I was bullied in junior high and some in high school, I guess. it feels very far away and I don't remember the specifics but I had lots of weird self-esteem issues for a while. at some point I was just like fuck it, I'm awesome and I don't know when that happened either.
bullies are just normal people. I found that often they arent cowardly or from broken homes. Sometimes they are just confident kids asserting themselves by picking on weak ones. Some grow out of it, some dont. I think everyone has the capacity to be a 'bully', I certainly was to kids weaker than me, a fact that I am most ashamed of now as an adult.
The reason homophobic bullying is worse is because often its a sentiment reflected by every other aspect of a young gay kids experience.
Someone mentioned before 'just ignore them'. And while this is effective against singular bullies, or just mean kids, it isnt really effective when you are fat, or are slow, etc. Kids start to do most of the bullying themselves at this point, the bullies job becomes irrelevant, the kid's own picture of himself and the world has been so skewed that very little input is needed, you dont need to be pushed into lockers every day, you just need to have no way of refuting the bullies.
Thats the reason why the cliche 'bully' is so out of date, often its more subtle and deeper than being given wedgies, especially with girls.
"LOL I smashed a bully in the nuts and then he totally stopped and then I got the girl"
Bullies aren't like they are in fucking 80s/90s shitty films. You don't ever need to resort to violence. That's childish and, at worst, going to wind YOU up in trouble with the police (for aggravated assault or similar). You just need to get on with your life.
Also, are there any statistics about that old theory that bullies project on their victims something they can't accept about themselves (for instance, being homosexual)?
i was bullied in elementary school because i was pretty much fresh off the boat, didn't really do anything about it, it just stopped after a while, nothing too serious.
i wish more bullying situations had resolutions like in the movies, with an embarassing comeuppance and a freeze frame with a shitty ending for the bully written out in text
Something like this with me. Except for the bullying. Because you know, I might be all foreign but I'm still white, so I must be ok.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
"LOL I smashed a bully in the nuts and then he totally stopped and then I got the girl"
Bullies aren't like they are in fucking 80s/90s shitty films. You don't ever need to resort to violence. That's childish and, at worst, going to wind YOU up in trouble with the police (for aggravated assault or similar). You just need to get on with your life.
Also, are there any statistics about that old theory that bullies project on their victims something they can't accept about themselves (for instance, being homosexual)?
I think you've completely missed the point here
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WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
What happens to bullies after high school? I'm 31 and have seen war; I still sometimes get idiots on the street trying to stare me down or purposefully getting in my on the sidewalk. I just lock eyes with them and they move.
Fucking dominant male bullshit. It's a waste of energy and needs to go away.
edit: Getting in my way, that is.
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Man, i remember being caught up in crowd bullying when i was in like 7th grade. Our class was at a winter camp retreat and the teacher was telling a story about a creep with a hook hand and it was scary, but then he made it funny and everyone laughed. This one kid had a nerd personality and a strange laugh, and i shouted at him "oh look its the creep!"
Dear god i took that back so fast, and i still feel like an ass for it. I made him cry because so many people laughed after it. I really hope he is running part of a fortune 500 now or something and shrugged off my moment of verbal bullying. I regret that so much.
Bullying fucking sucks. I didn't get it badly at school because for the most part people were scared of me. I took what they mocked me for and used it against them to make them hate me more but also be too nervous to confront me directly.
It was easier to ignore them talking about me if they had to mutter behind my back to do it.
It meant that I was violent and angry to anyone that crossed me or my friends and it's how I dealt with the issue. But not everyone can or even should respond to it that way.
But it was worse at home because even if I scared the shit out of people at school I couldn't scare the crap out of my own family. And so I learned to try to get the hell out of the way from my father and try to find another place to go. I never considered suicide because of the guilt I felt at what it would do to my mother who already threatened to overdose on sleeping pills on a near daily basis. So instead I focused on getting the hell out of the house.
Suicide is always a sad thing no matter what the reason someone had where they felt like they didn't have any other options.
