this is a post about bullying
Trigger warning for survivors of abuse and bullying!
Currently flocked - unfiltered - because I don't know if this post is useful, or if it's 'finished'. Please to be letting me know what you think, oh great and powerful flist. The flist has pronounced this fit to post, so I'm unlocking it.
I've been wanting to post this for a long time. It's been sitting half finished in my gdocs for months. Some recent RL conversations about bullying gave me the impetus to get it done and posted, but it's very much about bullying in general, and yes, online bullying.
When I was six years old, I was targeted by a bully. He would continue to bully me for the next three years, stopping only when my older brother beat the hell out of him, and our parents got involved. Shortly after, he was transferred to another school. Though his mother still lived in the neighborhood and he was often over for visits, I didn't see him again for another two years, when we were assigned to the same middle school. He targeted me again.
Let's call him Richard.
Like many bullies, Richard had a fair number of problems himself. He was poor and neither of his parents were around much when we were growing up. His parents had never married, and he shuttled between them on an irregular schedule. Though he was smart, (and he was smart, he tested as gifted, and in my personal experience, he was damn cunning), he didn't get good grades. He was a good looking boy who grew into a good looking man, but he was never charismatic, and he never seemed to have any close friendships. He fell in with a bad crowd when he was young, and when I was starting my first year in high school, he was starting his first year in juvenile detention.
Richard liked to scare people, and he liked to hurt people. He was creative and comprehensive in his efforts. He didn't limit himself to verbal taunts, or physical assaults. If, for whatever reason, you made it onto his internal list of people in need of breaking, he would wage all out psychological warfare on you. I was not the only person he went after. I didn't even suffer the worst. But I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experiences, so that you'll understand that I don't take bullying lightly.
Bullying is commonplace. We are all bullies, victims of bullies, or people who have stood by and watched someone be bullied. Some of us are all three. Because it is so commonplace, so much the fabric of our everyday existence, it's easy to dismiss. There are bullies in every age group, every walk of life, every demographic. When you are in a nursing home, pumped up on who knows what concoction of drugs (and hopefully being looked after), there will still be bullies. And there will still be people who advise the victims of bullies to just. Get. Over. It.
With ordinary schoolyard bullies, I knew to fight back or run, and I used both options liberally. I got into scraps with guys and girls, and I spent time in makeshift, neighborhood foxholes when fighting back didn't make any kind of sense. With Richard though, who was always bigger, stronger and harder, fighting back wasn't an option. Richard scared me. That kind of lizard brain terror that throws executive function down on the ground and steps on it. Sometimes the lizard brain just knows best though, and in this case it did - I was right to be scared. With Richard, I had to run, deflect, or find help.
I had to be smart about it. Help wasn't always forthcoming, and wasn't always entirely helpful.
It's a funny thing, childhood bullying. Adult responses are so often ineffectual or uselessly over the top. They so rarely take into account the closed world that kids exist in, with the adult world and all its rules something distant from their own private spaces and experiences. No one wants to be a rat, not when you're already being pressured, and when adults come back with "Not my jurisdiction, Not my problem, Not an appropriate response, young lady, you need to learn to rise above", well, you learn not to put your faith in adults. Instead you play them. Rat your classmates out strategically. Plant that seed of doubt. Appeal for their protection when necessary, but always downplay the magnitude of the situation.
I did a lot of downplaying with Richard. To unsympathetic teachers, to myself, for years, always telling myself that I could handle it, I could handle it. We all knew what he was, I think, but it was hard for us to articulate it, beyond calling him various ableist names that don't bear repeating. At six, eight, ten, twelve, we already knew whose parents and older brothers and sisters were gang affiliated. Some of my classmates knew violence intimately, in their homes. We all knew not to take candy from strangers, and why, we knew the neighborhood drug dealers by name. But how to make clear to teachers, who only saw Richard's beauty, intelligence, and boundless potential, that there was something fundamentally wrong, deep inside of him? What do kids know, anyway?
One time, my friend Libby and I were walking home from school - one of those lazy, almost the end of the year, early summer afternoons, where the temperature is perfect and everything is in bloom - dragging our heels until we were about the last kids heading out. Our path home was a short walk through a quiet neighborhood, then across a major street. Then we were on home turf. We realized about halfway that Richard was following us.
We knew he was following us because we tried to shake him. It was all very cop show - we walked slow, walked fast, took a circuitous route home, because maybe he just happened to be going the same way, at the same time. He made it clear pretty quickly that he was following us, and not just going our way. First through verbal taunts, quickly escalating to throwing things, and finally to running after us, screaming threats.
We ran. Of course we ran - what else was there for us to do? We ran through this old, winding development, once getting trapped in a cul de sac and having to shortcut through someone's backyard. We ran across four lanes of traffic. We ran all the way to the lobby of Libby's building, which unfortunately also happened to be Richard's. Maybe it was blind instinct that drove us there, or the crucial ten feet we'd maintained between him and us. It was a bad decision, but we were panicked. We were also lucky, because Richard had forgotten his key that morning.
