Most bullying is not illegal.
For example, isolation, rumor-mongering, exclusion, deliberately ignoring someone's existence or opinion, victimizing the target through intentional interpersonal manipulation, etc.
Some studies have found that "relationship bullying" is the most common and frequent form of bullying. Relationship bullying is also more secretive, harder to obtain, and more likely to underestimate the consequences, whether in school, in the workplace, or in society (Husky et al., 2022).
However, it cannot be dismissed as insignificant simply because it is not as brutal and obscured as it is reported in the news.
Rather than physical pain, victims generally believe that the biggest impact of the experience of bullying on them is "emotional trauma" – which is mainly manifested in an overall decline in self-esteem and a collapse in interpersonal trust.
Last week, we asked our readers for stories from "school bullying witnesses". We found that only a minority of people said they were "not affected now", and the majority of those who were bullied reported suffering from long-term psychological stress. But sadly, many people invariably use the same opening line:
"I don't know if it's bullying because it's not as bad as it is in the news."
Due to space limitations, we have selected some of the readers' letters to release. Hopefully, victims, educators, and guardians who are experiencing bullying will be able to draw attention to it: Yes, it's bullying.
👇
👬 "Whoever shows kindness to me will be sat down."
Anonymous, psychological counselor, 30 years old, Jilin
From the third grade of elementary school, the class was divided into three gangs. The kid I was playing with suddenly stopped playing with me, and she happily joined a gang and became the leader. Since then, she has led her little sisters in her gang to exclude me and not talk to me, and if someone in her group shows kindness to me, she will be "sitting" and disqualified from playing together in the group, and no one dares to be friends with me under this deterrence, and I still don't know why she excludes me.
🧹 "Dump the garbage on my desk"
Ling Ling Ling Ling, student, 20 years old, Shenzhen
When I was in junior high school, my grades were very good, but in a class with very poor grades (the class assignment was random), my classmates would often ask me to borrow homework and copy it. At first, I did borrow it, but because they always passed my homework around, I always didn't know whose hand my homework was, and then I was reluctant to borrow it, and sent a QQ space to explain my attitude. Those classmates attacked me because of this language, and even said that I was pretending to answer questions in class, first verbally bullying and then spreading rumors, throwing garbage on my desk, and so on. In fact, there were only a few classmates at first, and then the others blindly followed the trend and gradually evolved into the whole class.
🔥 "My weight is my codename"
Li Zi, primary school care teacher, 30 years old, Fuzhou
I've been fat since I was a kid. After I went to junior high school, the bullying about fat began, in fact, I don't know if it's bullying, in short, the boy keeps talking about me, whispering, and showing eyes. When I was measured in PE class, my weight was used as my code name, 175. The scariest thing is that there is an open-air aisle from the classroom to the toilet, and the balcony on each floor is facing this open-air aisle, which means that every time I go to the toilet after class, I have to be treated with a mocking voice by the boys upstairs. Actually, the aisle was very short, but I really felt that it was very long. After that, I don't go to the toilet after class, I always go to the toilet during class.
💬 "Laugh at me for speaking with an accent"
Anonymous, Business, 26 years old, Guangzhou
When I was in elementary school, I was bullied by my tablemates. At that time, I was small, introverted, and I didn't understand that this was bullying. The same table was a certain teacher's child, and for me at that time, it seemed to me to be an authority or a goddess of heaven. She would laugh at me for speaking with an unpleasant or wrong accent (the accent would always be a little different in different places), she would step on my feet when we read the textbook together in class, and there were some other things that suppressed me, I didn't remember it very clearly, and I asked her to copy it during the exam, and the most daring thing I did was to fill in a few of the questions incorrectly, and then I would change back to the correct answer when she finished copying. She transferred after a semester, and I really couldn't have been happier at that time, because it was a really hard time.
🧚 ♀️ "I was bullied for seven years because I didn't look good."
anonymity
Since I was a child, I was discriminated against and ridiculed because I was not good-looking and I couldn't dress up. When I first entered the school, I was told by the girls in the dormitory that I looked like an orangutan, and after the high school was divided into liberal arts and science classes, the boys in the science class were called "Quasimodo" in public every time I passed in front of them on campus, and I was also called "horse face" by my junior high school students. It was a full seven years of dark adolescence for me.
