Have you ever been a bully? Why?

[Sophiehoney]

This thread, if there's any interest, might get dark so this is just a trigger warning.

The recent thread about someone being contacted by her school bully was really long and I noticed a few people sympathising with the bully and at least one person admitting that they were bullies.

I suspect there probably were a few more people that bullied people but didn't admit it.

Name change if you must but I am just genuinely interested - if you were a bully, why did you do it?

Or if you're not a bully, feel free to give your reasons why you think they do it!

My 18 year old son did the same thing in college. His friends autistic older brother was being bullied mercilessly. DS cornered the bully and told him he’d kick shit out of him if he didn’t pack it in. DS got caught and reprimanded by 4 teachers!! He was threatened with exclusion for it. He left college quite soon after, sadly he had no respect for the teaching staff after that.

Also - I don’t think we do (hold children to different ethical standards). If an adult tried on some of the stuff detailed on this thread they’d be in prison for GBH, or if it was mental torture, the HR department would get on their case.

In fact, I’d throw the question back at you and say: why do we let children get away with beating each other to a pulp, racist or other verbal abuse or longterm psychological torture of another child?

Being a child is no excuse for doing such wicked things over such a sustained period. One-off episodes, or ‘losing it’ for some specific reason aren’t necessarily bullying. Bullying goes on and on and on and causes lifelong harm. It involves sadism and cruelty, not just a bit of temper.

Well done to him. I’m not surprised he lost respect for those teachers. - I’ve done that myself and I WAS a teacher!

I suppose I was thinking of less extreme bullying than your examples (sorry didn’t read the whole thread). But children are treated differently in courts aren’t they - the things you mention are crimes and should be reported to the police obviously. But we realise that children have diminished responsibility compared to adults even for violent crimes etc. I’m not excusing or minimising anything just acknowledging that as a society we have deemed that children are less responsible for their actions (presumably because they do not understand the consequences).

Over my teaching career I encountered some worrying attitudes towards bullying. Granted, this is going back into the 20th century, but I suspect some teachers - like some people- may still feel like this.

When told of a boy who was being bullied on a regular basis “Yeah - but have you seen him? He asks for it really, doesn’t he?” (A senior male teacher.)

Or from a woman teacher, about a girl being bullied: “ Well, are you surprised? She’s a totally different kind of person to them (the bullies) - hopeless at sport and wet as a floor rag. They’re never going to get along “.

I so hope things have changed.

Oh I quite agree and do not condone bullying in any and all forms. There must be consequences.

But unlike some on this thread, I don’t think bullies are a fundamentally different type of person, nor do I think they are irredeemable.

I am finding it interesting to see how some posters are expressing their own hurt and seeking catharsis by laying into the self-confessed ex-bullies on this thread. That anger and hurt engender aggression (even the passive kind) really shouldn’t be surprising to them. And the posters here are adults, not children.

When I was at primary school,most of the teachers where bullies

I can remember being sent to the staff room and over heard every single teacher pulling me apart and saying that I deserved any bullying I got because I was a 'ugly girl' and I need to be 'toughened up'

They where ripping apart my hair (my mother kept it very short-the girls who's faced fitted had long hair)my clothes (whatever my mother could blag off other parents or the local jumble sale) the fact I was miserable (my home life was hell) my personality,the fact I bit my fingernails until they bled due to the bullying,the fact I was dirty and smelly, and that I was 'thick' (I'm dyslexic not stupid)

These where women that aged from about 40-70 about a 6/7 year old girl

The worst one made a point of befriending my mother so I couldn't get away from her at home either

She went back to work and I heard her slagging off my bedroom which 'is worse than her face'

These women made sure I never got a part in any school play or concert-not once,they couldn't even pull up a part as a sheep or a star for me

I was made,every year,to sit by the edge of the stage by myself (just far enough to not be part of the plays and just enough for others to bully me for not being good enough)

I was always the last to be picked for whatever,never chosen to do something good,never once got star of the week/a gold star for my work-that was for the favourites

They couldn't even think of anything nice to say about me at parents evenings-i was really good at art and English and tried my hardest to learn (even with the teacher openly hating me and the sly bullies getting away with bullying me in front of the teacher)but all they could say was 'she's very behind,shes just stupid'

It's a long story,but I ended up doing my school work experience at that school (thanks to my mother pulling a few strings) and this same woman was up my arse,telling me id grown up into 'a sophisticated woman'

I remember glaring at her and walking off,only to be shouted at by my mother for being rude to the old crone

Rude?I wish id let rip at the evil bitch-most will be dead now and I hope they burn in hell (not you Mrs York,you where lovely and did your best to stick up for me)

Some people are not fit to be teachers,I'm convinced they do it for the power they get over children as they can't do it to their own age group

Enwarrall, I’m sorry if you’ve already explained upthread but - were you bullied as a child?

