Were you bullied?

Were you bullied as a child / teenager and how, if at all, did it affect you, your emotions and your opinions? Also state if you were bullied physically or mentally (or both).
Also did you bully others?

No, I had to deal with bullies like anyone else I was somewhat popular but there is always someone who thinks the y are cool. I always stood my ground on this type of thing, I’ve never gone out of my way to pick fights but I never backed down from one either.

Everyone gets teased in school, it's just something that kids do. I neither witnessed nor experienced physical bullying. I was in an all girls school until 6th form so that might have something to do with it. I didn't understand the value in teasing either, most of the time I found it humorous.

I remember my brother coming home from school after getting into a physical altercation with some of his classmates. Apparently they had made fun of his lips (which are kind of big and feminine) after he ate skittles which made them red. I don't think I could take someone's comment seriously enough to react like that.

Bullying is a word for the organization of hierarchies, infused with a moralistic tinge of being "bad". Get any group and they organize themselves in a pecking order.

If someone doesn't recognize their place in the hierarchy and behaves in a way out of line with their position, they are corrected by the rest of the group. Preventing "bullying" causes other problems. Individuals who act wonky don't learn and then when they find themselves in a less forgiving environment they end up really getting corrected or completely ostracized.

Different hierarchies have different ways of organizing and different ways of correcting behaviors. Some groups use force, some use emotional weapons like guilt and shame. All groups are directed at gaining something of value. Little girls value attention. See a group of young girls going out and you can't be in the group unless you're pretty enough, bringing in your share of attention. Little boys value more goal orientated objectives like material things, knowledge, force and organize themselves in groups as such.

It gets complicated as there are multiple hierarchies all overlaid. Especially as there are some hierarchies that are not as visible to some. Emotional hierarchies being one that certain PD may have trouble with. Whether or not empathetic people want to admit it, they form a moralistic hierarchy with the "good" at the top and the "bad" at the bottom. They are always signaling who is up and down. The goal is to increase the value of "good" in the hierarchy.

Often this "good" is not necessarily materialistically valuable. Taking candy from a disabled baby and sharing it with the group will not make me go up in the hierarchy even though I brought value to the group as it was less than the emotional value of being "bad". The baby is crying! I’ve bought shame and devalued the group who now shares the candy with me.

Specific examples would be when I was a child, I would pick on this kid that always tag along in the gang of friends but contributed nothing of value to me. Then I would get picked on by the adults who would correct me as it was “bad” to correct him. I had to learn that having this dweeb in the group was adding to the value of “good” of the group. Like caring for disabled people and old people. It adds to the “good” and hence a group goes up in this moral value. Whatever is being corrected is justified. Moral empathetic people want to view themselves as having a monopoly on value itself, but that is not the case. It is just another hierarchical structure to organize groups.

TLDR
Bullying is unavoidable, and justified for both doer and receiver.

Squaredonutwheels wrote: Snip Snap
TLDR
Bullying is unavoidable, and justified for both doer and receiver.

May I ask, do you have autism, no offense of course, but I have never seen anybody put that much thought in to something, except people with autism.

Squaredonutwheels wrote:Bullying is a word for the organization of hierarchies, infused with a moralistic tinge of being "bad". Get any group and they organize themselves in a pecking order.

Bullying has nothing to do with a pecking order. I've seen people get bullied for the most stupid of reasons. A kid I knew once got bullied just because his accent was different (he was originally from South Africa). Kids get bullied for not fitting into the norm, and various other reasons.

One thing about bullies (not all) is that many of them have low self-esteem. They pick on someone who they perceive as weaker to make themselves feel better. And you'll notice that a lot of bullies come from abusive homes. Many are just angry kids who feel like shlt themselves and just want make someone else feel like shlt too.

TLDR
Bullying is unavoidable, and justified for both doer and receiver.

Not in most cases it's not.

I've bullied people simply because I was bored (that's one reason anyway), how was that justifiable?

I still am

Not really. As an adult I stand over six and a half feet tall, even as a child I was that much larger than the other kids so as to make physical bullying pretty much redundant.

I had some issues with fighting at primary school, though this was less straightforward than it sounds. When I was 5 or so my dad decided I needed to do a sport and me being contrary as usual took up a couple of martial arts, which for reasons defying understanding caused my school to wet itself. Coupled with that I was friends with some of the weaker kids in class and so when people tried to bully them, they’d come running to me for protection. When a minor scuffle (and I do mean minor) inevitably happened the fact that I was biggest and had this ‘terrifying’ skill set meant I was the appointed guilty party. Also it didn’t take long for the other kids to work out the effect saying I had been doing whatever on them (which to the best of my knowledge I never did, not to mention most ma are about as useful as a chocolate teapot) had on the staff. The other kids rather out did me in cunning at that age, The school went so far as pressuring my parents to make me stop. Fortunately when my friend moved away the issue stopped as the cause of conflict had been removed. Not really bullying but being the teachers favourite scape goat did me no favours. Probably contributed to my hostility to any form of non meritocratic authority.

