bullying and the 105%

[rm]

Bullying happens for lots of reasons.

These include:
- bullies choosing to bully.
- cycles of abuse.
- biological impulses towards hierarchy.
- cultural glorification of violence.
- cultural shaming of various traits and interests.
- adults who look the other way.
- childhood and adult fears about identity and fitting in.
- features that people who are bullied can't change.
- features that people who are bullied shouldn't be asked to change.
- features that it may be reasonable to suggest people who are bullied address.

But when I was bullied as a kid, and prank calls came to my house calling a "cock-sucking whore," let me tell you the right response, when I was TWELVE and at an all-girls school, was not for my father to ask me what I had done to deserve this.

*

I'm one of those people who tries hard to live life at 105%. I realize that's a privilege to a given degree, but I do also think -- perhaps wrongly and ruthlessly -- that everyone's always got another tiny, extra sliver of fucking effort to give.

But it's not a damn obligation.

And while I am also always about strategy and pragmatism and survival, because those are my choices and my nature, victim-blaming is always wrong.

Which is why I find this post from theferrett upsetting. And his response to my (very possibly distressing for many) comment even more so.

*

I have made the choice, more literally than most people, over and over again, not to change my name, not to change my face, and not to run away from home.

Would you like me better if I was named Heather? How about Aleksandra? Andrea? Jenny? When I joined SAG, I thought long and hard about these things, and it was a terrible moment. Look, it's my actual job to make people like me.

You know who doesn't have that job? Some random eight-year-old who isn't beautiful, who has "weird" interests, who's a different race than her classmates, who has non-gender confirming hobbies, who's too smart, who has a difficult home life, who lives with a disability, etc., etc., etc.

So don't fucking tell me I didn't work hard enough not to be bullied. Or that I should have just worn a pretty dress. Or not been sick. Or tried not to learn things. Or made my parents name me something else.

I lived. That was, in this regard, all the work I was ever supposed to have to do.

Comments

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I think theferrett is hearing things in your comment that aren't there.

And I also think that there's a certain gap here that I don't know how to express without pissing people off, but it's the same thing that, say, keeps people dieting. If you (generic) just try a little harder, you can fit in. A little harder. just a little more. Try harder, it's just out of reach....

But there's always a group who knows that it's *not* just out of reach, it's impossible. Because of race, or gender, or income status, or physical characteristic, or or or.

I fall squarely into the latter category, theferrett into the former. And yes indeed, do his words sound bitterly useless at best to my ears.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

You have a really good point here. I am also in the latter category, and a bit tired of having people in the former category say, "Well, your experience is anomalous." If so, there are a lot of fucking anomalies out here, and we get tired of being invisible when people make Pronouncements.

[naath.livejournal.com]

It was generally in reach for me ('normality')... but why should I have to strain to reach it? I could strain to be better at maths instead.

In general I did OK, I think this is because where I went to school the anti-bullying stuff was actually functioning, very few people got away with being bullies. I was ignored a lot, and not well liked - but then *I didn't like them either* and was mostly happy to simply be left alone; I was never physically or verbally bullied.

I hate it when people conflate "could if you tried" with "can't". But I also hate it when people assume that everyone who "could if you tried" *should*. So, yeah, pretty damn angry with theferrett.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

If you (generic) just try a little harder, you can fit in. A little harder. just a little more. Try harder, it's just out of reach....

Yes, and if you can't reach it, it's because you're not trying hard enough, so you are lazy and morally reprehensible, and you deserve everything that's meted out to you.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

"Yes, and if you can't reach it, it's because you're not trying hard enough, so you are lazy and morally reprehensible, and you deserve everything that's meted out to you."

Very much yes.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

There is also the vast category of knowing that it's possible, and not knowing the how of possibility. (True for autistic spectrum children, and also for other ones -- I am the farthest thing from autistic, and spent a great deal of my childhood aware that there were politics, that I didn't know how they worked, and that I didn't know how to get better at them. I learned, but it took years.)

We don't tend to educate our children in social structures and in their manipulation. So they either learn by instinct and osmosis or they don't learn at all, or have to teach themselves.

And this is basically why I wish rhetoric was still part of basic education, but that's kind of off-topic.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

We don't tend to educate our children in social structures and in their manipulation. So they either learn by instinct and osmosis or they don't learn at all, or have to teach themselves.

So much agreement. (As one who was and feels still is perpetually between the latter of those two alternatives.)

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

I am very unlikely to be involved in raising children (mine or other people's), but if I am, knowing how social groups work, how to influence and use and enjoy them, and, damnit, how to write like Churchill and talk like Cicero -- will be part of their education.

Which will likely create problems of its own, of course, the worst of which is raising children who believe that other children are there to be manipulated.


But still.

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

::nods:: Where as I... had some of that arrogance about not being liked. "People should like who I am on the inside" without ever understanding the truth of "People DO judge you on first impressions of you and how you present yourself." I DID need that kind of direction or socialization. Would it have made a difference? Maybe... probably not. I was still way too smart and arrogant about it for my own good.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Whereas I was told by so many people, _including my parents_, that there was no point because I was too fat/ugly/whatever to be likeable, that I figured there was no point trying.

And then my mother used to get at me as a teenager that I didn't "take pride in myself".

It's easier to get away from being bullied if you have _someone_ on your side. Some of us went home for the second shift.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

If you (generic) just try a little harder, you can fit in. A little harder. just a little more. Try harder, it's just out of reach....

Wow, I think you have really hit on something that I encounter very frequently among white cis men (particularly but not only straight white cis men) who experienced bullying because of their personalities or interests--they think that the rest of us have as much option to "pass" as they did.