Thinking Like a Bully

I was contemplating a story a while back (not written, but that's another story) in which the viewpoint character was a bully, from childhood on up to adulthood. The problem is, I never understood them as a kid. I understand them a bit better now. What follows are my observations and educated guesses about how and why they operate as they do.

The central motivation in a bully's life seems to be obtaining power over others. This desire could arise naturally--some people are just born to want to be "the boss" in an aggressive fashion (as opposed to leaders, who have the same ability to get others to follow them but usually have more benign intentions). Others develop the desire to push others around in response to their childhood experiences. Either they were pushed around by parents or siblings or they saw one parent dominate the other one, usually with threats or use of physical force. Perhaps there are other explanations, but those are the ones that occur to me.

What's interesting and disturbing is to see how bullying plays out in the adult world. Just because you grow up in an abusive or threatening household doesn't mean you want to or have to emulate that in your own life. I'd like to think some don't. My home life while growing up was benign; my interactions with my peers, not always. I took a lot of teasing personally and mostly just wanted to get along and be left alone: "If you don't have anything nice to say..." The desire to control, boss around, or manipulate others just isn't a huge motivator in my life. I come at life with a notion of live and let live.

A bully doesn't think that way. A bully is paranoid, believing that everyone is out to get him/her, and the only way to deal with someone is to strike back at some perceived slight or to strike first before someone else gets the better of you. A bully "controls" his/her environment by fear--intimidating others through aggressiveness to prevent others from even desiring to "cross" them. Paradoxically, that effort to control through fear is born from the bully's own fears--sense a threat, attack it before it hurts you! It's a sad way to go through life.

Sometimes bullying takes different forms: back-stabbing, ostracism, gossiping, peer pressure, or "political" pressure, all of which are subtle ways of bending the will of the individual to the group: do things our way or you'll be sorry! Bullying works on individuals and groups. An individual with a group behind him/her is stronger and has more resources than a single person alone. A bully tries to get into the head of the victim and get them to imagine what will happen to his/her own skin, reputation, etc., if left standing alone. These dynamics are the same whether one is talking about a cult leader or a romantic partner who seeks to isolate and control another. Gangs, for example, usually don't jump other gangs or even groups of people, they usually assault a single individual and outnumber them.

"There's strength in numbers," the saying goes, and it's perfectly true. The converse of that is,  "There's weakness in isolation." Bullies play on those fears. They also tend to prey on the small, the weak, and the loner. These types of targets are unlikely to cause damage to the bully, are less able to defend themselves, or are less able to call upon others to help them in the event of personal danger. Bullies note those dynamics, too: they're opportunists, preferring targets of opportunity and seeking to dominate only those most easily dominated. Bullies are not exactly cowards, but they only push where they think they will get away with their intimidating behavior.

Some bullies operate on a broader scale and have a larger stage from which to work: crime bosses, armed gangs, even heads of governments. Again, the dynamics apply: isolate individuals, attack the weak, do as much as possible within what seems allowable. Sometimes they hit outside their weight to prove their toughness to others. Sometimes they do it because they sense that a stronger power will let them get away with bad actions. They will keep pushing the limits until they're forced to fight.

What is one to do with adult bullies? In the end, the choices haven't changed for thousands of years: you can either submit to their wishes, ignore them, or stand up to them. However, it's important to know that the first two options have consequences.

Appeasement or capitulation breeds reactive cowardice in the victim and leads to a situation where you lose control of your freedom of thought and movement. A bully, sensing surrender, will get MORE, not LESS aggressive because they now see someone who is not just weak but confessing weakness. Building on that, the bully will double down on their demands and misbehavior, figuring that if they push hard enough they'll get even more for their efforts. Appeasing a bully triggers a "reward" response, where they want and get more by acting in an aggressive fashion.

Ignoring bullies--regardless of the size--might or might not work. If they think you're an easy target, they will keep coming because they think they can get away with bad behavior or maybe they'll lose interest.

Usually a bully only backs off when they are confronted at a level that makes it clear their behavior will not be tolerated. You might yell, you might complain to HR, you might call the police, you might arm yourself, you might have to go out and take down the bully with all the resources you and your fellows have available to you. In the end, though, a bully is only stopped by another bully or by an honorable person with enough strength to make them stop. Such is human nature. I wish that it were otherwise.

Making It Better

I read this book review today, and it set me off.

“It Gets Better.” That’s what the current campaign says to encourage young people who are discovering their leanings toward people of the same sex. It’s a message that could apply to any persecuted, picked-on kid in junior high or high school. But it’s very damned difficult to convince a 13-year-old who’s getting followed home from school at least once a week by bullies who want to see the kid cry. It’s hard for a girl with a flat chest and too many freckles or too much flesh around her bottom to believe that life will get better. You, the adults looking back over scars 20, 30, or 40 years in the past, have the benefit of hindsight and survival over time. The teenager has just the now.

