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Study Shows Standing Up To Bullies Is Good For You
It will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever talked to my grandpa, but a recent study has shown that standing up to a bully is good for you. Although being bullied can be stressful and lead to depression, children who returned hostility were found more likely to develop healthy social and emotional skills. From the article: "In a study of American children aged 11 and 12, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, compared those who stood up to aggressors with those who did not. Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found. Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers. Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found."
until it isn't.
That only those of good mental and emotional health have the strength to stand up to bullies?
Emotions! In your brain!
...for those whose definition of "good for you" is that it causes you to be more popular.
By that definition, the world's best hamburger is made at McDonald's.
The problem is schools try their hardest to reduce attacks against bullies. For some reason the natural process of growing up has been demonized. Guess what? Kids fight. Guess what? They go home with a bloody nose and are made all the stronger because of it. These studies only confirm what everyone already knows that the natural process of growing up is just that: natural and beneficial.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
When you've got it, everyone knows it; you're better at everything because you believe in yourself.
When you don't, you're living in your own shadow.
I was bullied for a long time. I was raised Catholic and I thought that fighting back would be immoral. Then one day my dad told me "You know, son, sometimes you just have to smack 'em." It was like I had been wearing a blindfold. I went to school the next day, waited for that prick to mess with me, and I knocked the crap out of him. He was on the ground for a few minutes. No teachers saw it, and it was a shot to the solar plexus, so it left no marks. I haven't been bullied since. It taught me to not let people push me around, and that's a valuable lesson to learn.
Make some redneck kill bully's parents, chop them in a chili and make him eat it... Sound good?
Lots of statistics have correlation between them, but the extrapolated cause-effect situation may or may not be there. I suspect this is another such case.
If you don't stand up to a bully, you'll only look like an attractive target to other bullies, and other non-bullies who might feel inclined to bully you because they know you won't respond.
There's not just physical bullying either. Look at just about any teenage girl today. They're the most vile, fire-breathing, hostile creatures that walk the face of the Earth today, and they won't think twice about emotionally bullying a peer to the point of suicide.
Failing to stand up just means you get bullied more, with sometimes fatal results.
But then there would be no slashdot commenters..
How about killing the bullies? Before they have a chance to reproduce, of course. Clean up the gene pool! No bullies allowed!
-kgj
good luck trying to stand up to me, nitwits.
Sure, until the bully shivs you in the neck. You're dying words with be "...it was good for me...".
I prefer to take the same route and as beta male dogs; I pee on myself to show submission.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Once again we mix correlation with causuation. It's not like if a timid person will stand up a bully and become socially sucessfull. Non timid and socially healthy people usually stands up. The arrows that represents cause is pointing to the wrong direction
-- dnl
Well the subject makes it clear what I was told....
However it was until I decided to smash one guys head with a huge book, and kick another where it hurt while wearing steel toe caps that I got the reputation for being a "bit crazy and mad" that they stopped.
Yes, hit them back. It works and they don't expect it. Just make sure your ready and know how to defend yourself else you'll end up getting hurt even more.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Study fails the acid test. What's an Adult bully? A mugger/robber/assailant. Is standing up to robbers/assailants/masked figures making demands or taunting @, good for you? The answer should be sometimes. Sometimes it is essential, sometimes it is suicidal. Sometimes it is just smart, that would be when the bully is bluffing, and you are the one with the gun.
Back to children... Its good for you, only if the bully's response to you standing up is something other than engaging you in a fight you can't win, knocking you down on your feet, beating you to a pulp, until ribs are broken, give you black eyes, knock out all your teeth, and stomp groin until it is guaranteed child will not have children later in life.
Maybe study should show standing up to bullies can sometimes be good for them, as long as child knows when to surrender, or makes sure they are actually physically capable of mounting a reasonable defense / in the superior position to physically resist bully / make it not fun for bully to mess with them.
The problem with that, as I'm sure many others here can attest to, is were one to stand up to bullies, many schools somehow managed to punish the bullied student worse than the bully, who often gets off scot free, no matter what.
I hope things are somewhat better now, with all the anti-bullying programs and stuff, than when I went to school in the '90s and early 2000s.
It is somewhat of a consolation in a perverse way to find out what most former bullies do now that we're all adults. A great many can hardly hold down a minimum wage job, and blow all their money on alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. In theory, I wish them the best. But, yeah...
Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers. Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found
And no, I did not RTFA. I got as far as the picture of some movie characters and decided that TFA was crap. Turns out, I could have made that call if the summary had told me who published TFA.
Oh well. There's 30 seconds of my life that I'll never get back.
Some children that have no deficit of mental or emotional strength are taught by their parents that retaliation is wrong, that the meek are blessed, and that they should "turn the other cheek" as Jesus taught. This is reinforced by teachers who punish both students involved in a fight if either one defends himself against the other.
It is a testament to the children's stoicism that they can accomplish this. Unfortunately for them, it looks like doing so may negatively impact their mental and emotional development (yeah correlation is not causation and all that...that's why I said "MAY").
This happened to me. My parents were evangelical nuts. They set me up to go be a victim in public schools, which I was. I have no idea what psychological ramifications that may have for me today...but I DO know that when I started training in martial arts in high school, the bullying stopped, and I never had to hit anyone (which actually kind of disappointed me, because I had a lot of anger I wanted to unleash on the next unsuspecting bully).
Chicks dig scars. Probably triggers a paleolithic reaction that infers you'll protect the young-uhns from predators..
Looking up former high school bullies on www.classmates.com can also be a cathartic experience. It's amazing how those kids turned out as adults. The correlation, at least in my experience, is too good to be coincidental (or perhaps it's a self fulfilling prophecy). In either case it's rather karmic to see the behavioral traits that led to bullying in junior and senior high school also led to dead end jobs, too many children to support on their unskilled salary, and multiple marriages.
I suppose the flip side of this, though, is that they seem to raise more kids that may likely turn out to be bullies; assuming that's a cycle that repeats itself.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Pity those of us born in Christian households were taught the most moronic and opposite strategy for dealing ever, Jesus's moronic BS, and suffer to this day
Duh, it's called confidence, and confidence comes from knowledge, and knowledge comes from trying it in the first place (and succeeding). And confidence is probably the number one most admired trait in boys, and still up there with girls, though probably not number one.
We've become a nation raised solely by women - due to divorce, absent fathers (due to the divorce, working all the time, etc.). Schools and society have a decidedly pacifist stance. We no longer have good male role models.
Instilling confidence in your children is crucial. If you have children, you must allow them to wrestle around, "rough house," learn to fight and defend themselves.
On the contrary, most children would murder someone if they had the chance.
Why do you think child soldiers are so popular? Because you want a soldier who can barely lift a rifle? or because you want someone who murders without compassion or feeling?
Children are NOT nice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How many times must it be said? Correlation != Causation
Perhaps its because the healthier people who BY NATURE stand up to bullies, not that standing up to bullies makes you healthier.
While I am somewhere in between socially adept and not, I can safely say that I have had my run-ins with bullies. Some I stood up to and others I did not. On one occasion, I got the crap beat out of me. This particular bully later on causing severe permanent injury to another kid.
The point is, it's risky to say "this is more healthy" when it could potentially lead to severe injury or even death. These days, depending on where you live, bullies carry guns and other weapons, travel in gangs and don't take well to humiliation even if you win the first time around.
I always backed down / ran away from bullies as I thought that was the right thing to do. Got the crap beat out of me every day for 12 years because they knew I wouldn't hit back. Now that I have a 2yr old of my own, I'll be teaching him that if anyone punches him in the shoulder and laughs his response should be to punch them square in the face. I'll deal with the teachers when I get called in. If they can't control their class room my kid will defend himself.
I was just re-reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card the other day, and this post reminds me of the book.
There are several times in the story where the adults force Ender to stand up for himself so he won't be dependent on adults to solve all his problem. I agree that children who stand up for themselves get a better self image and are therefore more mature.
We would have known this a lot sooner, but previous experiments always ended with the test subjects getting their asses beat and unwilling to say more for fear of further reprisal.
In related research, researchers have found that 11- and 12-year olds who master calculus develop better math skills than those who do not.
I always felt that bullying was an iterated prisoner's dilemma situation. It's well-known that the optimum strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma is cooperate first, then tit-for-tat thereafter. In this context, "tit-for-tat" would mean fighting back.
All that running after standing up to the bully sure improved my cardiovascular system. Plus, I'm a really fast runner now.