The lobby had two sets of glass doors. We made it through the first one, and I pulled it closed while Libby unlocked the second. We dashed through, and pulled the door closed behind us. Richard was stuck in the foyer, screaming at us. "Open this door." We didn't. "Open this door or you'll regret it." We didn't. "Open the fucking door." We still didn't. That's when he started to kick it. He stood there and kicked that fucking glass door until it cracked, cracked, gaped open enough for him to climb through.
We were standing there, thinking-- hell I don't remember what we were thinking, it's difficult to keep the details straight in these kinds of situations, and I've always hung onto the physical. I can tell you what Libby was wearing, and Richard, but I can't tell you what I was thinking. I can give you an approximation though. Something like, "Oh god, I can't run anymore. I can't keep on running."
But then an adult, the super, came out and everything stopped. Libby and I took off. So did Richard, but he was the one the super chose to chase after. I don't know what kind of trouble he got into, but I didn't see him for at least a week, so there must have been something. When they replaced the doors, they got the kind with a spidery net of wires embedded in the glass. They're harder to break, and easier to clean up when they do.
That's one incident out of many. But just as this incident is only one of many, and not the worst, Richard was only one bully out of many. I've been bullied by girls too, a year of verbal abuse designed to break me down, and for no other reason than their entertainment, and the inflation of their egos. Taunts about my hair, my weight, my clothing. Veiled and not so veiled threats, and physical abuse too. There was a time when I turned to bullying too - it felt so good to be the one dealing out the pain, instead of taking it. I've fought back, I've outsmarted, I've avoided and I've responded in kind, but none of these strategies ever stopped it. Ever stopped bullies from being bullies.
I've rarely been bullied since middle school, but I am still affected by what happened then, and am still affected by seeing bullies in action.
Bullying affects not just the bully and their victims, but everyone around them. It creates an unsafe, abusive atmosphere. When you throw a screaming temper tantrum, uttering threats and calling people out like it's the wild west, you are bullying and you are doing more than just making your targets feel small and unsafe. When you shout people down, rather than hear contrary opinions, you are bullying, and you are contributing to an atmosphere of violence. Bullies feed off of other bullies. Violence feeds off of violence. When you stand by and let someone be victimized because it's not such a big deal, it's just words, it's just the internet, you are helping to perpetuate a culture of abuse.
Bullying is a big fucking deal. It is abuse, it can involve physical and sexual assaults, and torture. No matter the scale of it, bullying is not and will never be okay.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/248825.html.
Currently flocked - unfiltered - because I don't know if this post is useful, or if it's 'finished'. Please to be letting me know what you think, oh great and powerful flist. The flist has pronounced this fit to post, so I'm unlocking it.
I've been wanting to post this for a long time. It's been sitting half finished in my gdocs for months. Some recent RL conversations about bullying gave me the impetus to get it done and posted, but it's very much about bullying in general, and yes, online bullying.
When I was six years old, I was targeted by a bully. He would continue to bully me for the next three years, stopping only when my older brother beat the hell out of him, and our parents got involved. Shortly after, he was transferred to another school. Though his mother still lived in the neighborhood and he was often over for visits, I didn't see him again for another two years, when we were assigned to the same middle school. He targeted me again.
Let's call him Richard.
Like many bullies, Richard had a fair number of problems himself. He was poor and neither of his parents were around much when we were growing up. His parents had never married, and he shuttled between them on an irregular schedule. Though he was smart, (and he was smart, he tested as gifted, and in my personal experience, he was damn cunning), he didn't get good grades. He was a good looking boy who grew into a good looking man, but he was never charismatic, and he never seemed to have any close friendships. He fell in with a bad crowd when he was young, and when I was starting my first year in high school, he was starting his first year in juvenile detention.
Richard liked to scare people, and he liked to hurt people. He was creative and comprehensive in his efforts. He didn't limit himself to verbal taunts, or physical assaults. If, for whatever reason, you made it onto his internal list of people in need of breaking, he would wage all out psychological warfare on you. I was not the only person he went after. I didn't even suffer the worst. But I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experiences, so that you'll understand that I don't take bullying lightly.
Bullying is commonplace. We are all bullies, victims of bullies, or people who have stood by and watched someone be bullied. Some of us are all three. Because it is so commonplace, so much the fabric of our everyday existence, it's easy to dismiss. There are bullies in every age group, every walk of life, every demographic. When you are in a nursing home, pumped up on who knows what concoction of drugs (and hopefully being looked after), there will still be bullies. And there will still be people who advise the victims of bullies to just. Get. Over. It.
With ordinary schoolyard bullies, I knew to fight back or run, and I used both options liberally. I got into scraps with guys and girls, and I spent time in makeshift, neighborhood foxholes when fighting back didn't make any kind of sense. With Richard though, who was always bigger, stronger and harder, fighting back wasn't an option. Richard scared me. That kind of lizard brain terror that throws executive function down on the ground and steps on it. Sometimes the lizard brain just knows best though, and in this case it did - I was right to be scared. With Richard, I had to run, deflect, or find help.