They hurt Now.

They’re being punched in the arm Now.

They’re being left by themselves in the cafeteria at lunch hour Now.

They’re getting laughed at in class Now.

They’re crying themselves to sleep and having nightmares every night Now.

Telling them “It gets better” 10 or 20 years from now is a copout.  They need help Now.

Yes, some of your adult perspective is simply “Kids will be kids” or recalling that “They grow out of it.” But again, that’s the easy stuff, like learning how to drive or understanding when to use the right piece of silverware at a formal dinner. What isn’t happening, it seems to me, is that we’re not preparing these kids—arming them, to be blunt—mentally for the social combat that makes up the teenage years, all the way up through our early 20s.

What this essay is going to try to convey is some of the process I went through, from being a bullied kid until now. I will say some unpleasant things in this essay. I will use profanity. I will probably say something unpleasant about nearly every social caste that exists because during the ages that one is facing bullies, there are damn few people that you don’t learn to hate. [Actually, this turned out pretty tame, but still...] It’s unfortunate, but it helps to get into that mindset before you start saying something tepid and trite like “It Gets Better.”

It’s not that easy. You have to work for it.

*

Portrait of a Young Bart, 1984

The boy starts his day at home. His hair is a mess, unstylish and greasy-looking. His complexion is a mass of acne and blackheads. His wardrobe consists of Swiss army shirts, camouflage pants, and army boots. He wears an expression of hopeful desperation, as he is psyching himself up for what he hopes won’t be too bad of a day. At 5’7”, he is nearly eye to eye with his mother, at least in height. His attitude is somewhere between punchy smartass and surly. He ignores his sister or tolerates her or listens to her, depending on his mood. He waits for the bus stop with a bunch of the neighbors, kids he’s known for a month or several years. The best he usually can hope for is that he won’t say something that causes a negative comment or a laugh at his expense. He has learned to suppress even things that make him happy because inevitably, he thinks, someone is going to either cut him down or use that knowledge against him.

On the bus itself, he takes what is usually the least-desirable seat, the one directly behind the bus driver. But he knows why he takes it: he’s less likely to get punched or abused if an adult is within earshot. If he sits in the back of the bus, he’s in for a very long and painful ride. Once at school, he barrels for his locker, quickly looks both ways before working the combination lock (he had stuff stolen from his locker and burned a couple years ago, and he hasn’t forgotten it), getting what he needs, and slamming it shut. The interior of the locker is decorated with images of art, of science fiction movies, of pictures from Disney World. He does not share these things, they are simply talismans to remind him of happier days. He carries as many books as he can because he doesn’t want to have to go back to his locker more than a couple times a day.

In class, he keeps to himself or talks to the one or two people he thinks won’t abuse him somehow. He used to raise his hand in class, and sometimes he still does, when he thinks the question is easy enough. If he makes the mistake of answering something difficult correctly, he’ll hear about it later in gym or the cafeteria. “You think you’re so smart,” they’ll say, or words to that effect. His grades are lower than they could be. He’s in a slightly advanced algebra class—not the dummy version, anyway—and usually ends up with some of the brighter history or science kids, but he is performing well below his abilities, and he knows it. Even in the advanced classes in junior high, he discovered, the smart kids could be just as mean as the others, and who needs that sort of aggravation?

He gulps his food at lunch, eager to get out of the cafeteria before the bully of the day (singular or plural) finds him and decides to make his day difficult. He’s probably underweight simply because he’s under-eating and walking or running wherever he goes. He trembles occasionally, the result of recurrent fear.

Gym class is a painful joke, as he must suffer the multiple pains of being uncoordinated, un-muscular, and socially sensitive. He does not like exercise because it exposes his weakness for all the world to see and criticize and laugh at. He fails at individual sports and is picked last for team sports. He often skips the showers because the added vulnerability of being naked around his violent peers is often more than he can take. He occasionally shows up to class more fragrant than is strictly necessary, which adds to the greasiness of his hair and face.

By the time the bell rings, he has had enough. He hides in the Theater Department, where he is the teacher’s aide one period to get him out of some other, less comfortable place like study hall. The theater kids aren’t too bad, often outcasts like himself in some cases, but they aren’t quite sure what to make of him: too uncoordinated (again) for scene shop, too shy or self-conscious for acting, he works where he’s least visible or least likely to call overt attention to himself: sound, lighting, box office.