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and redirect their libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another.
I used to get bullied in middle school and the first half of high school. I don't really know why but kids don't seem to need any real reason to pick on others. During my junior and senior years it was a lot better, though people still continued to bother me. That wasn't bullying though, it was more just pestering me and asking the dumbest questions like, "Why don't you ever talk to anyone?" and, "Why do you read books?"
Pretty much my own situation. Every once and a while someone would pick on me but I generally made it so tedious and awkward for them at that point that it wasn't a common thing. Other than that it was just "why do you have to be so smart!" Yes, a couple people really said shit like that to me. It's bizarre. It pretty much ended by my senior year, though, as I made a stronger effort to be more social.
A lot of bullies just pick on people who are alone, I think. That's always when I got picked on, when I didn't seem to have anyone to back me up, which is why I think it's important to stick up for other kids if you see it happening. I remember once a kid was being picked on on my bus and I and a girl came to his defense. The bully seemed really caught off guard.
It probably helped that I wasn't small in my teenage years, I think I was 5'8 by 9th grade, but, again, I was a loner so I did get picked on now and then because I seemed like an easy target for that reason.
People stopped calling me gay because I had seven or eight really close female friends who hung out with me all the time and were always hugging and hanging all over me and they thought I was sleeping with all of them. The hilarious thing was that I didn't lose my virginity until after highschool, but it gave me a reputation that I didn't try and get rid of.
However, all my female friend's parents still thought I was gay and were perfectly cool with letting them stay over at my house which was also hilarious and eventually lead to the things they didn't want to happen.
For the minority (and I've been out of school for 6 years now) I've seen terrible social development. One guy I know is basically a recluse. Frankly, as harsh it sounds, it's now completely his fault. No one bullies him anymore. Everyone has grown up and tries to include him but he is just a terrible, awful drag to be around. I actually loathe having to spend too much time around him at big social events because he's so socially inept that it's borderline sociopathic. He could EASILY change but he won't let himself change because he's become what people joked he would during school..
Much like depressed people can easily stop being so sad, right?
Ambassador, I think your grasp of psychology, social development, and human behavior is tenuous at best.
Possibly - I'm not trained in the field. I'm just reporting what I've inferred. Care to enlighten perhaps?
Stop listening to Gloria Estefan for a few minutes and try to become familiar with stories and points of view beyond your own. I'm not saying everything you said was wrong but the way you put things it's as if even the concept of empathy is totally lost on you.
It woudl be nice if everything was like an episode of Glee and secretely all the Bullies were insecure and gay when they teased the insecure gay guy. But often they are confident and straight, and some will go through their lives unrepentant and satisifed with themselves.
As I said I dont think the key is to confront bullies or bullying, I think its to reach the victims and give them alternate information. I like the "it gets better" campaign, because its not saying "the bullies are wrong, or secretly gay, or will get their commeupance, or man up!"
These things are often untrue, and kids can see through this, they know that the bully is right when he calls them fat. The key should be getting kids to not define themselves by the vision bullies paint, and give them hope, because in the end the only thing that gets you through it is getting through it, I really dont think theres much you can do about it at the time, aside from the usual piecemeal advice you tend to give kids hoping they'll put it all together.
bullies are just normal people. I found that often they arent cowardly or from broken homes. Sometimes they are just confident kids asserting themselves by picking on weak ones. Some grow out of it, some dont. I think everyone has the capacity to be a 'bully', I certainly was to kids weaker than me, a fact that I am most ashamed of now as an adult.
The reason homophobic bullying is worse is because often its a sentiment reflected by every other aspect of a young gay kids experience.
Someone mentioned before 'just ignore them'. And while this is effective against singular bullies, or just mean kids, it isnt really effective when you are fat, or are slow, etc. Kids start to do most of the bullying themselves at this point, the bullies job becomes irrelevant, the kid's own picture of himself and the world has been so skewed that very little input is needed, you dont need to be pushed into lockers every day, you just need to have no way of refuting the bullies.