I don't know how those people fare afterwards, I couldn't go because of the party in my junior high school class many years ago, but when I entered the class group, everyone was bright and bright, many of them were abroad, including a boy who sat behind me in high school and said to me, "Even if you go to be a prostitute, no one wants it", and posted a photo of him and his wife abroad in the group. I had a similar situation after entering university. I, on the other hand, have been depressed since I was a child for various reasons, and now I am a patient with treatment-resistant depression who needs to take medication for life.
🎬 "Bring Me Into the Girl"
Anonymous, College Student
When I was in the first and second grades of elementary school, some boys with bad personalities bullied me, first kicking my legs and crotch all over black and green lumps, and then sexually harassing me, such as taking advantage of my inattention to rip off my pants, secretly searching for unsightly pornographic pictures and videos in information classes, and bringing me into the female characters in front of me, so that I don't dare to wear clothes with skirts and collars that are too low now. At that time, I reported these problems to the teacher and my parents, and the teacher just laughed and said that it was just a joke between children, but my parents asked me to reflect on whether I was wrong or not, and no other students in the class were willing to support me.
👖 "Menstruation stained my pants and was humiliated"
HHH, college student, 22 years old, Wuhan
When I was in the second year of junior high school, I had just had menarche, and I didn't know a lot about menstruation, and then the menstrual flow at that time was also very heavy, and the teacher often attended classes in the middle of the class, so I often stained my pants during my menstruation.
The school bathroom is very traditional and old, there is a partition between the two adjacent pit positions but it is very low, and the people in the back can see almost everything about the people in front. Once, when I went to the bathroom, a girl saw that a large part of my pants was covered in blood, and she said, "Your pants are so dirty, why are you so shameless"! Later, I met me again in the bathroom, and while washing her hands, she squinted at me and scolded me several times, I don't remember the specific content, probably "stupid idiot" or something.
I think it might be that she has that kind of menstrual shame. Because at that time, adolescence was not very well understood, and if someone had a menstrual period and soiled their pants or stools, the class would laugh at that person (but my own menstrual shame was not so severe). I also had the idea of talking back, but at that time, there were some examples of physical bullying at school (the bully was not caught), and I was afraid that I would know those people, so I didn't dare to talk to her. Later, the pressure of studying in the second semester of my third year of junior high school was too great, and I once wanted to commit suicide, but I didn't take action, and one of the reasons that supported me to live was her. I thought at the time, why should I die if she is so ugly, so morally corrupt, so bullying others, so hypocritical, she is still alive and well, and she is alive to bully others. That powerful hatred really gave me some hope to live.
🚮 "Find my item in the trash"
A 21-year-old college student
The bullying happened when I was in the first and second grades. At that time, a group of little boys, after class, the school was full of trouble, I was very poor at that time, and I was very honest, when they gradually found out that I couldn't run and beat them, the bullying began. Really, the cause is as simple as that.
It's mainly five people.,The boss is really tall and strong.,I enjoy the feeling of being a little bully.,The second is a military advisor.,Specifically thinking about a new way to bully me.,The third is a pure bad breed.,Shorty.,But the means are very inferior.,The remaining two are wall grass.,Mainly verbally attacking and mocking me.。 In the winter, the hat I wore was snatched from my head, and five people took turns to carry it, each of them took a class, so that I had no hat to wear all day, and finally got my hat in the trash can in the corner of the classroom, which was full of scraps of paper. When I go to the toilet in winter, the floor of the toilet is quite slippery because of the snow and ice, and they will push me while I urinate, leaving me with the stinky mud of the toilet all over my body. In a snowball fight, the snow thrown at me is often wrapped in stones. In the summer, the boss used a broken branch to smash the Tianling cover and the back of the head, and the second child secretly tore off the homework that was to be handed in the next class to wipe his buttocks, and the pencils in my stationery box were all broken by the third child. There were many more similar things, and this life went on and off for two years, only to end after the reorganization of the third-grade class.