When class is done, he goes home and hangs out with one of his two or three best friends. He doesn’t have or trust many others. If they are not free, he composes fiction on paper or in his head on the way home. Sometimes he skips the bus and risks walking home. He wishes he could go to work, which he will in a year, so he can have something to do.

And yet this kid is not completely lost. He writes a great deal—journal entries, poetry, plays, Star Wars stories. He draws maps of airline route systems he imagines operating or aircraft he imagines designing. He is counting the months until he graduates—he has already selected his classes for the next three years, and has set things up so that he graduates a semester early. He was going to shoot for graduating at the end of junior year, but his mother tells him that he’d probably not be mature enough for college at that age.

Some girls like or admire him, but he is too shy or too terrified to speak to any of them. Like his stories and his hopes, he figures any girl he likes would be just another source of teasing. And then, too: the girl might be lying to make a fool out of him. It has happened before, numerous times, and he has a high mistrust of the female species, from cheerleaders to the girls at church to the unpopular girls. It’s a comfort of a sort that his sister hasn’t completely disowned him. He talks too smart or too self-defeating to deal with his cousins.

The boy gets along just fine with adults, particularly teachers and people in authority, which earns him zero credit with his peers. He wants to learn what’s in the homework or the news or the sly comments that adults make to each other. More than anything, he wants to get out of here, not sure if he means high school, Lombard, or Illinois, but he has his sights set on Orlando. He has a mixed relationship with his father, who has been remarried, but he likes his stepmother and loves the free, unstressed feeling he gets when he visits them, away from other people who know him.

He reads and writes a great deal: science fiction, history, science. His grandmother directs self-help books his way, and he reads those as well, even though some of them are written for people older than him. He doesn’t know what he wants to be, exactly, but he has thoughts about Disney, about the military, about space—but above all, about writing. Writing is his great escape. He writes poems that bleed out his hurt. He writes journal entries dissecting the behavior and characters of some of his worst tormentors. He writes stories in which characters like him have power, authority, and right on their side. If his fantasy life does not include women (a field of study utterly beyond him), it does at least include alternate worlds where he has the respect of all the people around him, men and women—adults.

He has visions of what could be. He just needs to survive.

*

The sad part is, 1984 actually wasn’t that bad. The worst year of my life was 1981-82, the year I was in 7^th grade. That was when I was having the psychosomatic illnesses, fevers (104.3°, at one point), and serious prayers asking Jesus to let me die. If someone had told me that year that “It gets better,” I probably would’ve thrown up on them, either out of disbelief or stress or spite.

Another scary thought: my high school was considered pretty decent for the time, certainly a lot safer than a lot of the schools in rougher neighborhoods or in downtown Chicago. At just over 2,000 students (now over 2,500), Glenbard East was as decent a suburban public school as you were likely to find. No metal detectors, as yet. No knives or guns on campus (off-campus was another matter). The usual experiments with alcohol or marijuana (and even cocaine, if I’m to believe some of my friends at the time) going on.  And I fa-king hated it because I was scared and miserable most of the time. Or at least those are most of the memories that survived.

Lombard Junior High, the place of my darkest despair, was where I hit rock-bottom, socially and emotionally. My clothes were cheaper then, my body smaller and thinner, my social skills even less developed. If I was going to make something better of myself, it had to be there. I can only tell you how I survived. My combination of traits, talents, and circumstances might not apply to anyone else. But the effort deserves telling, because I did survive. While I was unlikely to get knifed or shot, there was every likelihood that I might’ve gotten beaten up more, or that I might’ve taken that to-hell-with-this-I’m-going-to kill-myself voice at the back of my head. Obviously, I didn’t, but why? The question bears asking because certainly there’s still enough teenage angst bullshit going around that needs overcoming.

So below is my recipe for helping a kid suffering at the hands of his/her peers. I can’t guarantee success; I can only say it worked for me, at different times, and in various combinations, but believe me, all of it was tried.

I understood that my problem was temporary, not permanent.

I honestly don’t know how I came to this conclusion, but I could count at a reasonable age, and I knew that any event or situation had a beginning and an end. Some of this might’ve been taught by my mother getting us to plan for a vacation X months in the future, or sitting through enough other boring or painful events. I just understood that boredom or pain or whatever situation I was going through would eventually change, and that this, too, shall pass.

I took the time to examine my own behavior and figure out when/where my peers were reacting badly to my behavior—and then change it.

