Bully Me This [Academic Essay]

[Writer’s note: I’m quite proud of the way this essay came out, and I thought I’d share it. It’s nine pages plus a works cited page, so buckle up]

The bell rang, and it was immediately obvious that Ms. Greb was going to be late again. It was hard to blame her; her office was at the other side of the middle school, and her waddle wasn’t speedy, to say the least. The picture of studious, I opened my Spanish text to look over the vocabulary again. “Bookshelf” was giving me a problem. Estantería, estantería, estantería. I silently repeated.

Ten minutes had passed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Zach stand up and swagger over. We were all sitting on one side of a long row of tables, and he stopped right across from me. I didn’t look up, knowing what was coming. At this point in time, we were about 11, and he was still a good three inches shorter than I. Unfortunately, that didn’t much matter. He leaned forward, placing both hands on the table between us, leaning in close. That’s when the yelling started.

To be honest, I don’t actually remember the words he used. “Fat” and “ugly” were definitely mentioned at least once, but all I can actually recall is the yelling. How loud it was. How hurtful. And how I couldn’t look up from my book, not even when he heard Ms. Greb approaching and hurried back to his seat with a smirk. No one else said a word, and class started as soon as she appeared in the doorway.

The question that I, like most victims of schoolyard bullying, asked was simply “why me?” Now that I’ve been removed from the situation, it’s no longer really a question of why a stereotypical bully would pick me, and those like me, as a target. I’m the easiest victim they could have possibly chosen. I’m trusting, prone to self-esteem issues, and I’m something of a recluse. However, the question I never considered is much more intriguing to me as an adult: Why did they turn to bullying at all?

According to Canadian Psychology in 2007, “Bullying is defined as repeated aggression in which there is a power differential. Two elements of bullying are key to understanding its complexity. First, bullying is a form of aggressive behavior imposed from a position of power: Children who bully always have more power than the children they victimize… Power can…be acquired by knowing another’s vulnerability” – in my case, raging insecurity and a naivety that would embarrass Charlie Brown- “and using that knowledge to cause distress. The second key element is that bullying is repeated over time. With each repeated bullying incident, the power relations become consolidated: The child who is bullying increases in power and the child who is being victimized loses power.” -Lucy will always pull the football away, maintaining her position of power in the relationship, and Charlie will always fall on his butt- “Through our research, we understand bullying as a destructive relationship problem.”

Oh really? Bulling is a destructive relationship problem? What a concept!

But maybe if I look closer at my three major childhood bullies I can begin to understand what I’ve never been able to: the bullies themselves. First, what caused them to become bullies, second, what was and is often done while the bullying occurs, and third, what those years of inflicting pain on others will mean for them.

Zach, I’ve had the most time to think about, so we’ll start with him. He lived down the street from me with his parents and older brother, Ben. Ben was a piece of work, let me tell you. He was about three years older than us, and he was horrible. Once, after getting off at his bus stop, Ben mooned the boy sitting behind me as we drove away. Another time he and his friend Travis defecated and urinated in a series of jars and opened them for the rest of the bus to bask in. Being related to that can’t have been easy. So maybe Zach’s aggressive behavior had to do with his misplaced respect for his older brother.

Or maybe Ben abused him at home and the only way Zach knew how to retaliate was to take it out on someone weaker, for example, me. His home life may have seemed, from the outside, to be normal, but Susan Swearer of The Washington Post would have me step away from these assumptions. “Researchers have found that elementary school bullies are more likely than non-bullies to have witnessed domestic violence during their preschool years.” (2011)

Cheryl E. Sanders and Gary D. Phye further back up this possibility. “Bullying is associated with families in which people do not treat each other with respect.” (p. 130) Whatever Zach might have been to his parents, who seemed nice enough, he was certainly not respected by his brother.

Then again, maybe that wasn’t the issue at all. As TIME Magazine’s Belinda Luscombe asserts, “Mean kids, mothers tell their wounded young, behave that way because they have unhappy home lives, or feel inadequate, or don’t have enough friends or because they somehow lack empathy. But a new study suggests some mean kids actually behave that way simply because they can. Contrary to accepted ruffian-scholarship, the more popular a middle- or high-school kid becomes, the more central to the social network of the school, the more aggressive the behavior he or she engages in.”