Thats the reason why the cliche 'bully' is so out of date, often its more subtle and deeper than being given wedgies, especially with girls.
In some cases I definitely think they don't even realize that they're being hurtful
in seventh grade there was a kid in study hall who ever damn day would throw my bookbag into this huge carboard box that the history teacher used to demonstrate the size of the blocks used to build the pyramids. It took forever to get it out and it always made me late to class. One day, I did it back to him and he put his hands around my neck, so I grabbed a textbook and hit him in the head with it hard and ran away.
In high school I actually got to be good friends with that guy and in retrospect, with more knowledge about his personality it was totally obvious that he was just messing around, and even when he was "choking" me he was just goofing around and if I hadn't been panicking I probably would've realized that he wasn't even squeezing.
Which isn't to say that what he did was excusable. Just that I think a lot of the time kids can be cruel without intending to be.
Honestly, as an adult, I don't know what advice I could give to a bullied kid. If I have kids, I hope they get my tall genes, because otherwise they're SOL with me as a father in a bullying situation.
We should fire all psychologists and make them be teachers. We'd obviously use the economy that was going to overpaid psychologists to increase teacher pay.
I had a particularly obnoxious friend call me a faggot for wearing slim straight jeans this weekend. He followed that up by telling me that he totally wasn't a homophobe or anything and was okay with gay people.. I can't wait to get the fuck back out of the Bible belt.
I had a particularly obnoxious friend call me a faggot for wearing slim straight jeans this weekend. He followed that up by telling me that he totally wasn't a homophobe or anything and was okay with gay people.. I can't wait to get the fuck back out of the Bible belt.
For the minority (and I've been out of school for 6 years now) I've seen terrible social development. One guy I know is basically a recluse. Frankly, as harsh it sounds, it's now completely his fault. No one bullies him anymore. Everyone has grown up and tries to include him but he is just a terrible, awful drag to be around. I actually loathe having to spend too much time around him at big social events because he's so socially inept that it's borderline sociopathic. He could EASILY change but he won't let himself change because he's become what people joked he would during school..
Much like depressed people can easily stop being so sad, right?
Just cheer up! Geez
Okay, that's oversimplifying a bit on my part - I recognise it's not a blanket solution to a very speckled problem.
I just think in some cases you shouldn't buy into it. I've seen people who have.
Ambassador, I think your grasp of psychology, social development, and human behavior is tenuous at best.
Possibly - I'm not trained in the field. I'm just reporting what I've inferred. Care to enlighten perhaps?
Stop listening to Gloria Estefan for a few minutes and try to become familiar with stories and points of view beyond your own. I'm not saying everything you said was wrong but the way you put things it's as if even the concept of empathy is totally lost on you.
I don't know who Gloria Estefan is. I understand there's so much more too it than just "ignoring" the bullies. I get that. I just think there's a little (or in some cases, a lot) that victims can do to get passed it too.
I used to get bullied in middle school and the first half of high school. I don't really know why but kids don't seem to need any real reason to pick on others. During my junior and senior years it was a lot better, though people still continued to bother me. That wasn't bullying though, it was more just pestering me and asking the dumbest questions like, "Why don't you ever talk to anyone?" and, "Why do you read books?"
Pretty much my own situation. Every once and a while someone would pick on me but I generally made it so tedious and awkward for them at that point that it wasn't a common thing. Other than that it was just "why do you have to be so smart!" Yes, a couple people really said shit like that to me. It's bizarre. It pretty much ended by my senior year, though, as I made a stronger effort to be more social.
A lot of bullies just pick on people who are alone, I think. That's always when I got picked on, when I didn't seem to have anyone to back me up, which is why I think it's important to stick up for other kids if you see it happening. I remember once a kid was being picked on on my bus and I and a girl came to his defense. The bully seemed really caught off guard.
It probably helped that I wasn't small in my teenage years, I think I was 5'8 by 9th grade, but, again, I was a loner so I did get picked on now and then because I seemed like an easy target for that reason.