I probably took this one to an extreme, being a responsibility-and-duty-focused kid (such are the joys of growing up the only boy in a home run by a single mom). But I did at least take the time to figure out how people operated. What were they saying? What were their expressions? How did they change when I did X versus Y? Which behaviors of mine create the worst reactions with adults or my peers? On the latter score, that was easy: talking down to people. It’s not just a matter of correcting someone if they misspell something, but how did I do it? What tone was I using? What words? “It’s not what you say, but how you say it?” I never quite got over my habit of using big words, but I at least learned to temper the lecturing, condescending tone and not use the absolutely longest words I knew (unless no other word sufficiently says what I mean). But this habit of watching others and minding what I was doing forced me in on myself, caused me to listen more, and be more self-aware.

I was focused on becoming an adult, not blending in with my peers.

“Grow up!” was a common refrain in my family. The expectation was always that I was learning how to become a grown-up so I could take my place in society and be a productive citizen. Again, starting from a responsibility-focused childhood, this behavior and belief followed naturally. In addition, given that many of my peers engaged in some form of teasing (serious or not—I took it all personally), I was not likely to idolize any of them.

I understood that I had specific talents, and I spent my free time developing them.

It really took until I was in college and was surrounded by people who not only couldn’t write but were willing to pay me to edit their papers that I understood that I might have something to offer others and that not everyone could do what I did. Even so, from a very young age, I was writing stories or poems and getting my thoughts down in written form. I figured out what I was good at and what I enjoyed doing. It took many, many years after that to find a job that would pay me to do the things I loved, but at least I had that start. My mother told me (and I recall the conversation) that I wanted to write for NASA. My grandmother told me I was five when I told her I wanted to write a novel. In any case, my future was going to involve writing.

I understood that I had a soul, and that it was worth preserving.

There’s no way around this: I had religion in my life. I had an understanding (in addition to self- and family-taught responsibility and duty) of sin as well as sacredness. There are things that are fundamentally and should remain good; to violate this goodness is, in fact, a sin. Frank Herbert wrote that the single, common message of all religions was, “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” True or not, that’s a lesson I absorbed at a young age.

I had an active internal life and a means of escape in the midst of an unfriendly crowd.

This is related to an earlier point, but it boils down to this: if you’re an outcast, you’re forced to develop your own inner resources simply because there’s no one else around to talk to. So I read a lot of books. Difficult ones, as my mother would tell me. She stopped understanding what I was reading when I was ten. As long as I dove into these other worlds and didn’t come out some sort of demon worshipper or terror to myself or others, she left me alone with my odd literary tastes. The act of reading did several things: when I was actually reading, I could tune out the verbal (and sometimes even the physical) obnoxious behavior going on around me. I could image a newer, more advanced, better world than the one I was living in at the time. And these other worlds helped expand my vocabulary—necessary for a writer—as well as my mental horizons and my future plans for myself.

I could take action on my own behalf.

One of the most horrible side effects of bullying is the utter powerlessness it inflicts on the victim: first, there are the physical circumstances of having someone bigger than you inflict pain on you. Then, if they keep after you long enough, you eventually feel powerlessness to take any action on your own behalf. You grovel or beg or humiliate yourself to get someone to stop hurting you or, if you’re particularly desperate, just be nice to you—and aren’t needy and desperate great personality traits? Anyhow, the books I was reading (SF, self-help, history, philosophy, what have you) all seemed to have similar messages: heroes have the ability to take action to fix their circumstances. For lack of a better idea, I decided to see myself as a hero, fictional or otherwise, and that freed me up to take actions that might make things, if only one day, one little bit at a time. So: wash the face to fix the acne; take karate to learn at least the rudiments of how to fight back; get a job and learn to take pride in my work; start and complete stories in which Bart-like characters triumphed.

I had a few friends and a family who believed in me.

This can’t be overestimated in its importance. If I’d been chased home from school by the bullies and then come home to an abusive family, I wouldn’t have come out nearly so well. Yes, I resented the stuff Mom or Dad or the grandmothers, aunts/uncles, cousins, etc., did on occasion, but I didn’t doubt that they could be counted on—they were family.

I had a desire for meaningful work.

I started working when I was just barely 16. My parents, aunts, and uncles always talked about their jobs, so I understood that to mean that they drew a great deal of their identities and self-importance from the work they did. With work came responsibility (which, again, I was all about) as well as accomplishment, independence, mobility, and money. The longest period I’ve spent unemployed since then was two months, and I was miserable. I kept looking for work because sitting around doing nothing can make me go stir crazy. If I’m working, I’m busy, and I’m not dwelling on some of the other things in my life that might be bothering me. And, at the end of it, if I’ve been doing things right, I’ll have something to show for it at the end of the day.

I learned to think for myself.