For reasons I still can’t entirely comprehend, Zach was a fairly popular figure in the schools we shared. Kids loved him. He dated every girl on our bus route (excepting me, of course) and had more people vying for a seat next to him in the cafeteria than I care to recount. So maybe his increasingly elevated social status had something to do with his bizarre aggression towards me.

Or maybe there was a recessive sociopath gene that unfortunately ended up surfacing in both Zach and his brother. All I can hope is that neither of them reproduces.

While we’re still close to the subject of social status as an influence on bullying, though, let’s move on to my next bully. Dylan didn’t require an audience the same way Zach did, but if there were other people bullying me, he wasn’t slow to chip in. We became friends through a mutual love of basketball and a lack of other options for companionship, and for the first few months, it was great just having a place to sit at lunch. It was not to last, however. Sometimes the bullying was about stupid things, like calling me a lesbian (a word we’d all just learned the year before) or refusing to pass me the basketball and forcing me to run back and forth with my team without ever getting to contribute. Other times, however, he’d send me IMs like “You’re dorky, nerdy, strange, and annoying. I’m done.” It was times like those that I actually found myself wishing there was an audience, so that maybe someone would step in, defend me. But there never was.

As Dylan rose in popularity through sports, it should have been obvious I wouldn’t have a place in his new life, even though I was his confidant on nearly everything. He told me things I doubt he’s ever told people since, and I never repeated them. But I was not “up to speed” socially, and so I’d have to go. The majority of our negative interactions surfaced when he would tell me, in private, how worthless I was, especially in regards to his status.

The ever-comprehensive WebMD backs up my conclusion. “Researchers found that children who bullied were often motivated by a desire to increase their popularity and that they chose generally unpopular victims to avoid losing social status.”

But my bully experience wouldn’t be complete without a fellow double-X chromosome. Mia. After one of the headier betrayals by Dylan, I craved female companionship, believing (wrongly) that I could hide from the pain amidst my fellow females. Admittedly, for a while, I could.

Mia, the queen bee of the group I ended up a part of, didn’t take to me very quickly. Prior to my “enlistment”, she had been known as the writer, the intelligent yet creative one. But I’d already written a 35,000-word manuscript and filled journal after journal with political rants and age-appropriate depressing poetry. If anyone could have stolen the writing spotlight, it would have been me.

Eventually, though we became friends, good friends even towards the end of high school. During our senior year we attempted to get into shape through running together, which failed miserably. We had differing political views on several levels, but we were cordial about expressing them and often met up for one on one study sessions.

There had always been a sort of darkness about Mia- even on good days her “teasing” felt a lot more like “soul-crushing”. I’d never been mean to her, never spilled a secret she entrusted me with, never tried consciously to cross her in any way. I was just… there.

We were both on the forensics team, and our senior year we both qualified for the national tournament in different events. Even as our team suburban pulled out of the driveway to make the long drive to Kansas City, Missouri, I knew this trip wasn’t going to be fun. Almost immediately, Zach-like remarks started flying from her mouth and into my head. I’d ask how long the total drive time was going to be, and even though I wasn’t addressing her, Mia would yell back something about how I had no friends and no one liked me. She laughed as if it were a joke, but repeated it and similar sentiments so often over the next four days that it was hard to take them lightly.

She even enlisted two other boys on the trip to call me horrible names like the ever-so-inspired “fat, ugly, and stupid” (do bullies have some sort of summit where they decide on these things?) as well, and after the second day of competition, it had gotten so bad I was having silent panic attacks in the bathroom, clutching my sides and trying to keep under control. Eventually, once I’d been eliminated from my event, I had my dad buy me a plane ticket and I left, after two separate crying episodes. I haven’t spoken to her since.

Her form of bullying was not original. According to JRank’s Online Psychology Encyclopedia, “although the stereotypical bully is male, girls engage in bullying behavior almost as often as boys.” Is it sexist that this fact is a surprise? Because I don’t think there’s ever been a time period where girls have been nice to one another. “Their tactics differ, however, in that they are less visible. Boy bullies tend to resort to one-on-one physical aggression, while girls tend to bully as a group through social exclusion and the spreading of rumors.”

