to question why some people get away with saying what they want?

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Why do some people get away with saying what they want and others don't?

To give an example; one woman I've known for several years, very outspoken, to the point of being rude, just coming out with things like she doesn't like your hair colour or she thinks you need to lose weight. Shouts at people like a fish wife if anyone upsets or crosses her. Everyone tip toes around her, scared of upsetting her. One day her daughter had been really horrible to someone else's daughter at school but she went up to the other girls' mum and gave her a massive row on the playground and reduced the other mother to tears. The next day the mum that had been reduced to tears was all smiley and chatty with this woman. Why??!!

Another woman who is in a large group of friends I did go out for nights out with is similar. On some nights out she has been absolutely vile to one other group member in particular, so much so that everyone comments on it afterwards and says how horribly she behaved yet none of them fall out with her and they are all trying to stay in with her and arranging the nights out around what she does and doesn't want to do. Even the woman she is horrible to doesn't fall out with her and just puts up with it. I've stopped going on the nights out as it is truly sickening to see, and although I tried to stick up for the other woman several times, other group members told me to just leave it and not make a big deal of it.

I know people would fall out with me if I behaved like that and certainly wouldn't facilitate it. Not that I would want to but you know what I mean!

She gets away with it because people let her. She's obviously worked out that the more outrageous she is the less likely people are to stand up to her...and she's right isn't she? It's how dictators get away with it. they make sure anyone who will stand up to them is removed from the scene or humiliated, or isolated by the people she knows she can dominate. Look at any bully, he/she always has little henchmen who serve the bully in order to protect themselves from being bullied. That's how the dynamic works. and please note people like this have no enemies but they are thoroughly disliked by their friends.

My BIL is like this, DH actually did stand up to him and he went mental about it, such a shock to him when someone told him to his face he was an arse. However, not many people are like my DH, they roll over for a quiet life.

Go on the night out and give her hell. She is a plain bully end of and someone needs to stand up to her. Or you will be like one of her little sheep...bahhh!

I think it's partually because they have behaved like that people tend to shrug their shoulders and say "that's just X, she's like that".

I know my bil is known in his family for tactlessness/bad timing/putting his foot in it. Along the lines of having seen someone every week for 6 years manages to ask them how their dp is, for the first time ever, the week after they've broken up. His family tend to fall about laughing and say "oh that's just X".
I think if they'd tended to be disgruntled with him for doing it he'd have learnt a bit of carefulness, as it is I think he tends to use it to turn the attention on him and rather enjoys it.

Have to comment on this, as know a prime example. This girl was "the leader of our gang" from primary school. But really just a big (physically as well as mentally) bully. In my professional opinion she clearly has her own self-confidence issues (not that that is an excuse). In school I just tended to take her jibes in order to not lose my other so called "friends". Also I absolutely hate confrontations, so let stuff go a lot. Somehow got into her good books by the end of high school, and ended up sharing a flat in uni. What a mistake! She was (and probably still is) totally incapable of flexibility and empathy. Made me cry several times and I was genuinely afraid of her, to the extend that my social life must have suffered (she forbade me to bring anyone, least of all a male, in the flat!). Eventually she decided the course she was doing was not right for her and moved out. She is now a PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER. It's like handing your kids over to SATAN She must have had all the Uni admissions people under her spell to have got into teacher training.. or maybe they are so short of teachers that they'll take just about anyone without a criminal record. A few years ago (a couple of years after she moved out of our flat) she sent me an fb friend request. I decided to accept. Never communicated on it at all and eventually noticed that she'd "unfriended" me. Had a little giggle to myself then. She's just like the wind, or something. One minute she's blowing hot, then cold. But I've finally stopped caring.

ToysRLuv she sounds an absolute nightmare.

Yes, she was. Very troubled young woman.

Other people are scared of them.

I can be a bit rude, I suppose cutting comments are likely to spring forth when I am trying to be witty. I do hope however I am considered a loyal supporter of all my friends who I love dearly. I have rarely met the type described, save for in school. As an adult I'd hope I called someone on such behaviour.