Another advantage of being an outcast is that you’re unlikely to join a gang, cult, or any sort of movement that will cause you to lose your identity. I learned quickly—as did my peers—that “peer pressure” was a great way to get me to push back even harder. What starts out as circumstance—your peers ostracizing you because you’re “different”—eventually becomes a badge of honor. You learn to hold onto your individuality because it’s all you’ve got. There’s a Peanuts cartoon I remember fondly: Lucy hands Linus a list of his faults. Linus reads the list, then shouts back, “These aren’t faults, these are character traits!” So sometimes behavior gets you labeled a kook (“He’s always off on his own somewhere”) eventually becomes one of your favorite activities and something that you come to see as integral to your self-image.

*

Final Thoughts: Your Mileage Might Vary

The lessons I learned above are partly the result of circumstances—where I grew up, who my parents were, what my family situation was, what sorts of traits I inherited, what church I went to, who my peers were—but a lot of it was simple reading or learning things the hard way. The person reading this might not be much of a reader or be terribly sensitive to others’ feelings—they just want to be left alone. Fine. Find alternatives. Build up your own inner life with music, art, woodworking, athleticism, mathematics, science, mechanical tinkering, horticulture, animal care. If you don’t know what you like or what you’re good at, keep trying things until you discover them. The point of all these little lessons, I guess, is just that social survival can be achieved, but a lot of it requires a will to make things better for yourself. I’m speaking from a vary first-world point of view here—I’m not sure if any of this advice would matter in a situation where you’re facing down guns or worse every day. But if you’ve got some of the basics covered (food, shelter, clothing, safety), you can work out the rest. The goal is to make yourself a better person, not to punish the ones who are trying to make you feel or be bad. You can’t do much about them, and becoming a bully to others just passes the problem off to the next poor bastard—and what sort of life is that?

So I hope this does someone some good. I feel better for having written it, but your mileage could vary. Let’s be careful out there.

Potpourri CXXXIV

Annnnnd the fun continues...

Something right up Dar's alley: Citizen scientists have an opportunity to contribute to work done on the Moon...counting craters.

From Brother Kanigan: The top 10 stolen body parts in history.
 
From Jerry Pournelle: Some more thoughts on the Greek debt crisis and how it affects/reflects what's happening here in the U.S.
 
From Erin: Your Moment of Coolness for today: a tour of the International Space Station.
 
For my Huntsville friends...some flyover times for the International Space Station.
 
Laser weapons on? Burn ‘em!


For Kate Down Under: Australia developing a space policy (about time, don’t ya think?).


Ohio and Massachusetts are developing their own STEM initiatives. What about Alabama?
 
One of the things I learned to enjoy early on was the art of fine conversation and complex argument. To that end, I'd offer the following series of essays on the topic of "Why aren't there any 'Lester Bangs'-like critics of video games?" That is, why aren't there critics who treat games as a legitimate art form and who have the critical vocabulary necessary to dissect this rather obscure subject? The discussion begins here, with an essay in Esquire Magazine on the topic. From there, move on to Doc's response to the Esquire essay. And, most recently, one can find this scholarly response to Doc's opinion. I'd post my own thoughts on the matter, but I don't play video games anymore, and so am not qualified to comment. On this issue, I'll defer to Doc, though I found the discussion most illuminating.
 
Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off for its last mission (theoretically). Always fun to watch. Of course if you spend enough time around the propulsion guys around here, you learn not to turn off NASA TV until Main Engine Cutoff (MECO), not just when the fire and smoke are over.


The Bank of England says U.S. faces the same problems as Greece. Well, duhhhhh…




Also re: the oil spill…Dar has started a crowdsourcing initiative on Science for Citizens to solicit ideas for containing the oil spill since nothing else has worked so far.


NBC is canceling the original Law & Order after 20 seasons. Bummer.


CNN has a (very unscientific) poll about people’s perceptions of the state of the economy. Bottom line: it’s not pretty.


Boeing rolls out the Phantom Ray unmanned aerial vehicle.


Legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta has died.


Ka-BOOM! A bad day with a cell phone.


Planets and moons and spacecraft, oh my!


Just because a leopard can’t change its spots doesn’t mean a planet can’t change its stripes.


Subtract one…census worker visits a home and finds a dead body.


Something for the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE): New Zealand’s PM got himself into hot water for making a cannibal joke.


Another bullying story. Bullying is at least partially alleged in the suicide of a young girl in Birmingham. Hate this stuff.


Disney is building a new animation-themed resort at the Walt Disney World property in Florida. My buddy Gwen already called dibs on the room assignment shift. Guess that means I’m stuck on the desk again, darn it. ;-) It will be located down near Osceola Parkway and Disney’s Pop Century Resort and is scheduled to open in 2012. Also in Disney news, despite falls in Parks & Resorts revenues, including at the Disney Cruise Line, the company is betting on an improved economic future. Glad someone is.


