Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
Humans always admire those who stand up to injustice, especially if they succeed. Look at the founding fathers of the US, Civil War "heroes", etc. It makes no difference if you are 8 fighting the school bully or if you are 28 fighting against tyranny, or if you are 78 and fighting injustice in the legal system.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
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.
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
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...
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..
No they don't. There is a significant number of people, probably even a majority, who think that people who stand up to injustice just don't know their place. That they are "uppity." Maybe they just don't consider the injustice serious enough to warrant a conflict or they think social order is more important than righting a wrong or, and I see this one a lot, they think the person who is speaking truth to power is going to get squashed in response and that they are fools for even trying. I think the last is a projection of their own cowardice - at the very least they could be cheering the guy on, but instead they feel like they have to denigrate him as a way to justify their own inaction.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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 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.
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...
Your analysis is spot on. I've seen this many times both as a child and an adult. And I've experienced it myself. The group will observe the fight (physical or otherwise) begin and start sizing up who the winner will be. Most will start siding with the projected winner. A few will tentatively stand on principle either siding with the projected loser or staying neutral but then as it becomes clearer and clearer who the winner will be they will all eventually line up with the winner.
I went through this very thing in adult life where a small group of people were abusing their power and I resisted. I kept pointing out to them that they were violating the law and behaving as bullies and that if they kept it up they would end up in court. I didn't take action for a very long time, years, because who wants to litigate against people you have to deal with on a daily basis? In hindsight that continuing reluctance to escalate was a mistake. But eventually I did launch an action against them.
One day the ring leader comes to talk to me and after trying and failing to scare me he asked what I would do if I lost (because I could lose everything I owned) and I told him "Then I guess I'll lose and start over - it's a matter of principle to me." Whooosh... the guy (who was quite a weasel) just couldn't understand that anyone would do that. They kept it up, perjured themselves, and took every opportunity, frequently illegal, to pressure me into quitting. Eventually they lost, settling out of court. My health suffered significantly, and probably permanently, and financially my costs were only partly covered (the lawyers for both sides did quite well). Somehow they have twisted this around in their minds that I'm somehow the wrong one, a bully (roflmao) etc. etc. That's despite the fact that when the bill came and they whined their own lawyer told them "Well you did something wrong and now you're paying the price."
Their anger is almost palpable. My take on it is that even though I had appealed to them on a regular basis, individually and as a group, to solve the problem without further conflict, that the facts showed they had repeatedly behaved atrociously and illegally, they are unwilling to think of themselves like that so some mental gymnastics occur so that they can believe they were in the right and I was just... evil? I just did what I thought my Dad would have done. As for the group they are continuing on with their old ways - just not trying to do it to me again. So far.
Standing up to bullies doesn't make them stop bullying, it just makes them pick an easier target.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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.