Obviously those that chose to stand up for themselves in terms of being bullied at a young age, are different, than those that did not. This study is nonsense. There's a core difference in personalities between the two types, so it's natural for the results to be different years later in terms of social maturity. While our environment is a strong influence as far as our inner being is concerned, we are all born with a core set of personalities and social demeanor that only change moderately based on experience. All this tells is is that those that "had it in them" to stand up for themselves in their childhood, continue to "have it in them" later in life. Some people, regardless if they are harmed or not, do not have it in them to "return hostility" in childhood or adult life. All this proves is that the two personality types have continued down the road of maturity with their core emotions/personalities intact, as expected.
"True refinement seeks simplicity."
Bullies grow up. They become managers. Yet, they are still bullies. Perhaps the physical abuse is gone, but there is plenty of workplace bullying. Everything from rudness, providing misdirection and denying it, to simply stealing a whiteboard and markers. How do you find the delicate balance between standing up to the bullying and keeping the job. Let's skip the "get another job" answer. There may be other reasons to stay on with the current employer.
I wasn't bullied much during school, but when I was, I returned fire 10-fold.
I was smart enough to know my physical limits, run, and fight another day.
During one bullying episode I wasn't able to win, setting the kid's backpack on fire at a bus stop got his attention. I told him next time it would be him. That crap stopped right away.
Another episode warranted stealing a bully's bike and throwing it off of a bridge onto a 6 lane highway at night.
Finally, I helped a friend return the favor to a bully by smashing his car windows, slashing his tires, and then paying a tow truck to tow his vehicle to a garage REALLY far away.
Since bullies typically don't pick a fair fight, they don't deserve a fair fight.
Isn't slashdot where all the bullied nerds hang out? Especially the ones who never stood up for themselves? Because if they stood up for themselves they would not be nerds. In spite of the movies (revenge of the nerds). I mean, come on. Slashdotters can't even stand up to their moms. If they did (stand up), they would hit their heads on ceiling pipes in their mom's basement.
Sometimes, if you stand up to a bully, you discover they are scaredicats.
wake up and hold your nose
I was a smallish kid for 9th grade (I skipped a grade so everyone else was 1-2 years older). I had to put up with the usual upper-class bullying (dorks out for laughs instead of psychotic), but nothing too serious.
Then the new kid showed up. I was 5'6" at the time, he was 6'5". And he zeroed in on me like a laser. I put up with it for a few months. Then the day came when we were out playing soccer at PE and he "missed" the ball whenever I had it and would kick me in the leg. The next day I could barely stand, and probably had a fracture of some kind. Standing felt like someone stabbing me with a knife.
I talked to my principal about it. I should mention that I went to a small Christian private school. The principal listened to my story, and then told me the next time it happened, beat the hell out of the kid and the principal wouldn't do anything (God bless you Roger).
Sure enough, within 2 days the psycho caught me in the hall and started trying to choke me. I kicked him in the family jewels as hard as I could, he fell over flat. I proceeded to spend the next two minutes kicking him in the family jewels, the chest, the head, everywhere i could swing a foot or arm. This ended only when the girls in the next classroom came rushing out to ask why I was beating up on Goliath, and they ended up pulling me off of him.
The kid didn't come back to school for a few days, and ended up transferring out a few weeks later. No one else ever messed with me again.
I don't like fighting, and greatly prefer to reason with people. But some people are psychotic sociopaths. The only suffering they can understand is their own. I'm always happy to give bullies a lesson using their own language.
What I remember (growing up in the 80's) is very much in line with what was said here. Defending yourself against a bully results in getting the same punishment as a bully.
In fact, I remember getting 5 days in-school-suspension for not doing much more than getting punched by a bully. He was in my face chest bumping me trying to provoke a fight. I raised my arm as a bar between us to try to get him out of my face. There was no shove, nothing but what would be a very gentle push to try to preserve my personal space. This was construed by faculty as assaulting him first.
Most bullies are manipulators, and they know how the system works. They will attempt to provoke you in a way that can make their assault seem like they are the ones defending themselves.
When growing up (as a slightly awkward, brainy, geeky kid), I found the only way to deal with bullies at a school was never to fight them, but to never back down. Get back up in their face, show them that you aren't afraid of them and aren't afraid to fight, but that you aren't stupid enough to play their game and throw the first punch and let them work the system to get you in more hot water than themselves.
Physical health, beefy musculature, and stature also help...
It could also be that people who are bullied and don't stand up (because they are unable_ become harmed by the repeated experience.