A scientist inspired by the Dalai Lama is studying happiness.


Governor Schwarzenegger is seeking deep budget cuts to reduce California’s $20 billion deficit. This bears watching, as does the continuing mess in Greece, which is similar.


Now here's a sport I'd follow next time I visit Orlando...lingerie football!

More On Bullying

Keeping myself away from the news and talk radio has its upsides and downsides. On the upside, I am not fed a lot of prepackaged pabulum designed to simultaneously enrage and soothe particular target audiences. On the downside, I sometimes miss important stories like the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince as a result, it is alleged, of pressure from bullies. I’ve touched on this ground before, but it bears repeating: bullying, physical or verbal, leaves scars. It hurts. Some people never recover completely, even fine folks like Your Humble Narrator. Miss Prince, an immigrant from Ireland, appears to have gotten the verbal treatment, which isn’t necessarily better, but is less likely to leave physical/visible scars. I hate this $#!t. With a passion. Since I’ve been sorting this stuff out lately, I’ll just share my story, and you can make of it what you will, but the past has a long reach, sometimes well into adulthood, and that reach is never pleasant to feel.



Imagine being born with a low-level hormonal disorder that prevents you from growing for the first year of your life. This disorder, while caught after 11 months or so, prevents you from growing, rolling over, crawling, standing, or any of the normal stuff that kids typically do by “the appropriate age.” You spend the next eight or nine years in physical therapy and learning disabilities programs learning basic motor skills. Add to this interesting quirk of genetics a higher-than-average intelligence, extensive vocabulary, emotional sensitivity/instability/immaturity, and an incredible lack of tact. What you have, if you’re a small boy in the football-minded suburbs of Chicago, is a recipe for social disaster. What follows from this sort of behavior? Physical threats. Actual hitting. Insult contests to see who can get the weak kid to cry first. Stalking the kid through the hallways or on his way home from school to make sure he doesn’t feel safe even within the comfort of his own home. That’s what the bullies are doing; but what’s happening inside the mind of the kid being bullied?


Perhaps we can start with something simple, like isolation and social naivety. The kid doesn’t have a lot of friends and is very desperate for friends because he has so few to begin with. This makes him eager to please, but also gullible when people feign friendliness in order to get the kid to fall for something. The kid gets burned enough times, he ends up not trusting offers of kindness, friendship, or love for fear of being betrayed and humiliated. Any sign of displeasure from a friend is immediately acted upon in a placating matter, again because friendship is so dearly sought and so rarely given or obtained. In later relationships, this results in a willingness to be a doormat. The boy (and later the man) assumes that any errors or hurt feelings are automatically his fault since he often offended people with his youthful disdain or confidence or condescension. In later years, the kid becomes a perfectionist, determined to be good at as many things as possible—speaker, writer, performer, student, friend, cousin, brother, son—to avoid giving others any reason to dismiss or abandon or dislike him because any sign of disapproval is a sign that he’s not doing enough. That he’s just not good enough. The resulting trap being, of course, that the perfectionist eventually realizes that perfectionism itself is the problem, leading to an even more heroic effort to “fix” external circumstances or himself.



No, that’s not all bad, but such behaviors have spiritual consequences and costs. The ones who caused the damage are long gone from the boy/man’s life when the long-term consequences are felt, but their presence is still felt in every interaction, every good thing, every failure. Some kids, lacking the inner resources to combat such inner terror, seek escape from the present through suicide. To those who inflict such pain I would see you educated about the full consequences of the damage you do. I don’t know what form that education should take, but I would hope in the end you come out of it with something approaching sympathy.



And in the meantime, if you were fortunate enough to escape your schooling with a minimum of abuse at the hands of your peers and you have kids, pay attention to their lives: are they being bullied, or are they the ones inflicting the pain? Both groups need your attention.

Book Review: Please Stop Laughing at Me...

I have done my own writing about the experience of school bullying, but that writing has often been fictional, and kept private. Such things are too painful to dwell upon at times, and in fact the writing I've done has been to get the feelings out of my system and to find some resolution to them. The author of Please Stop Laughing at Me...One Woman's Inspirational Story has taken the courageous step of laying out, in personal, first-person narrative form, her experiences with the bullying and general purpose cruelty that now seems endemic to our public school system. While I doubt the claim that Ms. Blanco is the first person who was picked on in school to write about her experiences, she is perhaps the first to detail the experiences and feelings with such detail or self-cosnciousness of bullying as a social phenomenon. It is a painful, gripping read, especially for those of us who saw more than our share of peer abuse, but very insightful nonetheless. I read it in two days, if only to get through it as quickly as possible.

