She had just finished reading Church School Blues, and she had a question.
"Why did you let all this happen to you?"
"If it had been me," she added, "I would have set them straight right away!"
If they were climbing over the walls of the toilet stall, staring down at her, why, she would have brought a squirt gun to school and it might not be water she squirted up at them, either!
The answer to that question is complex. It is a question that bothered me for years. Why did I allow them to bully me?
One problem with that question is that it implies blame upon the bullied instead of on the bullies. And yet, I'm not going to take the easy out and say that her question isn't valid. The fact is that the few times I was able to stand up to them, they weren't very tough at all. My bullies would have been ridiculously easy to have set in their place had I been up to the task.
Had I been up to the task.
But I wasn't up to the task, and this is where a term I ran across recently makes things more clear. Some people avoid the term "bullying." They use, instead, "peer abuse."
Understanding bullying as abuse allows us to consider the dynamics that occur in other types of abusive relationships. In abusive relationships, there is an unequal distribution of power, for whatever reason. In my case, the obvious inequality is that there were more of them than there were of me. They were louder, more confident, and they had the support of the other students and the teachers. There were other inequalities that placed more power on their side, such as my own personality which was introspective and creative.
But it was the abusive factor that froze me in place and struck me down again and again. When one is a abused, the boundaries shift and points of reference are skewed. One is no longer certain where one stands, and one becomes unsure if what is being done is, indeed, abuse. Words are like fists, and so one staggers about just as stunned as if one has been punched in the face. It is a head blow.
Disoriented from the blows, one begins to question one's own perception of reality. "Is this really happening or am I over-reacting? And if it's happening, is it because I am failure as a human being?" The bullies and bad teachers, and even well-meaning parents are quick to assure one that it is indeed a case of exaggeration and failure to try hard enough.
Add in immaturity to the quotient and you have a kid who is twisting in the wind with no life history for reference and comparison.
I am fairly certain that if a group of faces appeared over the bathroom stall today, that I'd be as capable as my questioning reader of shoving something into those faces, but I now have decades of experience that helps me to define what the boundaries are. I understand now that even if I really am a misfit, even if I am ugly, even I am any number of other negative descriptions, that nobody has the right to violate personal boundaries that make me uncomfortable.
But one doesn't have that wisdom when the boundaries are blurred and the points of reference are unrecognizable. Then it is a matter of endurance, and if you can just endure until you can find a point of reference that makes sense, until you can begin to make sense of the whole dynamic, then you become a survivor. But for most of us, that comes later.
It takes years.
------------
The term "Peer Abuse" is credited to Elizabeth Bennett.
The answer to that question is complex. It is a question that bothered me for years. Why did I allow them to bully me?
One problem with that question is that it implies blame upon the bullied instead of on the bullies. And yet, I'm not going to take the easy out and say that her question isn't valid. The fact is that the few times I was able to stand up to them, they weren't very tough at all. My bullies would have been ridiculously easy to have set in their place had I been up to the task.
Had I been up to the task.
But I wasn't up to the task, and this is where a term I ran across recently makes things more clear. Some people avoid the term "bullying." They use, instead, "peer abuse."
Understanding bullying as abuse allows us to consider the dynamics that occur in other types of abusive relationships. In abusive relationships, there is an unequal distribution of power, for whatever reason. In my case, the obvious inequality is that there were more of them than there were of me. They were louder, more confident, and they had the support of the other students and the teachers. There were other inequalities that placed more power on their side, such as my own personality which was introspective and creative.
But it was the abusive factor that froze me in place and struck me down again and again. When one is a abused, the boundaries shift and points of reference are skewed. One is no longer certain where one stands, and one becomes unsure if what is being done is, indeed, abuse. Words are like fists, and so one staggers about just as stunned as if one has been punched in the face. It is a head blow.
Disoriented from the blows, one begins to question one's own perception of reality. "Is this really happening or am I over-reacting? And if it's happening, is it because I am failure as a human being?" The bullies and bad teachers, and even well-meaning parents are quick to assure one that it is indeed a case of exaggeration and failure to try hard enough.
Add in immaturity to the quotient and you have a kid who is twisting in the wind with no life history for reference and comparison.
I am fairly certain that if a group of faces appeared over the bathroom stall today, that I'd be as capable as my questioning reader of shoving something into those faces, but I now have decades of experience that helps me to define what the boundaries are. I understand now that even if I really am a misfit, even if I am ugly, even I am any number of other negative descriptions, that nobody has the right to violate personal boundaries that make me uncomfortable.
But one doesn't have that wisdom when the boundaries are blurred and the points of reference are unrecognizable. Then it is a matter of endurance, and if you can just endure until you can find a point of reference that makes sense, until you can begin to make sense of the whole dynamic, then you become a survivor. But for most of us, that comes later.
It takes years.
------------
The term "Peer Abuse" is credited to Elizabeth Bennett.