We're looking for juicy steak, and we will select the best, but only after all the beef has passed through this meat grinder. If it's no good for making hamburger then how could it possibly make a good steak?
...
I think the most important experience a child gets out of this is that they learn to solve their problems themselves, without adult help. If a child grows up relying on an adult to solve their problems for them, they will rely on external assistance when they have problems in their adult life. If the child steps up and resists the bully themselves, they will learn to rely in themselves in their adult life.
The way the child deals with the bully doesn't necessarily need to be violent. More often than not, bullies pick on those who provide the least resistance and are the easiest targets. If their victim starts resisting, they become too much trouble to bother with and the bully will abandon them as a potential target.
There are limits, of course. If a bully is too dangerous or resistance may end up with the child getting hurt badly (as opposed to just a mild beating), then an adult should be brought in to assist. But for the most part the child will be able to handle it themselves.
..that they are "standing up to aggression".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
in my highschool, bullies had knives or pistols. if they didnt have those, they had friends who did not hesistate to jump in afterwards. you should run away, unless you think you can survive the immediate conflict or - more importantly - its escalation later. thats just frikkin reality. ~~~ now, at work: i DO NOT suffer bullies gladly. i dont care if they are on the executive team or not. they get what they get. if im fired, or let go - im okay with that. its never happened so far...
In 1991, my family moved from New Jersey to Florida, where I started the sixth grade at a middle school in what appeared to be another planet. Strikes against me:
- Brand new student to the district
- From New Jersey
- Glasses
- Computer geek
- In the band
- White, attending a 70+% black middle school.
I had to deal with a large amount of shit for obvious reasons. Since physically defending myself would have gotten _me_ suspended, arrested, or even hospitalized, I had two very simple measures:
- Formally complain about harassment or assault. After getting suspended, the harassment/assault would end quickly.
- "Conflict mediation" - any student could have any other student brought into the guidance counselor for a confidential student-student-counselor conference. I learned that once you take someone to Conflict Mediation, they'll stay the hell away from you at all costs.
- Bullying disappeared largely when I was in high school; it turned into a bunch of annoying fucks using the term "weirdo" or "fag" to refer to anyone not exactly like them. I transferred out of a 9th-grade electronics class after about one week because of these charming students. Not having a car in high school didn't exactly help my social standing, but I got on the school bus at a covered bus shelter while my peers walked 1/4 mile through the rain to student parking.
(A quick online check with the Florida Department of Corrections, and most of these former students currently are--or have been--in prison or on parole.)
Later on in life, I became the sysadmin for the high school I had attended just six years earlier. The school district and school's administration had decided, at some point between 1998 and 2004, to remove all the hall bathroom doors, probably much to the delight of geeks. And to the disdain of bullies, druggies, smokers, etc.
Also, as faculty, I learned where a lot of the bullies go come high school: they stop attending. There were several "fifth year freshmen" who were on the rolls, were automatically assigned classes due to not turning in course request forms, and have never set foot on campus. Or they show up for federal free breakfast and lunch--and to hang with their friends and bother everyone else--when they weren't getting rushed off campus by administration, faculty, or staff.
When I was in fifth grade, a pair of good-for-nothing brothers around the corner thought they owned the neighborhood. Until one day, they stopped messing with my sister and I.
Years and years later, my parents told me what happened: they told them that any trespassing, harassment, or assault would be met with a police report.
Getting suspended is nothing--heck, they probably like it, and their parents don't really care. But when mom and dad have to pick up their precious little bully from the police station because one of his victims pressed charges, they start to care.
My advice to parents out there? If your child is a victim of bullying at school, get the police involved, and forward a copy of the police report to the school's administration. Watch gears start turning. Where I live, middle and high schools have on-site deputies who should be happy to help with something like this.
If it's off-school bullying, i.e., in the neighborhood, give the police report to the parents.
This posting *screams* JonKatz
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34)
Humans do not "admire" those who "who stand up to injustice".
We just inherently despise a victim, even if we are that victim. Most people are ignorant, weak, irrational, and fearful. They try to placate their insecurities and fears by "proving" to themselves that they are better than someone else. For the healthy and competitive, this is generally sports. For the the unhealthy and smart, this is generally educational pursuits or business. There are millions of variations of the same theme.
I'm ok, because I'm better off than you in this way.
"Standing up" to a bully isn't "good for you". Ridiculous.