Partly, I think Mia’s behavior has to do with her obsessive need to control, the root of which I’m not sure. She liked to have influence over the way people felt, and the only way she found she could do that was to make you feel so small that you had no choice but to give yourself over to her radical mood swings.

Ask Man Online has an even more sobering possibility. “Studies of adult bullying provide converging evidence that bullies tend to have certain personality traits in common, including authoritarianism, a strong need for control and a desire to dominate. Other research has suggested a small but consistent relationship between bullying and narcissistic personality disorder, which is characterized by a perception of oneself as a special, elite person deserving VIP treatment, a lack of empathy toward others and a tendency to be exploitative.”

Interestingly enough, this is actually a fairly accurate depiction of Mia. She was radically liberal and amidst our highly conservative school she often exhibited elitist behavior. Once, she asserted that voting should be a privilege, not a right, and there should be some sort of intelligence test before entering the booth. Even the narcissistic personality disorder is consistent with this girl’s conduct.

We’ve looked at the past, so now let’s look to the “present”, or at least the present as relative to the periods of time the actual bullying was going on. There are innumerable resources for schools to try and combat bullying, and the two most common approaches to bullying are the class meetings and individual interventions.

Dan Olweus’ 1993 book aptly titled Bullying at School: what we know and what we can do offers a summary of what a class meeting should consist of. “An important aid in counteracting bully/victim problems and creating a better social ‘climate’ in the class is for the teachers and the students to agree on a few simple rules about bullying. Although there may already exist some general school rules or behavioral guidelines, it is of great importance to create a set of rules aimed specifically at bullying- both direct and indirect. These rules should be expressed in as concrete a manner as possible.” (p. 81)

We got anti-bullying pep talks almost every month during elementary school, and even during some classes in junior high. But the sentiment was taken as seriously as the ones about not texting in class, once that became an option (boy, do I feel old. “When I was your age, we didn’t have text messaging!”). I don’t think there’s a school in existence, public or private, that doesn’t have some policy against bullying that’s reiterated regularly. And yet according to the National Center for Education Statistics (2007), about one-third of middle and high school students reported that they’d been bullied in the last six months. So clearly, telling people that something isn’t ok doesn’t necessarily stop the behavior. Even when a teacher notices bullying occurring and chooses to punish the instigator, it generally just forces the efforts to become more covert.

And that’s where Olweus sees individual interventions being particularly useful. “If the teacher knows or suspects that there is bulling in the class, he/she should not delay taking action. It is important to initiate talks quickly both with the bully or bullies and with the victim… it is much easier for the teacher to have these discussions with bullying students if some of the measures previously described have already been implemented, for example, the class rules against bullying.” (p. 98)

There are only two ways a teacher would “know or suspect” bullying is occurring. One, they could see it themselves, in which case they would treat it like the rest of the school does, with some form of reprimand. As with being caught texting, reprimand usually just drives the practice “under the table”, literally. But the only other way a teacher could find out about bullying would be if a victim sought help.

I’m not sure if you’ve every been bullied, especially if it was more emotional/verbal, but in my experience, telling a teacher is just about the worst thing you can do. Not only will it mark you as a tattler, it will also give them an incentive to come after you. See, before, you’re only a victim because you’re an easy target with some combination of traits that make you vulnerable. But once you tell an adult and get the instigator in trouble, your innocence deteriorates. Now it’s not your glasses-and-braces combination they hate, but the fact that you got them into trouble.

Of course, physical bullying is another issue entirely, and I’m in no way recommending that victims of bullying should just keep their heads down and wait for graduation. I’m just saying that, in my specific position, going to an adult wouldn’t have made a difference, and it would likely make things worse. If you are honestly in danger, whether it be physical or emotional, however, I have only two tips. Make a responsible adult aware of the issue and never go anywhere alone. I don’t care if you don’t have any friends (been there, trust me), latch yourself onto a group and make sure you’ve always got an audience of people who at least don’t completely hate you.

So we’ve now explored both the past and “present” of bullying from the bully’s perspective, but what does the future have in store?

