Fanbullying 2

[kateorman]

Continuing to explore how my experience of fanbullying is like, and is not like, my experience of bullying in school, and how it is like and not like cyberbullying and bullying in general. To follow up from last night's cheerful account of my experience of bullying at school, here's some more general stuff about school bullying

Comments

[antikythera]

This article is mindblowing in this context.

According to Dr Lieberman, his results should change how we think about emotional pain. "We tend to think physical harm is in a different category to emotional harm, but this shows we should be aware that emotional pain can cause the same kind of distress to someone as physical pain."

Professor Anthony Dickenson, of University College London, who specialises in the origins of pain, said: "This whole area is incredibly important because it's proving to the medical profession once and for all that emotional distress is a genuine thing, that people who are distressed and upset are not malingerers.

"It shows that the psychological aspects of pain are genuine and real and dealing with it is not a case of telling people to pull themselves together."

[kateorman]

Having experienced both the savage, unceasing pain of a cracked and rotten tooth, the stabbing, jarring, pain of a ripped ankle cartilage, and the whole-body-flinch pain of a nicked cornea, I can honestly say I'd rather any of those to either a bad bout of depression or a bad panic attack.

[maevele]

I gotta say, I don't think it's cyberbullying if they don't follow you to your journal or places you post. It's just snark.

[kateorman]

Have another look-see at the definitions of bullying above - most of the behaviour is direct, and online we'd call it harassment; but there's also bullying behaviour which is indirect, such as spreading rumours. Plus, some snark is just snark, folks blowing off steam; but sometimes it's a passive aggressive way of attacking someone without directly confronting them.

[jhg]

no support from the school or from teachers

Again, join the club. At my middle school (aged 8-13) my mum went to the headmaster to complain.

'We're paying all this money to send James here and he's miserable. What are you going to do about it?'

And the reply amounted to: boys will be boys, best to let them sort it out amongst themselves. Don't worry your pretty little head about it.

And that was that. Bastards.

I should add that several (though by no means all, or even most) of the teachers were also bullying and abusive.

Thank heavens it's all long in the past now.

[antikythera]

Implicit in that kind of response is the idea that "if your kid can't survive on his own, he wouldn't have deserved our help anyways".

[jhg]

Yes, I think that's true.