I had to be smart about it. Help wasn't always forthcoming, and wasn't always entirely helpful.
It's a funny thing, childhood bullying. Adult responses are so often ineffectual or uselessly over the top. They so rarely take into account the closed world that kids exist in, with the adult world and all its rules something distant from their own private spaces and experiences. No one wants to be a rat, not when you're already being pressured, and when adults come back with "Not my jurisdiction, Not my problem, Not an appropriate response, young lady, you need to learn to rise above", well, you learn not to put your faith in adults. Instead you play them. Rat your classmates out strategically. Plant that seed of doubt. Appeal for their protection when necessary, but always downplay the magnitude of the situation.
I did a lot of downplaying with Richard. To unsympathetic teachers, to myself, for years, always telling myself that I could handle it, I could handle it. We all knew what he was, I think, but it was hard for us to articulate it, beyond calling him various ableist names that don't bear repeating. At six, eight, ten, twelve, we already knew whose parents and older brothers and sisters were gang affiliated. Some of my classmates knew violence intimately, in their homes. We all knew not to take candy from strangers, and why, we knew the neighborhood drug dealers by name. But how to make clear to teachers, who only saw Richard's beauty, intelligence, and boundless potential, that there was something fundamentally wrong, deep inside of him? What do kids know, anyway?
One time, my friend Libby and I were walking home from school - one of those lazy, almost the end of the year, early summer afternoons, where the temperature is perfect and everything is in bloom - dragging our heels until we were about the last kids heading out. Our path home was a short walk through a quiet neighborhood, then across a major street. Then we were on home turf. We realized about halfway that Richard was following us.
We knew he was following us because we tried to shake him. It was all very cop show - we walked slow, walked fast, took a circuitous route home, because maybe he just happened to be going the same way, at the same time. He made it clear pretty quickly that he was following us, and not just going our way. First through verbal taunts, quickly escalating to throwing things, and finally to running after us, screaming threats.
We ran. Of course we ran - what else was there for us to do? We ran through this old, winding development, once getting trapped in a cul de sac and having to shortcut through someone's backyard. We ran across four lanes of traffic. We ran all the way to the lobby of Libby's building, which unfortunately also happened to be Richard's. Maybe it was blind instinct that drove us there, or the crucial ten feet we'd maintained between him and us. It was a bad decision, but we were panicked. We were also lucky, because Richard had forgotten his key that morning.
The lobby had two sets of glass doors. We made it through the first one, and I pulled it closed while Libby unlocked the second. We dashed through, and pulled the door closed behind us. Richard was stuck in the foyer, screaming at us. "Open this door." We didn't. "Open this door or you'll regret it." We didn't. "Open the fucking door." We still didn't. That's when he started to kick it. He stood there and kicked that fucking glass door until it cracked, cracked, gaped open enough for him to climb through.
We were standing there, thinking-- hell I don't remember what we were thinking, it's difficult to keep the details straight in these kinds of situations, and I've always hung onto the physical. I can tell you what Libby was wearing, and Richard, but I can't tell you what I was thinking. I can give you an approximation though. Something like, "Oh god, I can't run anymore. I can't keep on running."
But then an adult, the super, came out and everything stopped. Libby and I took off. So did Richard, but he was the one the super chose to chase after. I don't know what kind of trouble he got into, but I didn't see him for at least a week, so there must have been something. When they replaced the doors, they got the kind with a spidery net of wires embedded in the glass. They're harder to break, and easier to clean up when they do.
That's one incident out of many. But just as this incident is only one of many, and not the worst, Richard was only one bully out of many. I've been bullied by girls too, a year of verbal abuse designed to break me down, and for no other reason than their entertainment, and the inflation of their egos. Taunts about my hair, my weight, my clothing. Veiled and not so veiled threats, and physical abuse too. There was a time when I turned to bullying too - it felt so good to be the one dealing out the pain, instead of taking it. I've fought back, I've outsmarted, I've avoided and I've responded in kind, but none of these strategies ever stopped it. Ever stopped bullies from being bullies.
I've rarely been bullied since middle school, but I am still affected by what happened then, and am still affected by seeing bullies in action.
Bullying affects not just the bully and their victims, but everyone around them. It creates an unsafe, abusive atmosphere. When you throw a screaming temper tantrum, uttering threats and calling people out like it's the wild west, you are bullying and you are doing more than just making your targets feel small and unsafe. When you shout people down, rather than hear contrary opinions, you are bullying, and you are contributing to an atmosphere of violence. Bullies feed off of other bullies. Violence feeds off of violence. When you stand by and let someone be victimized because it's not such a big deal, it's just words, it's just the internet, you are helping to perpetuate a culture of abuse.
Bullying is a big fucking deal. It is abuse, it can involve physical and sexual assaults, and torture. No matter the scale of it, bullying is not and will never be okay.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/248825.html.