So let's all blame the victim's a bit more, for being so victimizable, and tell them that they'll feel better if they "stand up" to those who are so small that they have to bully those weaker than themselves.
Humans. Such ignorant, weak, irrational, fearful and pathetic organisms.
Insulting you all, I now feel so much better about myself. ahhhhhhhhhh! refreshing.
Another blanket generalisation based on spurious research. After the age of about fifteen the world's a lot darker and less simplistic than when you're eight. The bullies I knew were psychopaths. One, at the end of his teen years, ended up beating up an 80-year-old, hospitalising him then robbing his flat after taking his key. Another one who made my life miserable locked a teacher out of his own class during a lesson and then taunted the guy through the glass of the window. If the adults in charge could not control them, then I'm not sure what a scrawny geek like myself was supposed to do, despite studying martial arts for three years. At no point did I fight back against these guys, despite being spat at, abused and punched for - quite literally - years. I don't believe it would have worked particularly well when the guys were certifiably crazy, dangerously violent and went on to enjoy prison sentences. I would probably have been hospitalised after the first attempt, and then a second time (with his gang helping) after the guy was expelled for GBH and blamed me for his 'misfortune'. Sociopaths aren't really all that clear on the whole cause-effect thing. There were plenty of other mean kids who seemed to make up a sizeable chunk of pubescent youth. These 'bullies' were never really a problem. Nor were any kids an issue at the ages when 'fighting back' actually has some effect. To say 'bullying is natural - watch puppies', or that 'being bullied is just part of growing up' is ridiculous. Not all kids are bullied: only those who stand out. To suggest that reacting violently to being bullied is a necessary part of the maturing process presumably means that all the beautiful kids who never suffered from bullying are somehow under-developed. Back to causality: I loathe conflict to this day, and have still have difficulty dealing with it. I don't think beating up a bully or two would have helped here, and most importantly - nor is violence in my nature. Despite not being violent myself - and suffering from mild Asperger's - I went on to run a successful company and managed to retire at 38 without ever having to beat someone up just because we have an atavistic fixation with physical force. Those who avoid physical confrontation are not 'weak', 'losers' or 'more likely to do well' - whatever that's supposed to mean. Let's try and let go of the neanderthal trappings and reinforce acting like a civilised, technologically advanced species rather than wishing we could all be Christian Slater in 'Heathers'.
And yet we have a legal system that at least makes a good-faith effort to determine the truth and impose penalties appropriately. We have a legal principle that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to unjustly punish an innocent man. But school authorities routinely punish the victim because "It's too HAAAAARD" to do the right thing.
Sure, it is not always possible to determine the truth, and mistakes will be made. But that is very different from punishing the innocent as a matter of policy. The fundamental assumption behind "zero tolerance" policies is "nobody is innocent" -- a point of view that the entire history of our entire legal system repudiates, and whose chief advocates in the present day are school administrators and terrorists
Beware false dichotomies, too.
It seems likely to me that both of these things are involved in substantial degrees. Self-confidence promotes standing up for one's self, and standing up for one's self promotes self-confidence.
Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature
Nothing says mature like beating the crap out of someone
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Standing up for yourself lets you know that you have your own power and authority. If someone takes advantage of you, and you let them, you will begin to feel that they are justified in their actions and internalize their treatment. If you stand up for yourself, even if it means you get the crap beaten out of you, you take the important step of rejecting that view of yourself.
Taking it further, when people believe that they need someone else to defend them it also reinforces an inappropriate view of helplessness. Sure, it's great if someone will step in and help you. But in the real world, people are often too busy or to concerned with their own business to step in and stand up for someone who's oppressed. That's why I always get upset when teachers get angry at students for standing up for themselves, or advise them not to. If you don't learn to do it from a young age, what hope is there for you later on when there is not teacher to "protect" you?
Then there's the laughable idea that the government can protect you from exploitation by you employer, or by other criminal elements more traditionally accepted as such (white collar criminals, murders, rapists, extortionists, polluters, regular old thieves, etc...), or from your abusive spouse. People always criticize libertarians (I am not a libertarian) for their view that you can take care of your self. While they are wrong about that, and you do need other people for sure, there will still be times when you will be all alone left to fend for yourself. If you find yourself in that situation (and you surely will) and you don't know how to stand up for yourself in the face of certain destruction, there is no hope for you.
This article is good. Hopefully now people will stop saying that we shouldn't stand up for ourselves.