I feel very strongly that unless you’ve experienced it yourself or had a bullied child (like me) you just cannot understand the real effects. I honestly don’t mean to sound rude, but I don’t respect ideas which have no basis in real experience here. As a former teacher I saw a lot of bullying (students AND teachers!) as well as what happened to my daughter over almost a decade.

I also had training about bullying which bore no relation to reality, with the emphasis almost exclusively on excusing and understanding the bully and frankly minimising their behaviour. There were mantras such as “We all could be bullies in some circumstances “ or “Bullying comes from sadness inside “ (someone has already trotted that one out on here).

I totally acknowledge that it’s probably the most intractable problem for schools to deal with. They want to issue a few useless platitudes which make them seem inclusive and forgiving and hope that a) the victim shuts up and puts up and b) they can all breathe a sigh of relief and move on, having ticked those crucial boxes for Ofsted. This was my experience both as a teacher and a parent.

What I’d like to see is acknowledgment of how serious and difficult the problem is and a policy which absolutely and unequivocally puts the victim’s interests first, with no excuses made.

@TheGetAlongGang

I’m so sorry, but not surprised, that this happened to you. I hope life has turned out better for you and well done for not letting your bullying teacher get away with her hypocrisy.

Unless posters are searching for the people who admit to bullying on every thread and being horrible to them I don’t feel like what is said in here needs policing with some wondrous insight that ‘hurt people hurt people’.

People come on here and get ripped to pieces because they don’t wash their bedding 3 times a week so I think this is quite mild considering.

A lot of bullies work in mental health services. It gets covered up and they are protected by those in senior positions. It’s not always about what you know, it’s about who you know and whether your face fits in. Unfortunately bullying doesn’t stop in the playground. It can happen in the workplace too with devastating consequences.

It baffles me why anyone working in mental health services would actively bully others or choose to be a bystander. They must realise the effects that bullying has on others so why do it? And why do they work in mental health?

It may be that the only time they realise the effects bullying has on others is when their own kids get bullied. And I bet they would be the first to complain if that happens.

Bullies need to remember that what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts. Some call in karma. You reap what you sow.

I dont really understand why the idea that not all bullies are irredeemable seems to downplay the impact of bullying on the victim to people on this thread? Cant both things be true?

Along similar lines, I recently had some contact with an organization which treats sex offenders who have accessed indecent images of children. Its not work I could do. But if it stops some of them from re-offending, I am glad someone is doing it. That does not mean I feel less for the victims or think their suffering should be dismissed - indeed, I have spend a career treating people for the damage it caused. At the heart of it, I want all such offending to stop.

Same with bullies - I would like it to never happen again. And if that means trying to understand and work with bullies, as well as with their victims, of course that needs to be done.

I've sometimes wondered about a school friendship I had. The term "frenemy" didn't exist or we didn't know it. We were supposedly best friends and inseparable but in reality we were in a perpetual pissing contest with each other. I don't know if it counts as bullying because to be honest we were both horrid to each other, but generally I came off better for various reasons. I think we made each other insecure; we were both bright but she was athletic organised and a science/maths person while I was not good at sports but good at dancing, scatty and a total art fart. You'd think we'd just enjoy being good at different things but we were just always in competition even though we had totally different interests and talents.

I think with hindsight she may have been autistic. We both had bad home lives but mine was much worse, full on abusive, and it took me a while to learn that I had been desensitised to a lot of awful things that upset most people. There was nothing wrong with how she looked but she was awkward and as we went through puberty I got more attention from boys and learned to socialise better, which is why I came off better even though we both gloated when we outdid the other. One time we had an argument and weren't speaking but I had an alternative circle and she hadn't so she was isolated for a day or two until we worked it out. It was never physical.

I think that's the closest I've ever come. We did both grow out of it and had a couple of years of being genuinely friends as young adults but we grew apart.

I was bullied in the first year of secondary, that passed and school became okay. However, a different insidious kind of bullying started in upper sixth...nasty slanderous gossip and assault to boot !
Unluckily for me I then developed a physical disease as then undiagnosed and was treated like a social pariah... complete bloody nightmare 😳
Effects still with me.

I can post on here anonymously. Yes I have bullied someone and I'm ashamed of it. Someone once asked me to be their guarantor for their house and I said no. I fancied her then fiance at the time. So I mocked and harassed her for years. I realized I had taken it too far when I sent some flowers to her now husband's work and sent them anonymously. So I realized I had to stop. I realized my problems were nothing to do with this person and they were all about me. So I unfriended her on all social media platforms about 5 years ago. Never seen or heard from her since.

Yes I was a bully, and was bullied, at high school.
genuinely, I didn’t see either a bullying at the time. I had, and still have, a quick perception and sharp sense of humour. I would make jokes and wind people up, and often this would be someone quiet or vulnerable. I thought it was funny but I realise now that it was probably hurtful and humiliating. I feel ashamed.
i was bullied by some older girls at my school, mostly name calling and telling others that they were going to beat me up (they didn’t).
apparently because I was a ‘slag’.

