same age.

My parents had a phrase that covered the bullies that themselves were bullied: "Shit runs downhill."

My mentor teacher from when I first started teaching, a tiny woman, would insert herself amongst nasty children and say "Don't be shitful." I cannot bring myself to say things that crudely to students, but I sure appreciate the sentiment, and will insert myself amongst nasty children and say "Don't be cruel. What you do keeps going and infects other people."

Hello. I'm over here from Cat Valente's journal. She wrote a post about this very subject.

I myself was horrifically bullied and tormented through middle school and high school, and also, in elementary school. I've repressed a lot of those awful memories, but a major part of what hurts today is the attitude my parents took towards it. My mother used to say "You're so sensitive! Just ignore them!" So I tried to toughen up. She also said that the bullies were just insecure kids who probably had a bad home life. Some of them probably did, yes, but others? Others were considered "good kids." Yeah, right. These were supposedly good "Christian" kids who treated me like shit. (For the record: I grew up in the Bible Belt.) Yeah. Real Christ like of them. Didn't Jesus say something about embracing the outcast? Anyways, I digress.

There were times when I thought about killing myself. I used to cry myself to sleep, almost hoping that I wouldn't wake up the next morning. I sometimes thought about ending it, but somehow, I made it. I survived. I got through all of that horrendous torment, but not without emotional and mental scars. For better or worse, my school experiences shaped who I am today. Finally during my senior year, I broke down, snapped, and ended up in a mental institution for six days shortly before graduation.

Whenever someone says "Kids will be kids" I can't help but snarl and call bullshit. The truth is kids will be complete fucking monsters if given an opportunity. And the fact is, bullies come from all walks of life. They aren't all kids with dysfunctional home lives. Many of them come from happy, secure home lives, and are the teacher's "pets."

I figure that I survived all of that for a reason. And the recent stories I've seen cropping up of seeing kids committing suicide because of bullying have finally compelled me to speak up, and speak out about this, and the others that have talked of their experiences gives me courage to go back and face those old demons. Maybe in my own way, I can do some good. More of us who were bullied need to speak up and say "enough is enough." I will join my voice with yours.

The bullies generally left me alone after I pulled a knife on one of them. Yeah I got suspended. Worth it.

I wrote my depression from being bullied a LOT (and the abusive home life) as a teen. This one in particular:

Despair

She dawdles home. Why can they not leave her alone? Instead they sneer and cat-call from the other side of the road. She stops outside the drugstore and looks around cautiously.

A little later, she emerges clutching a little package and hides it in the bottom of her schoolbag as she walks. Looking up, she realises with dread that she is nearly home.

Walking up to the gate, she trips on a wire stretched between the lamppost and the fence. The boys across the road snigger, "Pick up your feet, swatto!"

She comes in by the back door, which the wind snatches from her hand to slam it closed.

"Girl, don't slam it!" her mother calls from her armchair and gin.

She walks slowly upstairs to her room and takes out her parcel. Unscrewing the lid of the bottle she unwraps, she pours a mountain of gleaming white tablets onto the bed. Getting a glass of water from the bathroom, she sits on the bed and begins to take them, one by one.

She slips to the floor with a resounding thud after the 67th.

"Shut up girl!" yells her mother.

The girl is motionless.

The part about people being willing to say "but he/she's really a good kid" about bullies especially speaks to me, because I heard that when I was younger. I heard that a lot.

I don't give a rat's ass how a kid acts the rest of the time, if they're bullying someone, they are not a "good kid", they're a brat in need of an attitude adjustment STAT. Acting like a little angel doesn't excuse or somehow make it all right that they also torment others. It's also bullshit because the 'weird' ones never receive 'good kid' absolution for what they do 'wrong'.

I thought adults were clueless for telling me to ignore bullies when I was younger, and now that I am an adult, I boggle at the level of willful amnesia it takes to be able to say something like that to a kid and actually think it'll work. Ignoring bullies doesn't make them go away. Never has, never will.

I'd have tried to kill myself, too, if I'd had to go through the same school you did. My childhood was a miserable hell, thanks to ADHD--though nowhere near the hell yours was--and I went to schools that took things like destruction of property and being shoved into traffic seriously.

Only it turns out that there's no explanation.... I'm sure that every bully has a root cause...

I think you've nailed part of the problem right there. While every bully has a root cause, there is no addressable common factor, no explanation that fits enough of the cases to point the way to any solutions that could work on a better than retail scale. How much energy do we have available to spend? It doesn't help that bullying *among supposed adults* seems to be endemic as well, up to and including on a societal level -- and it's not solely a "curse of Westernism" either, not even close.

I'm linking to your post in my own LJ.

Thanks so much for posting this. It brought back a lot of memories, and reminded me of a lot of pain, which I have mostly gotten past. But when you grow up with fear, learn to socialize (or not) through the lens of fear and distrust, it never completely leaves you.
Adults fail to remember that amongst other things kids learn in school is the skill of learning to interact. When its done in an hostile environment, the taint will always be with them.

I always hate to hear of kids who had it even worse than I did, but that only makes me prouder of you as a person that you managed to overcome it. I never once actually thought there was anything wrong with me, but I wrestled with cognitive dissonance, both over their actions, & the reactions of adults. I knew instinctively what they missed and what you came to see: that bullies are bullies because they are bullies. They do not deserve understanding - they need correction.

I am also more fortunate than others because now that my daughter is being bullied for the crime of being attractive and popular - yes, that does happen! - I have been not just motivated but extremely well-equipped to put a stop to it. I have gone so far as to call the police, and both girls have finally been suspended. We'll see what happens next, but, believe you me, I am going to continue to "pay it forward" & save my daughter.

On behalf of your daughter - thank you :)