I became aware of this book through Dr. OZMG who, like me, has a keen interest in the effects of bullying on young people and how it affects them later in life. My entry point into Please Stop Laughing at Me was an interview the author, Jodee Blanco, gave on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR. The interview is worth listening to, as it covers her new book, Please Stop Laughing at Us: One Survivor's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying, which addresses what Blanco has done since she wrote the book reviewed here.

Like OZMG and me, Ms. Blanco is a Gen Xer who grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Her story as a "survivor" of bullying, though, is perhaps where I could most identify with her story. Growing up the only child in a doting family, Blanco was (and is) very much a fighter for the underdogs around her. One can argue whether such things are inborn or nurtured, but with Blanco it was most definitely a combination of the two. Teaching special-education kids as a volunteer, but also standing up for other kids who were picked on, she was encouraged by her parents to stick to her guns, but quickly found the dangers of sticking one's neck out, including insults, personal property damage, ostracism, and violence. Unlike today, 20 years ago bullying would more likely result in suicide; today, it could be a Columbine-type massacre, making the topic much more relevant and important--because it simply must be stopped.

One thing Blanco does as a writer that makes the story more gripping is writing in present tense ("I struggle" vs. "I struggled"), which puts the reader in the middle of her pains and her thoughts as she endured them, giving the reader a hint of what it feels like to be in a state of fear and not know what might happen next. It hurts, by the way.

What interested me was how similar Blanco's thoughts are to my own on the various players in her personal history and her reactions to them. A target of bullying ends up classifying people into several general groups: the bullies themselves, the victims, the neutrals (those who won't help you, but won't help the bullies, either), the disengaged adults (who know what's going on, but don't intervene or tell you to "lighten up" or "get over it"), the responsible adults (who will actively stop acts of bullying--but who are not always present), and those rare few one can count on as actual friends.

Another thing Blanco gets just right is the social dynamic that allow the groups to function as they do. Blanco's version is worth reading; my approach is to call it a "herd mentality." If one thinks of bullies as predators, their behavior makes sense. They do not go after the biggest or strongest, but rather, like wolves chasing a herd of buffalo, they seek out the old, the weak, or the small--the ones that stand out from the herd and lack their protection. The herd (the large swathe of neutrals who neither bully nor are bullied) cluster together when a victim is picked off by a predator, glad not to be the one being singled out. Others, of course, will join in on the bullying to prove that they accept the wisdom of the herd and the predators that circle it. It isn't particularly pretty--and I'd be lying if I told you I was wholly victim my entire time in elementary through high school--but it is understandable. What Blanco makes perfectly clear is how badly the outcasts wish to become part of the herd, but how the herd reflexively rejects anyone perceived to be "different" in a bad way.

I look forward to buying and reading Blanco's second book, where she details what she's doing to help schools address bullying. She now conducts full-day, three-part seminars, where she talks to the students, the teachers, and then the parents about her experiences and what needs to be done to stop the bullying process. That would prove an interesting discussion in itself. She talks about having shoes and articles of clothing thrown into toilets (been there), receiving verbal or written threats (done that), enduring taunts in the locker room (hated it), and getting chased down hallways or streets and subsequently knocked about by her peers (bought the t-shirt). How the hell you repeatedly give lectures about all that is beyond me. I'd have written the book to get it out off my chest and then called it done, but as in childhood, Blanco is a fighter for the underdog, and she has a cause. God bless her.

The good news is that Blanco's story is not all pain and doom, and her methods of escaping the pain she endured will be familiar to any "geek" who subsequently became a successful adult later. I recommend the book to anyone over the age of ten, both those who are currently enduring bullying and those who are not. Jodee Blanco has a serious message to share, and it is that long-lasting and sometimes irreparable harm can be done by willful and unthinking pain inflicted by people who are told that being picked on is "just part of growing up." This book will make you think twice about what growing up means when you're on the wrong side of the herd.

Another School Shooting, Book Review: Manliness

This one irritates me even more than usual because it happened at my alma mater. Every time we go through one of these geeks-gone-mad-with-guns events, I get thoroughly P.O.ed. This kid's story hasn't come out yet; all we know is that he was a "skinny white kid." As I matched that description once upon a time, I'll tell my story because it bears repeating.

Twenty-odd years ago, I could've been Derek Klebold or any of those other skinny kids who got pushed to far too often by bullies. My sophomore picture is a sight to behold: greasy hair, unhappy expression, bad complexion. I favored military-style clothing at the time and had a deep interest in the military and weapons of various sorts. Today, my teachers would've dragged me in for counseling. As it was, I just went to church and read and wrote science fiction stories to vent my frustrations. The point being: I survived and grew out of it.

