American style bullying

English added by me :)

Rejected anthology submission

Years ago I got a friend request from my childhood bully. I was so confused, I sent her a message asking her why? We weren’t even friends? And she went on some long bizarrely abusive rant which showed that ah… some people never grow up I guess?

my college does themed backgrounds depending on the week and this is their anti-bullying week’s one omfg

badgirl675 strikes again

the worst memories of being bullied is when ppl would pretend not to be bullying you and ask you questions and u thought they were just asking u stuff but they were actually laughing at you the entire time and u had no idea bcos you were young and you didnt understand why people would be mean to you when you didnt do anything wrong. 

I spent a lot of my childhood in a constant state of “this is a trap but I don’t know how”

It fucks you up permanently, I still have trust issues whenever someone I don’t know too well is being too nice to me

this. i never trusted “popular guys” in school because they would always come up to me and ask me questions and act super interested in me all of a sudden. i know exactly what you’re trying to do, just get a rise out of me by harassing me when i am trying to mind my own business, reading a book or waiting for my ride or something. i would act extremely disinterested and usually tell them to leave me alone, and they’d go back to their buddies and have a laugh about that weird quiet girl.

also, i still have a thing where i’m in public and i hear people laughing - i immediately assume they’re laughing at me and panic like i’ve done something wrong or embarrassing. it’s just my instinctive reaction.

#GrowingUpUgly When guys in middle school would get dared by their friends to ask you out and see if you say yes as a joke

How about growingupugly and then turning out sort of okay looking but you don’t know for sure because your self esteem is shot and you’re convinced you look awful?

#GrowingUpUgly Being so wholly convinced of your hideousness that as an adult you now literally cannot even imagine that someone would pay you a compliment and mean it; the only conceivable thing that could be happening is that they’re either a) taking the piss like the boys in school used to or b) so repulsed by you that they feel sorry for you and are telling you you’re pretty because they think you need to hear it.

Hurts how true this is though

I don’t know if this helps, but I’d like to say it anyway just in case it does.

None of you were ugly.

The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the “ugly girl” – the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.

And she looked like a normal little girl.

She looked no different than the rest of the class.

She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself “but I WAS ugly” – I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you weren’t.

Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives – and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming – the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.

Since I’ve become an adult, I don’t recall ever seeing an “ugly” kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.

I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy “standards of beauty”. Are any of the things that society fixates on as “ugly” truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness – to control them – to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.

The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy – we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.

No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldn’t grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldn’t grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.

You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an “excuse” to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.

An “ugly child” wouldn’t know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They don’t grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.

And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed – even if you feel you are still that ugly now…

That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. It doesn’t mean you won’t find love, and trust and happiness.

You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.

And if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice your worth – look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.

There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see “ugliness” – they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.

If no one else says it today, and even if you can’t say it yourself, I would like to tell you that you are not ugly. That you were not ugly. That you did nothing wrong. That you did not deserve to be treated the way that you have been and that you deserve happiness and love and respect. And you will find it.

I want to add some of my experience:

I was teased by a few people in primary school, sometimes for being best friends with a boy (because that had to mean we were boyfriend and girlfriend, right?). The more common thing, that is still with me today, was being called fat and lard-ass and such. For one of my birthdays (idk how old I was, but 18 or more) my dad gave me an old photo of me. It said it was from when I was 12/13 (though I’m not sure because of my hair). The point is, I’d grown up thinking I was always fat, but in that photo I saw a pretty average child.

Being called fat from a young age is part of the reason why I am fat today, and why I struggle with my weight and body image, and why I have a complicated relationship with food.

If I hadn’t been called fat, I might not had gained as much weight as a teenager, adults in my life might not have commented on it, and I might have had a better relationship with my body.

So, yeah. Try to remember that children make up reasons to tease and bully other children, and that what they said isn’t necessarily true.

why do they always showcase ‘bullies’ in cartoons as being some punk with a mohawk like

when was the last time you saw a cool guy in a leather jacket not minding his own business it’s usually some basic asshole in a graphic tee that has something to say

Because the people at the top have a vested interest in making people assume guys like them can’t be bullies.

Punk fashion is coded to be bad and untrustworthy. Suits and clean-cut clothes are coded to be good and upstanding people.

People with tats, body mods, dyed hair, funky hair cuts are coded to be dirty and lazy. Close-cropped hair, little to no stubble, zero body mods or tats, and nothing colourful is coded as clean and professional.

The people at the top would rather you see the group they fear the most as the enemy so you never question them or threaten their power.

Will Poulter left Twitter because people were calling him ‘ugly’ after he appeared in ‘Bandersnatch’.

This man, who is an actual gem, is anti-bullying, the ambassador of an anti-bullying organisation, critiques whitewashing, critiques the media for not calling white shooters “terrorists”, volunteers for charities, and is genuinely a nice human being.

And all people can think of saying is “eww he’s ugly”? “he looks like that ugly kid from toy story” (which, by the way, he dressed up as Sid from Toy Story for Halloween one year, so he knows the joke and decided to dress up while also raising awareness for bullying with it), “he’s an ugly white boy”.

Will deserves so much better than that. The man isn’t even ugly, but even if he was there’s so much worse things to be.

