I heard a statement about Bullying this morning on NPR that makes perfect sense. It’s that a bully is a performer. And what does a performer need? A performer needs an audience. Take away the audience and the bully loses both her power and her incentive.
This allows the possibility for the change to be not just with the bullier and the bullied. It gives those who are bystanders and witnesses power too. Yes, they have the power to say something to the bullier, but that can backfire and cause the bully to turn her attention to the person protesting. But what if those with the bullier simply walk away. What if they decide to not witness it? What then? It allows the bystanders to have power in a way that will not hurt themselves but will still contribute to the bullying being reduced.
Whatever course the bystander takes, it takes courage. But that is important and good that they learn to exhibit courage since it is a character trait everyone badly needs as they enter into adult life.
Drawing by Marty Coleman who has been both in his life.
I didn’t know it when I started but this is an appropo week to be doing a series on Bullying. The documentary movie ‘Bully’ is coming out this week. It is meant to be seen by teens and in schools but the movie rating board gave it an R rating for language. The Weinstein Company, it’s distributor, decided to release it unrated instead. I hope it gets a wide audience, in spite of it being unrated. Here is a trailer for it.
I was having a hard time finding a quote about bullying this morning. There are many good ones but nothing hit me right today. I was browsing around when I finally decided I would click on the ubiquitous Britain’s Got Talent clip that shows a duo on stage. I knew they were singers but I had seen enough of those over the years to know that often times they underwhelm me so I still hadn’t clicked on it. But today I did. Take a look, it’s worth it.
THE CURE
I am not showing it because of the singing, which is indeed magnificent. I am showing it because it is a great example of the best cure for bullying. What is that cure? Love is that cure. Not the idea of love, but the action of love.
Jonathan, overweight all his life, is the object of bullying and teasing. His heart is broken and little pieces of him are taken away each time it happens. Then this one girl in his school sees him deeper than the others. She needs love to see deep. She needs courage to not do what her peers are doing, either neglecting Jonathan or deriding him. They become a duo and took the stage at this competition.
As can be expected (otherwise it wouldn’t be on YouTube) they exceeded expectations. But it’s what Jonathan said that really made the tears flow for me. Simon Cowell said he was great but Charlotte was not and that he would be better off going on in the competition alone. Jonathan replied saying, ‘we came as a duo, we will continue as a duo’. Charlotte’s inner beauty of love had it’s own return at that moment, Jonathan’s best way of showing love back to her.
That to me is the best cure for bullying because, in truth, we will never get rid of bullying. It will never be regulated out of humanity. But we can overcome it with love and that is what this is all about.
Bullieve it or not, it’s day #2 of Bully Week at the NDD
The quote is by Taylor Swift, the singer songwriter. She is young, blonde and cute. She is sometimes seen in the cliche filter those traits bring out, namely that she is weak and fragile. But she is not.
She has a secret weapon to fight back against the haters and the bullies. She uses her creativity and her voice to tell the story of the bully and put him or her on stage for all to see. The bully doesn’t like that.
I loved my school days. Do I seem like a bully to you? I don’t think you could find a friend from high school who thought I was.
But they would be wrong. I knew how to bully and did it at times. Why did I do it? Let me quote someone else who said it best.
“There doesn’t always have to be a reason. People don’t even always dislike the people they’re bullying, it’s just something they have fun doing … It’s not really something they even care about – it’s just like something they can do, and then friends join in, and it’s almost like entertainment, I guess.”– Dylan Kaufman, 12th grade, Northampton High School Reported at Gazettenet.com
Here is my worst case of bullying and it fits in perfectly with that reasoning.
In our junior year of high school a number of my friends and I drove to Florida on spring break. In Florida we met up with two girls that were co-workers back in our home town with some of our gang. They were both fun and pretty and we were having a great time. We were also drinking.
One of the popular songs at the time, that we all happened to hate, was ‘Every time I see your face’ by Ringo Starr. It came on the radio when we were driving around with the girls. We started singing along with this song we hated.
In the meanwhile, one of the girls had been upset about something I think, I don’t remember for sure. I do know we were sort of annoyed about it. So, what happened? We turned on her. We weren’t trying to bully, we were letting out our annoyance at her. But with a bunch of guys all drinking, bantering and feeding off each other, it wasn’t long before we were singing very cruel and hurtful lyrics about her and her face. It didn’t cease until she was out on the balcony of our hotel room in tears.
In truth, it had very little to do with her at all. We were just ‘having fun’ cracking ourselves up over who could come up with the rudest lyrics. But our intent was beside the point. We knew we were hurting her and we continued because our fun was more important than she was. We thought she should have understood what we were doing. We thought she should just ‘get over it’. We thought the next day she would have forgotten about it like we did. That was not the case.
It was a shameful and bad thing we did. I remember thinking later how that really was over the top cruel and I never wanted to get that out of control with my words and actions again. I didn’t like being that mean, it wasn’t fun like we thought. It was just mean. If I could find that woman I would apologize in a heartbeat for that cruelty and whatever bad feelings remained with her about that moment in time.
An important note: My best friend, Jim Moore, who was with us on the trip, did not contribute to this cruel episode. I don’t remember it all that clearly but I think he was instrumental in getting us to finally stop. He was kind and thoughtful that way and it made me look up to him even more after that.