Due to whatever fluke of genetics I inherited most of my looks from my mother who is something of a glamour puss. That which is probably an asset as an adult made me look like a weird little critter as a kid. I got teased a fair bit about it and probably go out of my way not to ‘soften’ my face still.

I lost a large amount of time due to illness and trauma during my early teenage years (none of which relates to bullying and is beyond the scope of this forum). When I returned to school I was fairly badly damaged and got teased a little for that although given the #######4 a lot of people put up with it was fairly minor. Although I recovered fairly fast the sensation of vulnerability effected me more than anything anyone actually did.

Most of my friendship group at school were girls, in fact most of my friends are women to this day, because I was never ‘one of the girls’ or ‘just a friend’ but rather in a depraved guru esque category of my own, it isolated me from the possibilities of bullying. That and early in my final year I happened to the major bully of our year (who had the unfortunate surname of ‘darling’) and a couple of cronies in a manner which they found unpleasant. For the most part, my time in secondary education was spent being alternately praised for achievement and chastised for ‘sexually inappropriate behaviour’ by the administration.

I don’t know that I was ever really a bully, I could be prickly, quite intimidating if pushed and at times my intensity can be a little overwhelming but I don’t ever remember picking on anyone. I always found schoolyard bullying petty and somewhat distasteful. I guess on some level I always felt that merit is how the cream floats to the top, while bullying, cronyism, sycophancy and such is how scum attempts the same feat.

In so far as I know bullying benefits no one. The last long term study I encountered showed that those who are bullies, are bullied and in particular are both, over long periods have significantly poorer psychosocial outcomes than the kids who were not.

Reaper wrote:Bullying has nothing to do with a pecking order. I've seen people get bullied for the most stupid of reasons.

Not in most cases it's not.

I've bullied people simply because I was bored (that's one reason anyway), how was that justifiable?

You can try imagine away, or dismiss, a hierarchy that you can't see and failed to navigate as not existing or stupid, but it only exposes how badly you ostracized you must have been and now resort to blinding yourself now so are not faced with the painful reality of your lack of choices that lead up to your current half existence.

I'll assume you're asking me to justify bullying out of boredom for you so you can scavenge the response and wear it like a little dress.

-- Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:44 pm --

WhyAreYouReadingThis wrote:

Squaredonutwheels wrote: Snip Snap
TLDR
Bullying is unavoidable, and justified for both doer and receiver.

May I ask, do you have autism, no offense of course, but I have never seen anybody put that much thought in to something, except people with autism.

No offense taken. I suspect that it was an observation due to the way I write as well as the effort.
I like to put thought into what I engage in. Right now I have enough time to work on myself. By creating a response to which I have to exert myself, I keep myself interested as it organizes my own thoughts and expanding on them opens them up for pressure testing and evolution, and improving these will help me once I get my mobility back.

I haven’t researched autism enough to confidently find pointers of that label to my own behaviors, but I suspect that I wouldn’t fit that category as a whole, as I didn’t have the developmental or social struggles commonly associated with autism. If anything, in real life, I am hyper aware of social cues and pecking orders. It’s only on this forum that I get to ignore many obvious signs and write what ever for myself. Currently being unable to enjoy more physical interests, I have decided that I’d like to improve on the written language as it was something that I historically did very poorly in. Right now I am writing in a style that is inflated and pompous, but it is a stage I have to go through this as I am exploring words and ideas in general. Later as I improve, I aim to write in a natural way that is more relate able and less “autistic”.

Squaredonutwheels wrote:

Reaper wrote:Bullying has nothing to do with a pecking order. I've seen people get bullied for the most stupid of reasons.

Not in most cases it's not.

I've bullied people simply because I was bored (that's one reason anyway), how was that justifiable?

You can try imagine away, or dismiss, a hierarchy that you can't see and failed to navigate as not existing or stupid, but it only exposes how badly you ostracized you must have been and now resort to blinding yourself now so are not faced with the painful reality of your lack of choices that lead up to your current half existence.

I'm not sure why you got so defensive there. You get offended pretty easily, huh.

So, a kid getting bullied simply for having a different accent is lower on the heirarchy than a bully with low self-esteem?

Explain to me how that works.

I'll assume you're asking me to justify bullying out of boredom for you so you can scavenge the response and wear it like a little dress.

No, my point was it can't be justified at all.

By the way, if I bully you out of boredom where does that put me on the heirarchy? Higher than you, right?