My Dad tells me that when he was in school he had gotten into a fight. A teacher stopped the fight and took him and the other guy to the gym and put boxing gloves on them. They were then allowed to duke it out with supervision. After It was finished, they were good friends. The problem was solved.
Now, in more "enlightened" times, we would never do this. Instead, we make sure the kids can't resolve conflicts until one day someone flips out and does the murdering. We even go on to suggest how this should happen by having mock attack "lock downs".
I'm glad someone is starting to see reason.
...recently had this discussion with a friend, except more about teacher bullies and less about children bullies. I am unhappy with myself to this day over how I didn't have the guts to stand up to all the humiliation, emotional abuse, and overall nonsense (like requiring us to say the pledge of alliegance) in high school. All the little things, like teachers wasting time with education by sending students to the dean for saying words that they have us read in assigned books. How government class was skewed greatly not just for pro-America crap but was biased for the democratic and republican parties (that is, assignments regarding political parties did not allow us to focus on any of the third parties).
As for student bullies, school administrations are often composed of people so stupid that the military wouldn't ever take them, yet they have every bit of the authoritarian mindset typical of many military personnel. They're the kind of people with strong political opinions that only shout out slogans and respond to having their views challenged with these weak slogans (like how creationists will respond to anything with, "it's only a theory" without them understanding at all what a theory is). In my view, putting these adults in charge of the children's well-being and punishment is itself child abuse.
Looking at the matter with an oversimplistic view is potentially harmful.
But, as many folk aren't interested in thinking harder, I'll endorse the basic idea that standing up for yourself helps. Note that bullying is a dynamic that requires victims to complete it. It should probably be referred to as the Bully/Victim Dynamic to help people remember this fact. If you don't stand up for yourself, bullies will target you.
If you look into what makes bullies feel like they have to dominate others, you will gain a much deeper understanding of bullying.
Again, I highly recommend this article for anyone interested in understanding bullying better.
Now, the source quoted in this /. article is appallingly fourth-hand and diluted. Here are some other sources:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article7133986.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18mind.html?pagewanted=print
And here's an abstract for the actual study (which took a while to track down): Mutual antipathies during early adolescence: More than just rejection
In relation to having "healthy social and emotional skills", this study from a while back came to mind.
In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
This may go some way to explaining why nobody from the conservative ranks in the US has stood up to their own bullies, going so far as to apologize to them when they say something out of line.
It also explains why the bullies themselves also seem easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable too.
I know that this will either be marked as Insightful or Troll-bait. I also know that will be because of someone's opinion. But facts are cold, hard things.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
From reading the responses, it looks like most people encountered "physical bullies." The big brutes who would push you down to steal your lunch money or beat you up behind the school if you didn't do as they said.
I had psychological bullies. They never threatened to beat me up. Though non-violent, I was a big guy and they rightly figured out that I would easily beat them up if I decided to fight back. Instead, they would follow me around making fun of me, blocking my entrance to class, etc. All of these actions didn't threaten me with physical harm, but it was relentless torment. Day in and day out. If I tried to avoid them, they'd follow me and tease me more. It wasn't a question of *if* they would torment me on a given day but *how much* would they torment me.
Needless to say, it took it's toll. If I fought back, well they never laid a hand on me so I'd be the bad guy and would have been punished as such. (Or at least, that's what I was afraid of at the time.) I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to about it so I bottled my feelings up and came close to being extremely violent over it.
My salvation came when I opened up to a friend of mine who happened to be on speaking terms with the bullies. They thought of their activities as "just harmless fun" and didn't think it was anything that was really hurting me. They stopped, but it took me years to recover.
Countering a physical bully is one thing: You fight back and suddenly you aren't this easy target anymore. Countering a psychological bully is another matter entirely. Fighting just makes you seem like the aggressor since the school has no proof of the bullying happening (or chooses to turn a blind eye until it gets violent).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Most bullies will definitely step off once you show them you fight back.
Unless they are behind a keyboard here on /. calling someone a fanboy, idiot, loser, clueless or some other level of hate for using, buying, or merely commenting positively about some thing or other.