Wendy Craig, a Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario psychology professor, doesn’t have good news. “Bullying left unchecked in the playground leads to severely maladjusted teenagers and adults… Our data very clearly indicates that rather than growing out of it, these kids grow into much more serious and significant problems, on both sides of the coin… Boys who bully repeatedly have been shown to engage in delinquent acts later in life 100 per cent of the time, and 94 per cent commit acts of sexual aggression. Among girls, 100 per cent of those who bullied were shown to be physically aggressive in their relationships.”

She goes on to discuss how bullies victimize peers in school and romantic partners later in life, which is a link I’ll admit I didn’t see at first. I never thought of it that way. All this time I perseverated on how awful going to parties at Mia’s house was when I should have been anonymously emailing her new boyfriends with warnings like “Handle with caution: she’s crazy. And not in a good way.”

Professor Craig’s conclusions were not unique. “By age 24, up to sixty percent of people who are identified as childhood bullies have at least one criminal conviction. A study spanning 35 years by psychologist E. Eron at the University of Michigan found that children who were named by their school mates, at age eight, as the bullies of the school were often bullies throughout their lives. In this longitudinal study of bullies, many of these children, as adults, required more support from government agencies” (Psychology Today, Sept. 1995).

There’s no shortage of statistics and articles bemoaning the effects of being a victim, but the perspective that is often unexplored is that the bullies might have been, at one time, a victim as well. A victim of a harsh family, a victim of social anxiety, or simply a victim of their own unbalanced biology. They may be able to delude themselves into believing that bullying, in the moment, makes them happy, but it’s clear that most find it difficult to “grow out of it”. And that’s sad.

What’s even sadder, though, is that bullies like mine are a byproduct of our culture, the same as diabetes and the Jonas Brothers. Our Western society is so individualized that we’ve forgotten how to work together, forgotten how to cooperate in order to achieve goals. We’re so obsessed with this bizarre concept of having power over other people that we ignore the opportunities to collaborate. In Eastern cultures, like China, where the community is favored over the individual, bullying is much less prevalent. “Young children in China are intentionally taught how to be good citizens and get along with others. The structure of the school organization and daily activities contributes to the formation of children’s behavior. Teachers’ close supervision and direct instruction focus children on making the right choice for the good of society. Rarely, then, do instances of bullying occur.” (Childhood Education, 2008)

We are where we live. It’s not to say that an individualized society is always a bad thing, but when it comes to bullying, it certainly doesn’t help. The problem is that there’s no gray area between independence and collaboration; you have to choose on or the other.

As a victim, I may be more prone to depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, but at least I probably don’t have a criminal conviction in my future. Either way, I’m just glad I’m finally out of public school.

 

Works Cited:

Craig, Wendy M., and Debra J. Pepler. “Understanding Bullying: From Research to Practice.”

Canadian Psychology May 2007: n. pag. Web.

 

Swearer, Susan. “Five Myths about Bullying.” Washington Post 30 Dec 2010: n. pag. Web.

 

Sanders, Cheryl E, and Gary D Phye. Bulling: implications for the classroom. Academic Press, 2004.

Print.

 

“Why Kids Bully: Because They’re Popular.” TIME Magazine 8 Feb 2011: n. pag. Web.

 

Boyles, Salynn. “What Motivates Kids Who Are Bullies?.” WebMD (2010): n. pag. Web.

<http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20100325/what-motivates-kids-who-are-bullies>.

 

“Bullies.” JRank Online Psychology Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb 2011.

<http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/100/Bullies.html>.

 

Averil, Farah. “How Do Bullies Become Bullies?.” AskMen. N.p., n.d. Web.

<http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/special_feature_3700/3762_how-do-bullies-become-

bullies.html>.

 

Olweus, Dan. Bullying at School: what we know and what we can do. Wiley-Blackwell, 1993. 81, 98.

Print.

 

“What happens to Bullies?.” Bully Beware. N.p., 17 Oct 2008. Web.

<http://www.bullybeware.com/faq/bullying/62-what-happens-to-bullies.html>.

 

Arndt, Janet S. “Exploring Bullying: An Early Childhood Perspective from Mainland China.”

Childhood Education Aug 2008: n. pag. Web. 2 Mar 2011.