🦗 "Throw the grasshopper in my chair"
Sa'd
At first, the class laughed when they threw the grasshopper on my chair and watched me sit dead. Then I got into a fight at school with a couple of boys, and they got punched, and then they started stealing my books and locking my bike. The first time I sat on a dead grasshopper, the squad leader who came out to find me couldn't hold back his laughter, and I knew that there was no one in this class to help me. Sure enough, he was isolated for more than a year. Although I asked for help, and the teacher came forward to apologize to me, there was no improvement. There is no dependence, parents are in distant provinces. It should be that they feel that there is no one to support me, in fact, I feel the same way, otherwise why did I never ask for help from home?
🥊 I was regarded as a "cancer" and made up all kinds of vicious stories
anonymity
I have been isolated since kindergarten, and school bullying has been throughout my kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, and now college. I probably had an autistic disorder (because I couldn't speak until I was four years old, and I had some stereotyped and compulsive behavior, and I was bullied for it), and I was hated in elementary school because I couldn't speak Mandarin and I couldn't socialize with children my age. Mainly by nicknames and isolation, the head teacher regarded me as a "cancer" of the class, and even called me so in public. Since then, all sorts of vicious nicknames and rumors have swirled around me, claiming that they will be unlucky if they bump into me or be touched by me.
I was shunned by everyone like a malignant pathogen and rarely came into contact with me except for new transfer students. The people who bullied me almost all kinds of people in the class: good students, average students, poor students, class leaders, ordinary classmates...... Because when everyone knows that it doesn't cost anything to bully you and make up all kinds of vicious stories like urban legends, everyone can bully you with words and false accusations.
🪒 "Walk past them and sneer."
Anonymous, lawyer
I have experienced two school violence, when I was in elementary school, a child with no parents came to me to ask for money, rummaged through my school bag, and blocked the way home. This is a physical intimidation, trembling until the end of elementary school. When I was in junior high school, my parents let me go to the best school in the city, thinking that it would be different, but it turned out that there was no physical violence but relationship violence in this junior high school.
My class is a class of forced management, the teacher does not allow girls to have long hair, and also suppresses all outgoing girls. When I was in the first year of junior high school, I received a love letter from the next class, and the teacher asked me to read my love letter in front of the class. Under the suppression and ridicule of the teacher, the class began to call me a prostitute, isolated and slandered, rumor-mongering and exclusion, especially the sudden sneering and contemptuous glances that walked past them, even after 20 years, I still sometimes dream of it when I am stressed. As an adult, I was a professional who was very good at relationships, fulfilling a childhood dream of protecting myself with the law. I just want to hug that 13 year old girl, you're not wrong, you just met bad people and you deserve to be loved.
But what do victims hear when they ask for help?
🚗 "You have to be strong yourself, otherwise you will encounter more serious things in society."
Guinea Dolphin, NGO practitioner, 34, Beijing
As the tallest girl in the class, the leader who bullied me was the shortest boy in the class. There was no physical altercation, but I would coax when the teacher asked me to get up and answer questions, and deliberately threw my notebook and papers all over the classroom when handing out homework papers, which lasted for nearly a year, and no one in the class stopped me, and I told the teacher that I was just being taught, "You have to be strong, otherwise you will encounter more serious things in society".
🙍 ♂️ "The little boy likes you, but in the wrong way"
Anonymous, 30 years old, in a small county town in Jiangsu and Zhejiang
Chronic verbal bullying in grades 2-5. The one who took the lead was an influential boy who, for some reason, kept giving me nicknames (slut, slut, etc.) and making everyone isolate me. Every time I show up, I will be put on some unwarranted slut-humiliating content, such as a small model competition between classes, the teacher chooses me and a few other girls, saying that you can bring a set of clothes from home, my mother prepared a blue calico suit (long sleeves and trousers), he said that I must be on stage to seduce someone when I wear this dress, bells and whistles, sluts are like this, the surface is pure and slutty, basically every day as long as he sees me, he must say a few disgusting words, all about female insults, and then because of his influence in the class, other classmates began to become unfriendly to me。 Once, a few classmates who had a good relationship suddenly blocked me in the toilet, saying that her father had bought popsicles for each of us on the way home the day before and asked me to pay me back.
Because there was no physical bullying, I was hesitant to tell the teacher, because at that time I could already know very clearly that the boy had money in the family and spoiled him very much, and he was a thorn in the face at school, and the teacher did not educate him, and I would only be insulted even more if I went to report it; 。
Later, when I went to junior high school, one day I mentioned this to my mother lightly, I said that I would be bullied by a boy all day long, for several years, my mother thought it was a child's fight, and told me: That's the little boy likes you, but in the wrong way. It wasn't until I grew up that I could calmly accept that he was bullying at that time, no matter what the reason behind it was.