People stopped calling me gay because I had seven or eight really close female friends who hung out with me all the time and were always hugging and hanging all over me and they thought I was sleeping with all of them. The hilarious thing was that I didn't lose my virginity until after highschool, but it gave me a reputation that I didn't try and get rid of.
However, all my female friend's parents still thought I was gay and were perfectly cool with letting them stay over at my house which was also hilarious and eventually lead to the things they didn't want to happen.
I actually didn't get a lot of people calling me gay, mostly because I just avoided a lot of people and have a pretty average male appearance.
Sounds strange but, before I actually learned to be more social, one of the things that helped me most was realizing I could always go to the library during breaks and hang out and read or use the computer lab in peace. It was kind of a safe place I could go and be around people without worrying about negative reactions.
Later on, I used this idea to become more social as well, by hanging out in public places like cafes and such even when I was doing my own thing.
I wrote a really long post, but I deleted it. Just wanted to say I was bullied very badly and constantly because I was fat. I lost a lot of opportunities due to depression and subsequent seclusion that persists to this day. Teachers and parents should be better educated to help bullied children.
The school or whoever gave me this big brother once. They thought they were helping, I guess. He just complained about having to spend money every time he picked me up, then he stopped coming. They didn't try helping anymore.
Posts
Who gives a shit.
And who is saying they are?
It's bad if ANYONE commits suicide.
Suicide is not the only result of homophobic bullying. Being shoved into the closet is also damaging.
Secret Satan
and then he brought out the cane
god yes
http://www.audioentropy.com/
The reason homophobic bullying is worse is because often its a sentiment reflected by every other aspect of a young gay kids experience.
Someone mentioned before 'just ignore them'. And while this is effective against singular bullies, or just mean kids, it isnt really effective when you are fat, or are slow, etc. Kids start to do most of the bullying themselves at this point, the bullies job becomes irrelevant, the kid's own picture of himself and the world has been so skewed that very little input is needed, you dont need to be pushed into lockers every day, you just need to have no way of refuting the bullies.
Thats the reason why the cliche 'bully' is so out of date, often its more subtle and deeper than being given wedgies, especially with girls.
"LOL I smashed a bully in the nuts and then he totally stopped and then I got the girl"
Bullies aren't like they are in fucking 80s/90s shitty films. You don't ever need to resort to violence. That's childish and, at worst, going to wind YOU up in trouble with the police (for aggravated assault or similar). You just need to get on with your life.
Also, are there any statistics about that old theory that bullies project on their victims something they can't accept about themselves (for instance, being homosexual)?
I don't think it will go away.. people are still bullies even as adults =/
Some people grow out of it other remain tremendous assholes their entire lives. I've observed both.
well it wasn't a catholic school
started at public school the year after that though, for that and other reasons
I came in a few months into the school year and there second grade class was full, so I ended up getting bumped to third grade
those kids fucking hated me and I don't know why
also in spite of being 9 they all thought Pokemon was for babies
fuck those kids
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I think you've completely missed the point here
Fucking dominant male bullshit. It's a waste of energy and needs to go away.
edit: Getting in my way, that is.
Dear god i took that back so fast, and i still feel like an ass for it. I made him cry because so many people laughed after it. I really hope he is running part of a fortune 500 now or something and shrugged off my moment of verbal bullying. I regret that so much.
They actually grow up.
I know several bullies who are repentant and some who have apologised to their victims.
Someone please think of the children.
Possibly - I'm not trained in the field. I'm just reporting what I've inferred. Care to enlighten perhaps?
It was easier to ignore them talking about me if they had to mutter behind my back to do it.
It meant that I was violent and angry to anyone that crossed me or my friends and it's how I dealt with the issue. But not everyone can or even should respond to it that way.