Exactly what pandemoniaa said. I have always, through choice or not, been on the fringes of friendship groups - I was very shy as a child and never really learnt how to make friends. Whenever these bullying type friendships occur, they never EVER seem to happen to me. I think they just know that I have no interest in being part of some sort of dynamic.

Also I have an arsy face and if someone is acting like a dick I say "you're acting like a dick". Being an outsider has its advantages. If you're already on the outside, you can say what you like.

OP do either of these women every try to speak to you like that? Women like that tend to keep going with people who put up with it and it's hard to watch but often a bad idea to bring the focus of their attention to yourself if you know that others will keep letting her do it to them.

By the way, I am what is known as someone who speaks their mind and doesn't suffer fools gladly but I don't think it's fair to assume that I'd be a bully too, so please don't judge people based on comments like those.

The only thing I'd say about the bossy/loud/rude types (I know a couple of them), is that often the flip side is that they are tremendously good fun, intelligent, quick witted, entertaining.

So, for me, it's not that I'm bullied by them and too scared to break ranks, it's that they are still, on balance, worth hanging out with because they are great company.

Of course I am generalising and people are individuals but this has often been my experience.

Sometimes other adults are intimidated by strong personalities so they let things go they wouldn't otherwise. Also it can be the path of least resistance - this ISN'T school, we can't tell the teacher, what can you do? Just avoid at best.

Incidentally over the years I have found these "speak as I find" rude and domineering types to actually be crushingly insecure and have been known to blub like babies if anyone confronts them or calls them up on their behaviour.

SmethwickBelle - that's very interesting. I once worked with someone who made scathing comments about me in front of other colleagues. I hated it, sought advice from HR and challenged her. I was shaking like a leaf, until she starting crying. I found it all very odd. I did feel she was genuinely upset she'd hurt my feelings. After that we had an uneasy truce until she left. When I see her now, we get on fine

I often wonder if some of these "bullies" have personality disorders, Esp if they have a track record of dramatically falling out with people

I know a woman exactly like this. And I think it is correct to say that people are scared of her. When we would meet up she would spend the entire time gossiping about/ slagging off her 'friends'. She would of course no doubt do the same to me when I wasn't there. She wanted to be the Mother Hen of the group, knowing everyone's business. She used her 'authority' bullying to borrow money from people which took forever to get back (if at all). She finally came unstuck when she did it to the wrong person...

It is actually surprisingly hard to cut someone like this out of your life. I have now and and very glad to have done so.

Agree with the 'sheep' thing. It infuriates me too that people are given licence to act like arses by others. I can't stand people like that and don't ever put up with such bullhshit. The only place it is hard to not put up with that is the workplace but I'm a freelancer now so don't have to deal with bullshit office politics either. It's amazing how many people think it is acceptable to be this way - there is such an inflated sense of self-importance in these people.

Her approach works, why change. Agree with thosevwho saybthesevsort of people choose their circles though, if don't go along you are quickly dropped.

Useful to get assertive and have a few phrases ready for people like this, said in a calm smiling manner - nipping it in the bud is usually a lot easier than stewing. By getting away with minor stuff, their confidence to bully/be straight talking grows.

I don't like your hair like that - well I do thanks.
Slagging off x,y,z persons - Ah well their choice/no point dwelling (end convo/change topic).
Is that rude of me - yes it is a bit.
I need to borrow money (when you don't trust someone) - I dont lend money, it can lead to arguements.
Can you do (insert unreasonable request) - NO (with no additional apologies, explanations, excuses)
etc,etc.

I've got one tactless/straight talking friend that needed a few corners rounding off and by nipping her comments in the bud we get along fine. I guess its about setting boundaries with people.

I've had many other passing friends who have behaved like you described but have quickly cut them out if we are unable to reach a happy medium. Life is too short and full of lovely people to put up with people who behave badly. The sheep you guys have been referring to probably hate themselves inside for putting up with this bully and panic about being cast out of the group.