If little Victor Victim was allowed to scrap it up in the 2nd grade with Bobby Bully, while they are equally matched, then maybe Victor won't try to take Bobby out with an AK47 in the 9th grade? Perhaps both would learn the lesson back when they are 7?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I read bullets instead of bullies.. I just thought wtf. "Study Shows Standing Up To Bullets Is Good For You"
However you can if somebody starts a fight with you
END IT RIGHT THERE
Im sure that somewhere in the Art Of War there is a few notes on 1 on 1 combat
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Sadly our schools punish those who are attacked or baited with fighting words if they fight back. We need to encourage our kids to break a nose or knock out a tooth if they are hounded or pushed around and we need to insist that our schools back up those that have been wronged.
Wait, wait wait. Since when are the social criteria for maturity "judged more socially competent by their teachers" and "more popular and more admired by teachers and peers"?
I stood up against a bullies twice. The first I remember, I was 11. Another when I was 13. Both times, I was hit and lost the fight. But nonetheless, it did improve my self esteem and the way others looked at me. The bully in both times stopped being so bold about bullying others.
why there are bullies in school, who are let to bully in the first place ? do we just let anyone beat up anyone that freely in adult life ? why arent there laws to prevent the same thing in the schoolyard ? because they are children, their actions do not have consequences ?
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Compare with Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, in a district with a zero-tolerance policy for violence, which has had success telling kids and their parents that returning physical violence is wrong.
Phoebe Prince.
Ever notice how many mainstream movies and TV shows condone bullying and violence against outsiders as a rite of passage?
The ideology of this study is nothing new. It's the reason why bullying is socially accepted to a certain extent. Educators hope it makes kids fit for capitalist society, a society ruled by bullies. What it really does for most kids is to drive them into life-long depression, or into becoming bullies themselves.
I have a better surviving technique: Escapism. Learn to give a shit about your social standing or about being perceived as healthy, mature or socially competent (notice the root: it's about competing). Realize that the desire to be popular is not worth giving up any part of what you feel and what you are. Worked for me.
If you have the means then you have a duty to f*ck the bully up. There is not much more that needs to be said on this subject.
zero tolerance. possibly expelled for fighting; just having a 1 way that doesn't last that long doesn't go that far but a fight where the victim keeps it going by fighting back? Or attacks or pre-empts the bully? that make the bully the victim.
Plus you have USA schools that not only have brain dead zero tolerance but also policies and laws that cause the admin to turn the kids over to the cops and even get the kids to talk and then turn that over to the cops without a lawyer or any rights! Its worse than adults! a kid's testimony to the teacher can be used against them and is--- gone is common sense and reason of the previous generation.
I would rather not... ...have a bully who has "channeled his aggression into martial arts", and ended up still a bully.
-- Terry
What utter bollocks.
Non-violent means work better then violent means. The British didn't let Gandhi do his thing, they couldn't stop Gandhi without turning him into a martyr. Imprison him and protests will continue, he will gain more supporters. Kill him and he becomes a martyr, he will gain a lot more supporters.
Gandhi succeeded because he had the support of the people, not because of the British. All successful revolutions occur because the people supported it.
The Government of India turned out for the better, it took them half the time of China to reach the same (and in many ways superior) industrial capabilities. Compare this to violent revolutions that provided us with governments like, China, Soviet Russia, Iran, Burma, Taliban, most of whom are totalitarian and dirt poor.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well, I was in 12 different schools (my parents travelled a *lot*, great fun) and it was the same every time:
a) Get introduced to the class by the teacher.
b) Have the class bully with his 2-3 friends threaten you.
c) Better obey him.
Except that c) never worked for me. Thus I found that this class-bully is typically chicken if he's alone, and will only act like sh*t if he's with his friends.
Thus walk up to him and hit him hard. If you're quick enough, you can beat him up quite a bit before his friends can stop you.
Then you get beaten up, of course.
But the next day, you walk up to him and do it again. After a very short time, they will actually start to leave you alone, and you can spend the rest of your time in school in peace and quiet, meeting the other people, enjoying yourself.
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I particularly laughed at how he said the jews should protest Nazi policies by killing their selves.
Of'course, Gandhi was a failed Brittish-trained lawyer of some kind so he is looking at things in an unrealistic light of action where your life is expendable but the nobles and royalty should continue being perfect armchair examples of doing nothing but collect Titles in re-enactments that didn't earn them any real-world experience.
I hear Gandhi, to convince people to do as he says, threatened starving Hindus and starving Muslims that he would starve himself to death if they didn't get along. Imagine that, if a child in a highchair threatened to not eat dinner... weabooooo.
