NaNoBloPo: Bullying - What is it really?

[author_by_night]

This isn't part of the original meme, but it is a proper blog.

So, let's talk about bullying. It's hard to ignore it, because everyone's talking about it these days; what it means, how to prevent it, will implementing experiments where kids have to shun one another help, etc.

Here's my question - what exactly constitutes bullying? In my opinion, the term can not only be overrused, but in fact, underused.

Recently there was a story about a group of girls who essentially bullied a kid to death, even asking why she hadn't killed herself yet. When she finally did, they expressed no remorse and one of the girls even joked about it. This has happened before; apparently two bullies once attended the funeral of a girl who had killed herself, and made fun of her while she was in her coffin. In another community, a school had multiple suicides - the first two or three apparently not teaching anyone a thing.

But in that case, is it really simply bullying? I knew mean girls, but I can almost guarantee that if one of the people they were mean to killed themselves, they wouldn't have joked about it. They wouldn't have attended the funeral to mock. Because while I think they were pretty nasty people, I've seen one of them since and nothing's changed, so I imagine she's a lost cause, there's a certain ruthlessness that goes beyond being nasty. Instead of looking at how technology ate their brains, why aren't we looking at where the kids come from? One family defended and attempted to cover up their child's actions, making me wonder what other things they'd defended and covered up. (I believe it came to light that there was a criminal record or two there.) Was the problem really that the girl was a bully, or was her family fond of making trouble? I think there's a line between bullying and criminal behavior. Now, apparently people on this girls' friends list liked her nasty comments, but on the other hand, people tend to like without thinking. (Which is a different issue.) People also tend to follow sick people without realizing what they're doing. Which is another problem.

On the other hand, I think we need to be careful about what bullying truly is. I didn't have many friends in school, but honestly? I don't think that was necessarily bullying. I think there were kids who went out of their way to make me feel unwelcome, but for the most part, I wasn't like them and they weren't like me. I did have people who actually bullied me, both verbally and emotionally (never physically, I was lucky), but it was intentional, calculated cruelty, not the act of not having anything in common with me.

Even with cyberbullying, it's tricky, because theoretically a lot of things I've seen online could count. On the other hand, is a heated debate really bullying? They happen, and people online don't know or care how old you are or where you're from, even if in some cases they perhaps should. Yes, often online flame wars are stupid and pointless, but I think they're mostly bullying if the intent is definitely to agitate a specific person. If someone is just overly defensive, I'm not sure it's bullying. It's just being an overzealous douchebag. On the other hand, I have had people bully me, and that really is the only word for it. They wanted to ostracize me because I expressed opinions they didn't agree with, and went out of their way to let me know.

I am not saying that bullying isn't a problem; it is. But in order to really help kids deal with it, we need to understand what it means and what's involved, and we also need to refrain from overreacting or looking at the wrong issue.

On a slightly different note, I've seen in the news that kids are starting to go back to using anonymous sites. While I realize this makes it harder for Mom and Dad to track their kids, it's actually my hope that it means they're learning what my generation already knew - you don't want just anyone to be able to find you. I'll grant you, kids in my generation tended to be online because we were nerds and going to Harry Potter fansites and Star Trek forums, so the reasons were a bit different, but nevertheless, limiting your online identity to those you choose can only help, imho, unless they're using it to anonymously bully. But even then, while you can't change your real name, you can always change your online name. I'd like for some of you who know a little more about the alternatives weigh in on this.

All thoughts are welcome!

Comments

[caitriona-3.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, bullying is generally a deliberate attempt to hurt someone emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically. It has to be a deliberate choice with a personal focus for it to actually be bullying.

Heated discussions, rough-housing, or just not getting involved - this isn't bullying. It's when things slide into personal attacks (including name calling), the desire to hurt, or gossiping behind the back that bullying comes to the scene. I've seen the word overused on rough housing, but underused on name calling.

I think one of our biggest problems is that we are focusing too much on how to stop bullying. I think we need to control it, but we have to be real - unless you separate people from each other and put them in their own little worlds with absolutely no contact with others, you are going to have bullying. It's just the way things have always been - like it or not.

What we need to remember is the flip side - teaching people how to deal with bullying. I was bullied through most of public school, emotionally and mentally, and I never contemplated suicide because my family gave me the foundation and the background to stand up to it. We need to teach kids to have the internal wherewithal to stand up to bullies. Bullies are cowards - people who try to pick on the weak, the lonely, and the vulnerable.