Was in this situation in early 20s with a group of people, psychopathic male lead of group feigned terminal illness to exert weird power over people - I became uncomfortable with it all but not assertive enough to confront bully. They were my life at that time and I worried about having no friends by removing myself from them but I did and was the best thing. O and he is still alive 15 yrs later. I joined an evening class to extend my circle and immediately met three lovely girls who I am still in contact with today.

I tend to do the same as you, Georgethecat. Like you say, there are so any lovely people that it seems silly to put up with anyone who is less than lovely.

I can think of 3 possible factors:

One is that often these people can be very entertaining and "life and soul of the party" when they don't happen to be getting at you - often including when they are bullying someone else (in a way that makes their cronies laugh). So people want to be in their circle because they enjoy the laughs and the action.

Another thing is that because they tend to have this "circle" of people, which may include a lot of the other interesting/popular people (who may actually be nice people themselves, except for putting up with the bully), dumping the bully can mean losing all these others as friends, not just the nasty one, if they decide to stick around (see popularity thing above!). I had a situation like this at school for a while, and found it very hard to dump the bully because she had suckered in pretty much all my original friends, and pretty much everyone else in our year I might have wanted to be friends with. So frankly there weren't many others left to hang out with instead!

And lastly in my experience, these people can themselves often swing between quite nasty, and occasionally very nice (to the same people). It's a bit like the domestic abuse thing I guess, if they were being nasty to you all the time you would leave, but instead they swing between abuse and acting all lovely to keep their victims sucked in. (There's also the variant, in these cases, where they suddenly stop picking on victim 1, and including them in the "fun" of getting at victim 2 instead - so victim 1 is so relieved to no longer be the victim and instead be "one of the gang" again temporarily, that they are happy to join in laughing at the new victim).

Really I guess the only way to deal with them is to build up the courage to challenge them every time they are like this, regardless of the cost... but that's hard enough for adults to do, never mind children!

And lastly in my experience, these people can themselves often swing between quite nasty, and occasionally very nice (to the same people). It's a bit like the domestic abuse thing I guess, if they were being nasty to you all the time you would leave, but instead they swing between abuse and acting all lovely to keep their victims sucked in. (There's also the variant, in these cases, where they suddenly stop picking on victim 1, and including them in the "fun" of getting at victim 2 instead - so victim 1 is so relieved to no longer be the victim and instead be "one of the gang" again temporarily, that they are happy to join in laughing at the new victim).

I think this is a big part of it. Certainly in my experience.

The other thing is that people don't want to draw attention to themselves or to be perceived as weak and sometimes they're really friendly with the bully afterwards as a way of showing that they weren't really bothered by what they said. Horrible, horrible people.

Totally agree with InigoMontoya (love the name by the way). What often happens also is that the bully tends to be the most outspoken person and so sets the "agenda" of the group early on. The bully decides what kind of group it is and then everyone feels compelled to fall in line with that. It happens to a certain extent on MN, particularly in more specialist topics, where a new person comes along, posts a question that is perhaps naive or done to death and the "old guard" come along with in-jokes and jibes that solidify their position as the guardians of the group and induce the new person to either leave or fall in line with the party opinion.

People definitely behave differently in groups than they do in 1 to 1 situations. That's why I've never been keen on groups of friends - it always ends up with a couple of people controlling everything and jockeying for position. I have one particular group of really good friends whom I love dearly but I deliberately try to see them separately as when we all get together they are a nightmare - two in particular are very overbearing and, yes, quite bullying really, in their behaviour, despite being lovely people outside of the group. I had to give one of them a good talking to at my wedding as they were behaving so badly. He apologised (and cried ) and could see that he was being a shit, but I know in a similar situation he would behave the same way. He's quite an insecure person deep down and I think he just can't handle uncertainty which makes him very unreasonable in a group situation where he feels he doesn't have control.

Group behaviour is a fascinating aspect of psychology. Groups have been shown to influence people to engage in all sorts of mad behaviour that they would never even consider while alone.

I know someone like this. Can't have an evening with her without her starting umpteen conversations with 'I'm not being funny but...' followed by slagging someone off. I just stopped spending any time with her. People were scared of her as she would actually make stuff up so that she could shit stir. Awful person.