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[urocyon]

I will not stand for this

Everyone Feels This Pain
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erynn999 summed it up well: "The cruelty and violence -- physical, emotional, and verbal, needs to end."

Ah, bullies. Synchronicity seems to be in the air again. A couple of days ago, I turned out a Usenet post touching on the subject, with a more personal bent than I prefer. Lately, I've also been trying harder to ferret out how the PTSD (fueled, in part, by years of bullying) is continuing to effect my behavior and emotions in close relationships. How clinical-sounding a description of trying to shed some of the defensiveness and feel safer dealing with people. :)



Yes, I most certainly survived. Sheer bloody-mindedness can carry a person pretty far. I am not any sort of broken, hastily-patched-up person; this view of individuals who have lived through any abuse makes me livid. It does seem, though, that there are a few more sore spots than I have wanted to admit to myself--and what better time to see to them? Skimming other people's bare accounts of experiences very similar to my own should not feel like a slap, better than ten years after the fact.

Over the past few years, several people I knew in school have approached me in a friendly manner. In every case, I automatically segued into hyper-polite mode, while feeling the strongest urge to react quite differently: "*scary grin* Oh yes, I remember you! It's been ages! *nudge* Why, the last time I saw you, you were standing around and snickering while--what was his name?--spit on me. Or was it when what's-her-face lobbed the exploding can of Coke at my head? *grin* Hey, sorry you can't stay and chat!" Rationally, I know it's not fair to place much blame on the (large group of) cowed onlookers, but my reaction to them is still pretty potent. There's obviously more stored-up hostility than is healthy for me, at this point. (Still, how could some of these people think that I would want to be friendly to them ever again? *shakes head*)

Besides setting the entire PTSD enchilada aside for years in triage, I do suspect that I've avoided poking too much at the effects of bullying because--to some extent--I was subdued by the message that it's not a "real" problem. (Not to mention the more insidious one that the victims somehow deserve to be mistreated, so have even more reason just to "suck it up".) Even when it was first suggested that I was showing glaring signs of PTSD, when I was 14, the therapist chose to focus on earlier dealings with my biological father, rather than on the awful daily verbal abuse and periodic physical attacks I was still experiencing. Granted, this was before the goings-on at Columbine and such, but if an otherwise reasonable psychologist dismissed the "teasing" as a minor concern under the circumstances, it would seem a decent indication of how serious the problem was being considered at the time. It may get a little more lip-service these days, but I don't see many indications that real attention is being paid. (Except out of overblown fear, to children who are a little different; I hope this has calmed down.) I've heard too many stories from my younger cousins, still in school.

As I touched on in my other post, what is the huge difference between plain old child abuse and tolerance of bullying? I spent far too long analysing things to death, with encouragement, just to come up with, "He went crazy and was horribly unpredictable. Who knows why he wanted to insult me? Who knows why he felt a need to hit me, seemingly at random?" with regards to Bill Brewer--this sounds like classic bullying behavior to me. (I have little doubt that many people prone to childhood bullying behavior go ahead to treat their own children in a similar manner, for that matter.) In both cases, there's the actual abusive behavior, also the abdication of adult responsibility. Children are generally encouraged to trust school personnel, and have very little choice but to rely on their protection all day long. This may not be as strong a conflict as if a parent is involved, but it can lead to similar problems with trust, on top of the victims not being able to trust their peers. Calling it child abuse by proxy is hardly a stretch.

So much weight is laid on the victims that I've had to consider the question of victim selection. The general view seems to be that children chosen as victims really are "different" in some demonstrable way, and that the timid and physically small are particularly appealing to single out for attack. I'm not even going into the idea that a decent proportion have objectionable enough personalities to excuse such treatment. These popular theories would be fine, but for one thing: they make too much sense. A reasonable person would not repeatedly insult and attack someone larger, stronger, smarter, and just as aggressive as himself--these things do not deter a dyed-in-the-wool bully. The selection criteria are hardly clear, perhaps not to many bullies themselves. I have begun to suspect that rather aggressive people without the bully mindset are actually prone to more clashes. Bullies will size people up like strange dogs, and those who will not or cannot provide a show of submission will be attacked. The timid just don't gain or hold their attention as well, from what I've seen, while the nuttiest of them will keep coming at an inappropriate target after repeated failures. Maybe they've been watching too many Grade-D movies.

What to do about the problem? I'm certainly leery of "Zero Tolerance" policies, in this as with every other (mis)application I've seen. The kid with Lemonheads gets in deep trouble, while another is rushed to the hospital because she can't carry an asthma inhaler. There is already enough encouragement of sneaky behavior, with the poor soul who snaps and lashes back at someone who's been taunting him for years frequently the one suspended from school. The policies in place when I was in school were based on some common sense, and gave some appearance of fairness, at least: try to sort things though and find out who provoked whom, how severely, and who threw the first punch (sort of a tiebreaker, in cases of mutual puffery). Nobody even bothered to question me about the couple of occasions I publicly snapped after elementary school, in rather sharp contrast to a number of other people's experiences. The "yes, we know you're being set upon by a pack of ravening hyenas--what do you expect us to do?" message is still preferable to the equivalent of the "Zero Tolerance" housing policies which set women out on the street because somebody decides to use them for a punching bag.

How about we avoid using cutesy labels, and admit that there is a deep-seated problem? Admit that systematically undermining a person's confidence with not-so-"harmless" words is an absolutely appalling thing to do. Admit that the victims are not causing this phenomenon. Admit that trying to condone such behavior through various social evolutionary theories ranks up there with eugenics. Admit that somebody can stop the insane behavior, and the most likely person is the first reasonable human being who witnesses each instance of it. If more children were taught to be reasonable human beings, rather than hangers-on, the potential hardcore bullies would wither.

None of this may happen anytime soon, but it certainly would be a nice start.

This managed to run away from me and turn into a different post from the one I started. It happens, even when one is trying to cut down on the ranting. ;) I do promise not to go ahead and try to address the subject as originally intended--for public consumption, at least. *g*

Comments

[switchbit.livejournal.com]

What can I say? I was bullied like this too. 5 schools and 16 years later I was suicidally depressed and tried to commit suicide frequently. But you get told to see a therapist, try to fit and are made to feel its your fault for being different.

Take care
Switchbit