Completely normal. No magic, and no signs of any sickness. You’re wrong.

My 4 year old nephew loves to paint his nails. Any time he sees someone wear nail polish he asks if he can have some too. The most difficult part is getting him to decide what color, because he he wants all of them.

Nail polish is for everyone.

The kid’s favorite football player responded with support.

THISSSSS

I’m actually crying. This is some A++++++ parenting right here! Rock on, Sam!

Facts that adults don’t tell you about bullying

- Communication doesn’t work on bullies. Telling a bully they’re making you feel bad is the wrong way to go. They want to make you feel bad. That’s the point.

- being kind to a bully doesn’t always mean they’ll stop. Sometimes it means they’ll just use your kindness to manipulate you while still continuing to bully you.

- not every bully has a sympathetically tragic home life. Sometimes people are just mean. Sometimes people just get off on hurting others.

- on that note, a tough home life is a reason, not an excuse. You don’t have to put up with bullying because somebody’s life sucks, just like you don’t have to let someone mug you because they’re broke.

- in order to forgive someone, they have to apologize first. If your bully has not apologized to you, you do not owe them anything.

- getting bullied as a kid can still mess you up in adult life. Maybe kids grow out of being bullies, but the marks they left often don’t go away.

- there are ways to get people to stop bullying you, but they almost all involve being mean back.

- as long as parents keep raising shitty bullying kids, there will be bullies. No amount of assemblies and hand-drawn posters will fix the problem. It’s the parents’ fault.

- It’s not your responsibility to fix your bully or to stop the abuse they send your way, but some adults sure will act like it is.

- Many times (especially in the case of girls) your friends can be your bullies. This makes things even worse as these are people who know you and your intimate secrets and use them to their advantage. If your friends are bullies, don’t take crap from them. Get new friends. 

im gonna throw in that its never your fault, people will pick a target to gang up on because theyd rather it be you than them. even if you think “this must be because im weird”- everyone is weird, in different ways. anyone can be made a target. it’s not just you for some reason in particular, i promise.

why do they always showcase ‘bullies’ in cartoons as being some punk with a mohawk like

when was the last time you saw a cool guy in a leather jacket not minding his own business it’s usually some basic asshole in a graphic tee that has something to say

Adulthood is hearing kids yelling outside and going out there and yelling at them for trying to throw some other kid’s wallet on the roof, and hoping the middle school is still open.

Update: School is open, found stickers in backseat.  Hope Jessica likes goldfish.

Final Update: Not only was school still open, Jessica and her parents were there looking for the wallet.  They thought she had lost it, she wasn’t sure and was close to a meltdown becuase she couldn’t find it in any logical place.  Had a talk with the principal about bullying and helped ID the kids out of a yearbook. Even if the administration doesn’t do anything, at least her parents believe her now. 

So for me that was a two-minute conversation with some kids, and a ten-minute detour on the way home.  For her, that was stopping a massive panic attack, validation in front of her authority figures, and hopefully some action to prevent future bullying.

If you think you see something, step in.  If you find something that’s lost, return it.  Even if it’nothing, it’s better than letting someone get hurt.

Also she liked the stickers.

Burger King just released one of the best anti-bullying PSAs I’ve ever seen

This really got to me. Like how can y’all just sit there and not do shit but quick to get up over a burger

I’m over here crying my eyes out

K second commercial that’s made me cry this morning

This made me want to hug the bullied actor and eat some BK fries

I hope they dragged every one and told them exactly what they meant. You did nothing for that kid but you got up for this four dollar burger. Don’t worry, here’s a fresh one.

Wow

I was thrilled to pieces when I saw this scene. Disney could have written Gideon off like some bully character who never really amounted to anything, or got what was coming to him like a lot of those characters do in their movies.  Gideon made something of himself. He’s a pastry chef, something that’s not traditionally a job for men in media. And as soon as Judy speaks to him, he immediately apologizes to her. He doesn’t try to shrug it off as no big deal, or say that it was just boys being boys or whatever; he knows he hurt her, and he owns up to it. And Judy immediately forgives him. 

Well done, Disney. 

Also the language that he used is not something that he would have most likely grown up hearing/using. Describing his failings as self-doubt that manifested into “unchecked rage and aggression” sounds SO MUCH like therapy speak. So he’s either gotten counseling to help him with some of his problems, or sought out literature to help himself. A++ disney :)

This movie is a treasure.

the worst memories of being bullied is when ppl would pretend not to be bullying you and ask you questions and u thought they were just asking u stuff but they were actually laughing at you the entire time and u had no idea bcos you were young and you didnt understand why people would be mean to you when you didnt do anything wrong. 

I spent a lot of my childhood in a constant state of “this is a trap but I don’t know how”

This stayed with me. Sometimes when people are nice to me, I still think they have bad intentions.

It took me a very very long time to unlearn this

all public school anti-bullying activism is extremely transparent and meaningless

it usually consists of “tell your bully you dont want to treated that way and theyll understand because they Obviously dont want to hurt you because nobody is evil ever! :)”

“tell an adult or a teacher what’s happening!” okay but what if they dont believe me or think i deserve it or that if i ignore it it will go away, what then brenda

what about when the bully is an adult or a teacher, brenda