Sept. 13, 2005
We normally associate "bullies" as big kids in elementary schools shaking down the litter and weaker kids for their lunch money. But my dears, bullies can happen, even in adult hood. Only adult bullies do not shake us down for our lunch money, they shake us mentally for other things.
It might be for other reasons. Reasons like ex-spouses not paying child-support because they claim they cannot get a better job because they have a huge amount of child support hanging over their heads. Well, if they would have paid the child support in the first place, the amount of back child support wouldn’t have gotten out of control, now would it? But then the bully will try to get the ex-spouse that has the children to go to the court system and say that they don’t want the back child support so that the bully can get a better job so that they "can start sending money regularly." I’m sorry Mr. Bully, but if you want me to do this, you better send SOME money via Western Union so I know that you are a man of your word and won’t keep your stupid behavior of not paying your children what they have coming to them up.
Then there are the bullies that keep their spouses in line by controlling them through beatings and other methods of horror. People on the outside take a look at this relationship and wonder why the woman doesn’t walk. Being a victim of this in the past myself, I can tell you I didn’t walk because of pressure from my family to stay in the marriage and that the children belong in a two-parent house. Even if one of the parents is totally beating everyone in the house, you took your marriage vows seriously and you didn’t leave. I was wrong for leaving, a fact that is thrown up in my face during every phone call home.
But I’m a better person now and my son is becoming a better person because we have someone that is a loving man. A man that isn’t beating us on a daily basis and isn’t the cause of the break-up of my marriage as some people believe. We are with a man that is encouraging us through positive enforcement to be better people and for that is truly God’s doing.
The bully feels that they must push around others because there is something missing in their psyche. Perhaps they are being abused at home if they are a child. Or if they are an adult, perhaps they were raised in that environment and they don’t know any other way to live. They believe this is acceptable behavior. To make others hurt makes the bully feel better about themselves, because they too hurt on the inside. And we may never tap into the deep recesses of the brain of the bully to see what exactly makes them tick the way that psychiatrists have tapped into the brains of serial killers to profile them for the FBI.
To get into the brain of a bully would be a most frightening trip, I’m sure. One would never know what one might find there, pain and scars of childhood might be in the deep recesses. Maybe just the inner desire for power and control over people. And of course the bully maybe just doing harm to others without even knowing that they are doing harm to others. And they are under the impression that they are doing the world a service by telling another person when they are wrong and what they can do to better themselves. A perfect example of this type of bully is Janice Dickerson, the lady that claims to be the "World’s First Super Model" and her antics can be seen on VH1’s "Surreal Life" on Sunday Nights along with "America’s Next Super Model."
She seems to delight in not only saying rude things to others to their face and behind their backs. But she delights in the fact of trying to get her way on the "Surreal Life" by simply cursing the other celebrities on there and then using the excuse of "I’m a Super Model!" She is a model and a study in bullyism.
Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. They come at you in person and in your emails in-box. They even come at you over your phone. No matter how long this chunk of rock we mer humans exist on, there will always be bullies to harangue us and try to make us feel like we are lower than a snake’s belly.
sean, the concept of bullying is a great one to explore! i wanted to let you know about a potential resource for you to explore, if you wanted to. i went to a conference a few years ago and heard Rachel Simmons speak - it was pretty fantastic. she is the author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and does a great job describing the differences in the ways boys and girls often bully. generally speaking, boys' bullying is usually visible (pushing, insults, teasing) whereas girls' bullying can be much harder to spot because it is subtle. when girls bully it can be invisible to a teacher/adult because it involves body language, tone of voice, talking behind each others' backs, and more subtle exclusion.
ReplyDeleteanyways, i'd be into sharing my notes from her presentation if you are interested! also, here's her website, which i think has links to articles she's written: http://www.rachelsimmons.com/
love,caro
There's another great book about girls' socialization that deals with bullying (although I'm not so sure the author actually calls it that, but really - that's what happens) called Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman.
ReplyDeleteyes! and Queen Bees and Wannabes was a big resource/inspiration for the movie Mean Girls! (definitely worth seeing, if you haven't, in regards to the topic of bullying. also the topic of Tina Fey!)
ReplyDeleteSad part about this is the original author of this is a horrendous liar. The man who fathered the majority of her children was not, in fact, a deadbeat, but a man who was cut off from contact with his children whenever their mother or her new man got upset. The woman who wrote this article originally didn't even have the class to divorce her husband before moving cross-country to have another man's baby, and stayed married to her husband until he died - all the while living with another man she met via the internet. The man this author moved in with WAS, in fact, beating her middle child, oldest son. That boy has so many issues now that he's been in and out of lockup for things the two of them (the author and her new husband) fabricated. This author is NOT a nice woman. She has made attempts to publicly flame her own daughter, after Child Protective Services deemed her to be an unfit person to be left alone with her own grandchildren, and her daughter was too nice to tell her personally, because she didn't want to hurt her mother's feelings. I know this family personally, and whereas this IS a touching tribute to anti-bullying, this author will spout whatever she can to get attention, even to the point of slandering others.
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