Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Problem with Bullying

Like countless others I was a victim of bullying throughout most of my formative years.  Like many others I didn’t quite know why.  Like many others I often found myself asking, among other things, if my tormentors were right in their assertions.  They were not right.  It took a long time to figure that out.  It took a long time to figure out that certain things marked me as a target and that I was viewed by other kids as prey.  I hesitate to say that bullying is an intrinsic part of the human condition but it may very well be.  It tends to coincide with jockeying for popularity and merit.  It tends to teach aggression and the power of persuasion.  It tends to instruct how you can influence others and manage social spheres.

I was bullied because of things like my learning disabilities and my attention deficit disorder.  I was also bullied because of my reactions to said bullying and my posture.  My reactions were exactly what my tormentors wanted.  Usually shrinking away from the confrontation, my face contorted in a mesh of defeat, sorrow and confusion.  Other times I was loud and upset, shrieking out at their viciousness.  Those times it seemed were the only ones the teacher would take notice.  Because I caused the disruption I was in trouble.  They would twist their faces in horrible smiles happy that not only had they hurt me but I got in trouble for it.  Had I been older when this started happening and more experienced I would have known how to handle it.  There was also the problem with my posture.  It was slightly slumped.  It showed no confidence in my demeanor.  Nothing about my body portrayed don’t mess with me.  Again things I wish I knew.

But something happened around seventh grade that helped.  A girl was being uncharacteristically mean to me.  She never spoke a word to me before and had never displayed any emotion in my direction, either good or ill.  Al of a sudden in Spanish class she started making fun of me.  Before I noticed what I was doing I turned to her and simply devastated what she was saying with humor.  She was completely off guard, stunned to silence.  I turned away hiding a smirk and ignored here for the rest of class.  She was silent and her clique was silent as well.  I had found my savior.  Quips.  It was still a bit of a struggle for the rest of my school day but by the time senior year of high school rolled around I wasn’t a scared little kid anymore.  I had faced my bullies and I made it out with my dignity intact.  Sadly it isn’t that easy for so many.  Sadly what happened to me is not uncommon and worse still is comparably light.

I think part of bullying mentality is to sever empathy.  Bullying causes crying, distress, depression, and, worst of all, suicide.  The perpetrators see either no connection with the harm they are doing or devalue certain people’s emotion.  That or they perversely enjoy the pain they cause knowing the emotional toll they make.  It all depends on the bully’s emotional maturity.

But there is another big problem with bullying that exists outside the dynamic between bully and those bullied.  It’s the rest of the people surrounding it.  Those that do nothing about it, those that encourage the bullying and those who actually punish the victims (especially if they speak out).

The term has come to be called victim-blaming.  That’s where people who have suffered are further expelled from social interactions and made to suffer more because they brought uncomfortable accusations to light.

The story (linked below) is an example of how a family who was wronged by one person is shut out by the community, ostracized and demonized for besmirching the name of a popular person.  Being attacked isn’t enough harm but having to be harassed, and not simply you but your whole family, just because you seek justice afterwards.  Worse still the case was dropped.  The cliff notes version is a 13 year old girl, coerced (but not forced) into drinking was raped by a 17 year old boy at a party.  Then she was left outside in 30 degree weather just outside her house overnight.  There was good chance that this second part could have killed her.  The family was then made fun of, taunted, the mother lost her job and the charges against the boy (and the others involved) were dropped.  This was most likely due to the boy’s family having deep connections to the community.  What strikes me is the girl who was assaulted and left for dead is blamed.  The community reacted violently to the idea of prosecuting the young man.


Sadly this is only one of several instances.  There is alos the case of bullying continuing on after the teen committed suicide.


But it is not simply the community who is at fault for this continued cycle of victimization it is the authorities themselves.  Police, it seems, treat sexual assault victims with no tact and nothing but suspicion.  Turning an already harrowing experience into something much worse.  And we wonder why there are so many young suicides and unreported sexual assaults.  Society it seems delights in not only making it difficult to move on from the trauma but to forcibly remind the young victims of what happened daily.  But not simply remind to smear their faces in it smugly and blame them for what befell them.


Why is this happening now more than ever?  I’m not sure it is happening more, I simply don’t have the stats, but I do know that with social media we can distance ourselves from the reaction and the fallout.  Regardless of your capability for empathy you can’t see someone crying on the other side of Facebook.  The anonymity takes out the emotional response.  Some kids need to see what harm they cause the torment they create.  Some of them realize it’s wrong to bully by seeing that and making that emotional connection.  Some simply delight in the pain in some perverse manner.  But the internet takes away that reaction and only leaves the sense of doing something funny.  I think about it thusly.  Kids aren’t emotional intelligent enough to understand their actions oftentimes.  That’s part of the reason the knock out game exists.  They don’t think to the part of sucker punching someone to knock them out might have deadly consequences – like passing out while upright and hitting their head causing brain trauma resulting in death.  To them it’s simply something that is fun and they didn’t mean anything by it.  They have already run away by the time the victim falls or recovers.  Our dismay media conglomerates have done nothing but advertise and sensationalize this trend making it spread all the much faster to impressionable kids.  But the problem often is bad kids are caused by bad parents.  You only need to pass one test to become a parent, or fail it depending on your outlook.
But social media bullying isn’t relegated to kids only.  Wither twitter and Facebook and all these venues popular posters are able to influence mass swathes of people.  In this case a man with a popular twitter decide to take to task a rude airplane passenger.  I in no way disagree that the lady was rude, selfish jerk but was this the best method in which to deliver a lesson.  In that I heartily disagree.  He stole her anonymity here and posted it all over the internet.  He posted her name, her picture, as well as her words but all from his point of view.  He was judge, jury and executioner.  Sadly news sources seemed to delight and cheer him on.  I was rather disgusted.


But, fortunately, as I have found for every rotten awful person there tends to be someone wonderful who stands up and fights for others.  Sadly they are often beaten savagely as in this man’s case.  A hero this man was brutalized for standing up for a bullied teen.  Even more importantly he said he made the right choice and would do so again.


I don’t tend to think of society as broken I simply see it teetering on edge and it needs more positive examples like the man above to counteract all the atrocities committed by the bullies, those who sweep the uncomfortable stories under the rug and those who lash out at having their perfect world disrupted.  I can hope bullying will get better.  But what I will do is stand up to those who I see doing it.  Step in when I see a fight happening.  Be like that man and help my community.  That is what I can and will do.  I hope others will feel and do the same.


Ben