⛰️ "Endure the calm for a while, take a step back and open the sky"
Anonymous, Head of Quality Department, 29 years old, Jinhua
I studied in the city in elementary and junior high school, until I went to the countryside to study in high school, and my classmates thought that I was pretending to speak Mandarin, saying that I was delicate, and threatened to beat me, nicknamed me a princess. I don't like it, and they keep calling me by this ironic nickname. Sitting in the middle position, they didn't let me go out, and the hot water that was drawn by the long queue in winter was directly used by them. I borrowed money and didn't pay it back, and I talked to others about what I had done, and I said bad things about me while I wasn't in the dormitory.
The teacher found out and simply talked to me. I told my parents, who told me to "endure the calm for a while, take a step back and open the sky". At that time, I was very resistant to going to school, and cried every day in the dormitory under the covers. It's still painful to think about it now, and part of the reason I decided not to have children was because I had been bullied, and some of the former bullies even became teachers.
👨 🏫 "If you do well in your grades, will they still beat and scold you?"
Xiaoliu, doctor, 36 years old, Hunan
Being bullied started in the third grade of elementary school and continued until I graduated from high school. At first, it was just because I was playful and my grades were not good, and the teacher often blamed and physically punished me in class, and then my naughty classmates began to imitate the teacher's criticism and corporal punishment on a daily basis, and I treated me silently. Later, it gradually developed to the point where the girls excluded me, the boys pulled my hair and poked me with the tip of a pen, and I told the teacher, and the teacher said: They just criticized you on my behalf, and they said that you did not do your homework well, and said that you did not write your homework, did they say that it was wrong? If you hand in your homework seriously, and if your grades are good, will they still scold you and beat you? Later, I told my mother, and my mother said: The current classmates are all temporary, and when you reach junior high school, they will not be able to bully you. I can only continue to be silent.
After I entered junior high school, my grades were still not good, and some of my classmates began to bully me again, pinching me, poking me with the tip of a pen, suddenly punching me when passing by me, tearing up my homework and writing my name, pretending to be my own homework, I would be criticized for not handing in my homework or handing in an empty notebook, and every bullying would end with me crying.
Later, I also thought about why me, what did I do wrong? If I don't resist, it will worsen the bullying, if I resist, it will worsen the bullying, and if I seek help from my parents and teachers, it will still make the bullying worse.
Write at the end
"It's my weakness that fuels bullying."
When asked, "What do you think is contributing to bullying?", many people responded in the questionnaire.
We see that victims are not only upset by being bullied, but also by feeling neglected, marginalized and unprotected. This reminds me of what Skrzypiec et al. define as a "polyvictimisation" situation: the victim is not only bullied at school, but also a victim of domestic violence, neglect, or abuse.
In a short-term longitudinal study, Smith et al. found that there were some children who had been bullied for a long time, but there were also children who were no longer victims after two years – and the latter children were labeled as "escaped victims" with some subtle differences from "persistent victims": they were less likely to blame themselves for being bullied and worked harder to find new friends.
As the reader @flower-clothed piper said:
In any case, don't lose yourself because of other people's bad words, if you are bullied, don't feel that you are being bullied because of how bad you are, because everyone has their own dark side, and those who bully you are precisely unable to accept their own dark side, so they project this dark side of themselves that they themselves think is unacceptable to the bullied person.
Even if the person who is bullied may have some strange characteristics that are difficult for others to accept, these strange points are definitely not a reason to be bullied. If a person has characteristics that are different from others, even if they are flawed, these can help us find our own meaning. Because each person exists precisely because of their uniqueness. It's up to us to accept ourselves, and if we can fully accept ourselves, embrace ourselves, and stop hating ourselves, then the slander of others will not be so important to us. But having said that, if bullying is about cyberbullying and more serious situations, then be sure to ask for help from someone who can help you, don't take it yourself, and keep as much evidence as possible of being bullied.
Bad things happen, but don't blame yourself for that – we can at least do it for ourselves.
Editor: Jianghu Side Cover: "Young You"