This bears directly on a book I'm reading right now, Manliness by Harvey C. Mansfield. The book deals with the "gender-neutral" society and the attempts--mostly by feminists--to weed out "manly" or simply masculine behavior. Aside from heroes in movies and cops and soldiers in the field, all other men are expected to be docile, violence-free, and utterly equal to women, despite 10,000 or more years of evolution stating otherwise.

Here are the lessons one learns, as a guy, on the school yard:

• Cowardice is not rewarded, it is considered contemptible.
• Cowardice can take many forms, but the primary one is the unwillingness to stand up for yourself, verbally or physically.
• If you make at least a valid attempt to fight back, you'll get more respect than asking someone politely to stop.
• Not all guys need to beat the cr@p out of every other guy just to prove who's the toughest. However, those who do act that way will only respect an act of self-defense. All other behaviors will result in continued attacks.
• Even egghead males have a ritualistic manner of testing the limits and strengths of others, be they potential friends, enemies, or strangers. Guys would call it "testing the other guy's manhood." My mother would call it teasing. Call it what you will, the male testing ritual is as old as Cain and Abel, and we know how that one turned out.

Now there is a difference between sheer aggressiveness and assertiveness, as the book points out. Assertiveness is aggressiveness with a purpose. Its purpose is to vigorously stand up for oneself, one's beliefs, or someone else. This willingness to fight for one's beliefs is what has kept women and children both protected and in peril for as long as human beings have been in existence. And this fighting spirit (aggressiveness, assertiveness) is the thing gender-neutral schools and human resource departments today are trying to tame, medicate, or get rid of. After all, physical biology still favors men over women in matters of violence, female bodybuilders and Xena notwithstanding. If society is to be gender-neutral, something must be done to overcome that unpleasant fact. Thus we have sensitivity training, "time outs," sexual harassment lawsuits, and ritalyn.

The ones who suffer most from this de-masculinization of the culture (not emasculation, that is a different issue) are the sensitive, brainy, hyper kids like me.They are the type B personalities who aren't particularly gifted in matters of physical prowess and who are often over-eager to please authority figures. So, when teacher/parent/preacher says, "Do unto others" or "Don't fight," they obey, and their peers tear them apart on the playground after school.

There was a time not so long ago when young boys were mentored by fathers, coaches, and male teachers on the proper applications of aggressiveness, violent and nonviolent sports, and even provided tips on how to fight properly. Young boys were brought up to respect discipline and restraint but also firmness and resolve in matters of honor, including the defense of women and children. Are any of those things taught now? Could they be without the PC police going nuts? I have not yet finished Mansfield's book, but my guess is that he's recommending that we do so anyway.

This brings me back to the kids who have gone nuts and shot people at Columbine, Virginia Tech, NIU, etc. It is my contention that these "quiet" kids are not just reacting with deadly force against bullies. They are having, in fact, a fundamental moral conflict between what their elders teach them in the classroom and what their peers teach them in the real world. They've obeyed and obeyed and obeyed, and not fought back. This has only earned them more ridicule and contempt from the peers, whom they simultaneously hate and crave respect from--and they see no way out. More importantly, they have been taught no other way out! And what ways they have been taught come from the media, and we see how well those lessons turn out.

Fortunately, I had a mother who respected the value of manliness. She backed me up when I decided to play baseball (badly, for one season, but still), play with guns, go to Cub Scouts, join karate--all activities that were considered normal for boys. If I started acting like a sissy (crying unnecessarily or for some minor reason, for example), she told me to grow up or even once, "Be a man." Amateur psychologist that she was, she also encouraged me to turn my energy elsewhere, to writing, to reading, to thinking about the future and the fact that adolescent pain is just that, and that it doesn't last forever.

And then, of course, I got to know my father after I graduated college, even lived with him for awhile. He introduced me to conservatism, masculine behaviors and ways of thinking in the office, more direct ways of thought. Through him I acquired more rectitude, stoicism, and maturity. By the time I left Orlando, he'd become my best friend. Hard to believe from a kid who smart- (and bad-)mouthed his divorced father for years. But it happened. And what I didn't learn from him, I learned from the conservatism he cultivated and the military and engineering role models I came to know in my professional life. No man is self-made; he is brought about through his contacts and, yes, his conflicts with others.

Earlier I reviewed The Dangerous Book for Boys, which I believe fills a need for boys growing up today. Equally important as teaching or allowing boys to do boyish things must come a renewed respect for manliness, and the maturity that comes with it. I hope those lessons are learned before another school becomes a damned statistic.