You just advocated a nude shower scene, where you get smacked to the ground like a slippery bar of soap, and as you lock eye--go higher idiot--ss to his baby brown-eyes you square your jaw and rise up to shoulder length where you extend yuor arm in a deceitful truce of compassion...
Are you done with wiping that lather off the back of your hand onto my face, love your neighbor as yourself? To which you later write that you Bro-Fist with your new little buddy like The Skipper and Gilligan. Son, I am disappoint...
I think you are leaving something out of what you wrote, that perhaps you are the bully in a failed relationship that somehow convinced someone stronger than you that you are to be feared moarrrr.
Columbine was a Psy-OP.
COPS were at Columbina for 3 hours while allegedly-only those two bastards shot-up the place. For 3 hours, those COPS stayed at their cars. When interviewed by angry parents why they did nothing for 3 hours, COPS said they only follow orders from their Supervisors and they aren't liable to protect anyone. That was their legal assertion that got those damn COPS off the hook.
The other matter was that there were over 100 isolated bombs moved onto that Highschool, 30 of which weighed so much they needed a dolly to move them. Fellow students also reported seeing people that day that had no affiliation by age or Classroom, all dressed like Secret Service agents in black suits just walking around.
Don't even mention Columbine because it was a Psy-OP to create more policing and legislate changes to destroy America. Of'course, you never read about the students forced to attend because of the hostile environment towards unfiltered sciences and actual positive-law religion; forced to associate because lawyers treat them as vulnerable meat out of reach of legislated rights.
It will all lead to more policing, because that's the only jobs a bully can get -- police the people he picked-on durring mother-fucking High Schroool. Just remember that it's still the bullies controlling the fruits of research and technology developed by nerds they dominate politically and economically as they did to World Trade Towers.
I should sue slashdot for making me angry !
I have always found that the best way to deter a bully was to hit back just a tiny bit harder. It never sent a message to other bullies, but there was never teacher interference and the bully in question always seemed to pull back after one or two attempts. The best part was that it never came to punching (things rarely start with that).
The reason, I think, is that it sends a very clear message that you don't want to fight (by strictly controlling the amount of damage), but if you must, you will win (since you hit a little harder). Of course, awareness and being able to more or less stand your ground when a bully tries to check you out of a line helps a lot too (makes you appear invulnerable).
I never got into a fight, never got beat up, never saw the inside of a trashcan or a toilet (saw someone else who did, despite him attempting to stand up to the bullies at times), and I never got a black eye or a broken nose. I would have appeared to be a prime target for bullying, but the bullies knew better.
Always something isnt it, should turn the other cheek, then should stand up for yourself, then you are equally to blame, then the bullies are
to be held accountable for the outcome of that situation, however we cant because they are products of their parents so the parents.....etc.
It will never cease to amaze me how much different information sounds when coming from multiple sources, can we
at least agree on one source, so as to then establish that as proper etiquette in schools today?
You have religion, which is now a factor...you have race which will always be present, you have language barriers, you have mentally ...
face it, you can't bunch this into one variable....you have factors, and other elements that affect the situation. Stand up to your bully
and cause waves, then you will get eyed as a trouble maker if you stand up too often for yourself, or a whiner that things are not
ok, and you want to change them.....
Counselor>the other kids have no problems, why do you have all the problems, you might be bringing it upon yourself
Student>i read that if you stand up for yourself, you are doing something better for yourself
Counselor>you can't believe everything you read...
It was brutally driven home to me that the worst thing I could do was "stand up" to bullies. As I recall from elementary school, bullies came in packs. Their modus operandi was that one or two of them would shove me and kick me a bit. If I resisted in any way, they'd call out, and four or five kids would run in, knock me down, and then the group would encircle me and keep kicking me while I tried to protect my face.
The school would not try to protect me; instead, they blamed me. The school "yard duty" teacher would usually ignore the beatings, and would insult me if I asked them for help. The only way I could find to defend myself was to avoid the bullies and stay in the library during recess -- at least I found librarians and school bus drivers sympathetic. A few times, the school administration called me in, and asked, all sympathy, what it was I was doing to provoke other children into attacking me. The bullies were never disciplined, as far as I know.
My parents took the position that I was being beaten up because I was a coward, and therefore deserved to be beaten.
I'm really glad my stepsons go to a school where they actually intervene in incipient bullying long before violence appears.