I've just remembered, there was a girl who tried to bully me and my friend and we turned it back on her. She took a dislike to us (we weren't very cool) and started seeking us out to tell us we were incredibly ugly and would never get boyfriends. It was unfortunate that she had a very upturned nose, so after a while we began pushing our noses up when she started on us and calling her Piggy, oinking and suggesting that she wasn't in a position to insult how anyone looked. She made out that she didn't care but she did soon stop insulting us
(after threatening to have her brother kill us after school, and quieting down when she heard my
friend had three older brothers who had all served in the army, and anyway we weren't worried). However, we did do it a few times to her before we realised she wasn't starting on us any more and was actually running away and we ought to stop or we'd become the new bullies.

One of the girls who bullied my daughter badly is now a Christian missionary in Nepal. This fascinates me.

Some pps have mentioned that either their bullies, or themselves (having once been a bully) have gone into 'caring professions' such as nursing, care or teaching.

If you've bullied when young and then entered one of these professions - could you say something about why you chose that path and how you reconcile it with what you did in the past? Do you, for example, think of the irony? Or have you blotted out your past behaviour?

I'm genuinely interested, because obviously child bullies grow into adults and while some must mature and have regrets, maybe some don't. They might be in denial or possibly make excuses for their previous behaviour?

I wouldn’t say I was a bully however I did batter a few girls who were bullying my twin sister to the point they hospitalised her.

Not something I’d do now, I’m not proud of my actions but I’m also not ashamed either.

My teenage brain wanted the bullies to stop and the only way to do that was to fight them (we tried schools, going directly to the parents, police etc).

They didn’t go near my sister again, I then got the reputation of being the hard twin, so no one messed with her again in fear of me then retaliating.

I don't believe I've become an adult bully. We continued doing the Piggy thing a few times because we didn't realise she'd stopped; we never sought her out but if we passed in the corridor or something, we'd do it in a sense of "first strike" because we truly thought it was coming (she had made a habit of seeking us out to insult us). After a couple of days we realised she wasn't doing it any more and we also got the sense we had genuinely hurt her; she had obviously tried to hurt us first but still, it wasn't what we were after. We just wanted her to know that she couldn't walk all over us like that without pushback and we wanted her to stop. We were also only about 12. In retrospect, of course we should have just told a teacher but there was the "tattletale" thing. Again, we were 12.

I was bullied fairly relentlessly from the age of about 11 to 15. I had a nice group of friends but outside of that was fairly relentlessly picked on by other kids at my school.

In my case it really came about because I was an easy target. Before I attended the school aged 11 I had been home educated. I was young / immature for my age, dreamy and scatty, undiagnosed ADHD, impulsive, slightly odd. I didn't know who was popular in music or film, I didn't have any cool interests and I was still interested in playing with my toys when the other girls my age weren't.

Because of these quirks of personality it was incredibly easy for people to get laughs and gain social capital by making fun of me. Even after I'd been at the school for a year and significantly wised up in terms of social development people still thought of me as an odd duck. I think in the tribal world of school where there is a lot of joshing for space in the social hierarchy, people could define what they were or weren't by making fun of me. Joking about how I didn't know who the cool musicians were proved that they did, etc. They could show their credentials for being accepted into the club of cool kids by showing up the ways in which I didn't meet that standard.

I never bullied anyone myself - I never wanted to but also I literally couldn't have. If I'd tried to make fun of someone it would have backfired on me as someone trying to move out of her place in the hierarchy.

I have a weird kind of sympathy for the bullies. They were so horrible to me but it was a result of their own huge anxieties about their place in the social hierarchy. Looking back it was all kids who lacked the skills to be inclusive and kind and interesting on their own terms, who could only cling on to their position by stamping on others. I don't believe I was ever bullied by a truly happy kid, even though many of them were pretty / popular etc.

This is why I think bullying needs addressed on a structural level. You can and should address the behaviour of individuals who are persecuting others but you won't solve the issue unless you're also working relentlessly on creating a genuinely inclusive school community where the entire concept of that hierarchical popularity contest is challenged. I'm not a teacher and I don't have the answers as to how but I know lots of schools are working very hard on community building to try and do that.

I was bullied badly towards the end of primary school and pretty much throughout secondary school. I had red, frizzy hair and glasses. It affected me for a long time - I really couldn’t care less if my bullies have crappy home lives, they made my life a misery. If they apologised to me now I would tell them to fuck off

I totally get this. It affects some people for the rest of their lives. Forgiving the bullies and putting their minds at rest can go and do one!

I agree with you on this. In some schools it’s seen as uncool to bully kids like you’ve described. Punching down isn’t seen as building yourself up. I don’t know how that comes about though.

From what I can tell the properly cool girls aim to “be kind” it is extremely uncool to be outright cruel especially not to “punch down” socially. Teens now seem to be far nicer than we were!