[lynn82md.livejournal.com]

I'm going to cheat by using what I used on my community's userinfo (and there were five different definitions):
"1. Bully (v): to abuse, to affect by means of force or coercion

2. Bullying is generally defined as repeated physical, verbal, sexual, or psychological attacks or intimidation by one individual who is perceived as being physically or psychologically stronger than another. In a general sense, a student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students.

3. Bullying is a form of abuse. It comprises repeated acts over time that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power with the more powerful individual or group abusing those who are less powerful.

4. Bullying is acting in ways that scare or harm another person. Kids who bully usually pick on someone who is weaker or more alone, and they repeat the actions over and over.

5. Bullying is a form of overt and aggressive behavior that is intentional, hurtful, and persistent (repeated). Some of the key words in our definition of bullying are intentional, hurtful, persistent, and imbalance of strength. Thus behavior such as teasing that is not intended to hurt and is not persistent is not considered bullying. However, even playful teasing can easily escalate into a bullying situation. Those who have power over the child may repeatedly use the teasing comments to hurt them." With that said...

I think one of the ways to deal with bullying is:
A)Teach kids that differences are okay because that's one major reason why people bully is that they are wary of how different others are compared to them and
B)Teach kids on how to deal with negativity in their life. We're never really taught how to deal with our emotions when something bad happens like if a love one dies or if our parents divorce. Since kids don't know, they tend to take their feelings out on other people.

I do know that you will always have kids that will bully for reasons other than because they're going through a difficult time or have an issue with differences. However, I think doing the two above will dramatically decrease bullying a lot imo.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Someone who continues to bully someone who is already dead and in a casket at their funeral isn't a "mean girl"--that's a sociopath. We're talking about behavior that someone who doesn't need years of therapy would never engage in, or someone who has been socialized by a family that understands common courtesy and how people are expected to behave in public. A person who does that may have seen something similar in a work of fiction--perhaps a soap opera, either daytime or (more likely now) nighttime--but if they duplicate that behavior in real life, they clearly lack an understanding of the difference between fiction and the real world. And if a family defends this kind of bizarre behavior or any other bullying behavior--bear in mind that the child is a product of that family, so it really shouldn't shock.

Spreading lies about a person is one of the most insidious types of bullying, and seems to be the kind of cyberbullying that's most common, but it took place back when I was in high school using landline phones, notes in lockers and other primitive methods. Never underestimate the power of a nasty rumor to make a kid feel like she wants to crawl under a rock--or kill herself. While most people will claim that they believe lying is a terrible thing to do and insist that they always tell the truth, in reality they will usually lie to make themselves look good (or not look bad). That's fairly typical human behavior. A bully, however, will spread malicious lies to make someone else look bad, which I don't believe is typical for most people. You have to have a particularly nasty mind-set to not care about hurting someone else in that way, and even nastier and scarier if you're still attacking that person after you've driven them to kill themselves.

In my experience, authorities think that the best approach is to separate the bully and the bullied, but all that does is to teach the bullies how to get rid of people they don't like. They've achieved their goal when that happens, which is a rotten message to send them, because they WILL do it again the next time they want to banish someone else. No one ever seems to see this behavior as a red flag concerning the bully, or consider how to help the bully to turn over a new leaf, let alone punishing them. I have never, ever experienced seeing or hearing about a bully being punished or reformed. No one even tries, and that's why it continues. There are no negative consequences for anyone but the bullied.

[scionofgrace.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the incident you mention makes me wonder if "bullying" has too wide a definition. There's kids who bully 'cause they want a power trip, because they need to feel superior, because people doing their own thing is somehow insulting, but that's not the same as kids who drive a kid to suicide and show no remorse. At which point, we're talking major psychiatric dysfunction: sociopathy, or something else as serious. Not that it excuses the perpetrator, by any means, but it does mean you (and they) are going to need strong measures.

These things may exist on a continuum, but so does radiation. On one end, it makes you feel warm and cozy, on the other end you die.

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of what bullying is comes from hierarchical thinking.

People are familiar with various levels of hierarchy. Hierarchy is human nature. Being the opposite, kind and thoughtful, is also human nature.

Raising people in a supportive environment instead of a hierarchical environment might make a big difference.