@cowgirlsareforever
I find it hard to understand how bullies are often described as having been bullied or having a difficult life. The boys who bullied my ds were not bullied themselves and are the 'golden' boys of the school.
I can completely understand and relate to your question. As I mentioned earlier, I was bullied for 10 years at school. I was hospitalised, outed, beaten up continuously and by the end of it my esteem was on the floor. It's no surprise that I had a lot of anger towards those who had bullied me, which is the general consensus of society.
In a study we published last year called 'The Annual Bullying Survey 2016', we did something that had never been done before. We asked kids to tell us what they considered to be bullying. Then we asked them, if they had ever bullied anybody based on their definition. We then asked everybody a series of life-related questions - there were a ton; we wanted to understand what their relationships looked like and if they had issues at home or if they had experienced anything stressful or traumatic.
With this data, we created control groups to see how people answered the life-related questions differently based on their experience of bullying others. What we found was astounding and changed our entire perceptions of bullying.
The kids who were bullying were the most likely to come from hostile homes, the most likely to have lost a pet or loved on, the most likely to have parents going through a divorce. The list is endless.
We also found that the guys were more likely than girls to bully and to become physically violent. Think about it for a moment.
The second a little boy cries or shows emotion, he's often told to man up or stop being a girl. He learns early on that crying isn't allowed. So by the time he's 12 and he's going home to witness arguments between mum and dad, or has just lost his nan - he finds it difficult to cope with the emotions. His mechanic is to become abusive or violent because that's what he's been taught. This is why most crimes, bullying, sexual violence are instigated by men - because that's the role they're placed into.
With all of this information and knowledge, we're working hard to challenge things such as toxic masculinity. We actively help kids navigate through stressful and traumatic situations and we don't use the word 'bully' or 'victim', because bullying is a behaviour and not an identity.
If you're interested in finding out more, there are 2 really great reports I'd recommend for you here:
www.ditchthelabel.org/annual-bullying-survey-2016/
www.ditchthelabel.org/research-papers/masculinity-misogyny-digital-age/
So on the outside, the boys may seem to be okay, but they are less emotionally expressive than girls. It's difficult to know what's going on behind closed doors.