But it was worse at home because even if I scared the shit out of people at school I couldn't scare the crap out of my own family. And so I learned to try to get the hell out of the way from my father and try to find another place to go. I never considered suicide because of the guilt I felt at what it would do to my mother who already threatened to overdose on sleeping pills on a near daily basis. So instead I focused on getting the hell out of the house.
Suicide is always a sad thing no matter what the reason someone had where they felt like they didn't have any other options.
"Don't fight back you should run and tell a teacher all about it!"
Ugh! It's amazing how much some adults forget about being a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
This is the #1 human flaw IMO.
People stopped calling me gay because I had seven or eight really close female friends who hung out with me all the time and were always hugging and hanging all over me and they thought I was sleeping with all of them. The hilarious thing was that I didn't lose my virginity until after highschool, but it gave me a reputation that I didn't try and get rid of.
However, all my female friend's parents still thought I was gay and were perfectly cool with letting them stay over at my house which was also hilarious and eventually lead to the things they didn't want to happen.
Yes. Many of them were not bullied nor do they want to take on the responsibility of actually dealing with the problem and disrupting their class.
Secret Satan
Much like depressed people can easily stop being so sad, right?
Just cheer up! Geez
Stop listening to Gloria Estefan for a few minutes and try to become familiar with stories and points of view beyond your own. I'm not saying everything you said was wrong but the way you put things it's as if even the concept of empathy is totally lost on you.
That's up there
Of course at this point they are quick to teach you lesson #2: "don't be a tattle-tale"
As I said I dont think the key is to confront bullies or bullying, I think its to reach the victims and give them alternate information. I like the "it gets better" campaign, because its not saying "the bullies are wrong, or secretly gay, or will get their commeupance, or man up!"
These things are often untrue, and kids can see through this, they know that the bully is right when he calls them fat. The key should be getting kids to not define themselves by the vision bullies paint, and give them hope, because in the end the only thing that gets you through it is getting through it, I really dont think theres much you can do about it at the time, aside from the usual piecemeal advice you tend to give kids hoping they'll put it all together.
In some cases I definitely think they don't even realize that they're being hurtful
in seventh grade there was a kid in study hall who ever damn day would throw my bookbag into this huge carboard box that the history teacher used to demonstrate the size of the blocks used to build the pyramids. It took forever to get it out and it always made me late to class. One day, I did it back to him and he put his hands around my neck, so I grabbed a textbook and hit him in the head with it hard and ran away.
In high school I actually got to be good friends with that guy and in retrospect, with more knowledge about his personality it was totally obvious that he was just messing around, and even when he was "choking" me he was just goofing around and if I hadn't been panicking I probably would've realized that he wasn't even squeezing.
Which isn't to say that what he did was excusable. Just that I think a lot of the time kids can be cruel without intending to be.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
This is probably because I was the kid who never went to school and when I did I had emotional breakdowns and panic attacks.
The kids who would have were probably scared of ME.
I just wish I could help any kid who gets made fun of in school, but I wouldn't understand at all.
/writes your senator/representative
More like slim gay jeans, mirite?
Okay, that's oversimplifying a bit on my part - I recognise it's not a blanket solution to a very speckled problem.
I just think in some cases you shouldn't buy into it. I've seen people who have.
I don't know who Gloria Estefan is. I understand there's so much more too it than just "ignoring" the bullies. I get that. I just think there's a little (or in some cases, a lot) that victims can do to get passed it too.
I actually didn't get a lot of people calling me gay, mostly because I just avoided a lot of people and have a pretty average male appearance.
Sounds strange but, before I actually learned to be more social, one of the things that helped me most was realizing I could always go to the library during breaks and hang out and read or use the computer lab in peace. It was kind of a safe place I could go and be around people without worrying about negative reactions.
Later on, I used this idea to become more social as well, by hanging out in public places like cafes and such even when I was doing my own thing.
Secret Satan
every person in my town ever.
The school or whoever gave me this big brother once. They thought they were helping, I guess. He just complained about having to spend money every time he picked me up, then he stopped coming. They didn't try helping anymore.