Who is bullying who?

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I did inadvertently bully someone in elementary school. To my mind I think I was just trying to socialize and be friendly to the person. One day they just walked up to me and yelled "Stop bullying me!", I was dumbfounded as to what I had done wrong, I still don't understand. After that I never talked to him again and avoided him whenever possible.

So I do know inadvertent bullying is possible. I think if the person with AS is provoking someone else, it would probably be the habit to correct people when they are factually wrong, or providing long technical discussions about an interest. On some level that is going around telling people "hey, I am smarter than you"

I don't think bullying is always group based, but when it is I think it serves a definite purpose to unite the group. if you ever see a group directly after they loose their scapegoat, they start to fall apart because all of the grievances and lies they have with one another start to come out, now that they have lost their focus against someone else.

I think similar to why patriotism will always spike when a country goes to war. there is no better why to unify people than an enemy.

bolding by me.

This right here is why Haywire is right about some situations. You are assuming that the NT on the recieving end of the comment knows that the offense was unintentional. Haywire has realized that they don't.


My daughter has said some absolutely horrendous things to other children. In her former school their was a girl who was very overweight. My daughter would routinely call her "fat" to her face and ask her why she was so fat. I spent a lot of time trying to get her to stop doing this. But she would insist, 'she is fat". She just couldn't get that just because it was true didn't make it ok to say out loud. My argument that she was hurting the other girl's feelings left her unmoved.

Do you think that other girl (presumably NT) thought to herself, "I'm sure my classmate doesn't mean any harm in saying this true statement. After all, I am fat. It's true." Of course not. She probably went home and cried in her room about the bully at school who kept calling her fat.

Yes, I agree. This whole thread revolves around the definition of 'bullying'. TheHaywire is getting 'bullying' confused with 'insulting' or merely 'offending'. Try this definition of bullying: "a persistent, deliberate attempt to hurt or humiliate someone. " http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/educat ... llying.htm

I'd spend exactly as long analysing the bullies point of view as they spend worrying about others. Zero.

Yes, bullying has to be persistent. Usually it begins very subtle but then gets more obvious over time. I think bullies take delight in seeing the affect on the victim. That is why it gets worse as it goes on. Also remember that the only way to uncover a bully is to confront them with the pattern of behaviour (the sequence of incidents) but not the individual insults or put downs, which may be easy for the bully to explain. It is always the number of incidents that the bully cannot explain.

How do you confront them? Telling them that they're a bully and explaining how/why just gives them further ammunition no? Don't you have to use their own weapons against them and hit them where it hurts? If a bully wants to hear that they're a bully it's not what you want to tell them. Isn't the best idea to make them look like an insecure victim so they can appear vulnerable? To show them what it feels like? Even if it's just one hard blow as opposed to persistent harassment. It could be argued that they won't know what it feels like unless its persistent but there has to be a way to get them off their throne and show them what their targets are capable of.

From my understanding of bullies, they are people who are usually hurt at home (usually from abusive or alcoholic families) that are lashing out at others to try and cope with what they are going through. Some do it just to be spiteful though, and others do it because they're afraid if they don't they will be bullied too.

So, a bunch of people usually corner one kid and verbally/physically/emotionally bully them.

Most of the time, as I have been told before, it is people that are too afraid to start confrontation without a group around them cheering them on. In other words, a bunch of cowards. Which is why it takes so many to pick on so few, or sometimes even one.

The one they pick out is always the most vulnerable kid they can find, or one they think is vulnerable.

One things bullies can't handle? People sticking up for themselves. Especially if they actually can fight. That happened to me once No one bothered trying again. I was in a karate class at the time and so knew I could defend myself.

I think there's such a thing as unintended bullying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_ ... ng_tactics

1. Falsely accused someone of "errors" not actually made (71 percent).
2. Stared, glared, was nonverbally intimidating and was clearly showing hostility (68 percent).
3. Discounted the person's thoughts or feelings ("oh, that's silly") in meetings (64 percent).
4. Used the "silent treatment" to "ice out" and separate from others (64 percent).
5. Exhibited presumably uncontrollable mood swings in front of the group (61 percent).
6. Made up own rules on the fly that even she/he did not follow (61 percent).
7. Disregarded satisfactory or exemplary quality of completed work despite evidence (58 percent).
8. Harshly and constantly criticized having a different standard for the target (57 percent).
9. Started, or failed to stop, destructive rumors or gossip about the person (56 percent).
10. Encouraged people to turn against the person being tormented (55 percent).
11. Singled out and isolated one person from coworkers, either socially or physically (54 percent).
12. Publicly displayed gross, undignified, but not illegal, behavior (53 percent).
13. Yelled, screamed, threw tantrums in front of others to humiliate a person (53 percent).
14. Stole credit for work done by others (plagiarism) (47 percent).
15. Abused the evaluation process by lying about the person's performance (46 percent).
16. Declared target "insubordinate" for failing to follow arbitrary commands (46 percent).
17. Used confidential information about a person to humiliate privately or publicly (45 percent).
18. Retaliated against the person after a complaint was filed (45 percent).
19. Made verbal put-downs/insults based on gender, race, accent or language, disability (44 percent).Age is another factor.
20. Assigned undesirable work as punishment (44 percent).
21. Created unrealistic demands (workload, deadlines, duties) for person singled out (44 percent).
22. Launched a baseless campaign to oust the person; effort not stopped by the employer (43 percent).
23. Encouraged the person to quit or transfer rather than to face more mistreatment (43 percent).
24. Sabotaged the person's contribution to a team goal and reward (41 percent).
25. Ensured failure of person's project by not performing required tasks, such as sign-offs, taking calls, working with collaborators (40 percent)
I think a lot of those things could happen just by thoughtlessness. I know the list comes from workplace bullying, but I've seen similar stuff happening in social (free or self-managed) groups. Wouldn't it be a lovely world if people just didn't do those horrible things? Imagine a group in which all members were charged with the responsibility to police for those things and to get them stopped But I won't get too carried away with definitions - call it bullying, marginalisation or just plain insensitivity, it's all the same to me.

Yes the "common enemy" thing is very likely behind a lot of it. I hate any kind of scapegoating, not just the human variety but further back when they'd kill an innocent animal in the vain hope of pleasing their imagined deities. How much good a human scapegoat does for the cohesion of the rest of the group, I don't know. I was once in a group who had removed one particularly harmful member, and after that it became very noticeable that our conversations were always drifting back onto that guy, even though we were rid of him......it was the one thing we could always agree on, that he was a bastard of the lowest order. We were aware of the futility of it all, flogging the dead horse when we should have been looking at the here and now and moving on, and we'd often say "oh no, we're doing it AGAIN!!"......but it was SO tempting The human race must be hard-wired to do this. We weren't intrinsically nasty people.

Hi TheHaywire. I suppose the way of dealing with a bully depends on where or how the bullying is happening. If it is in school or college or in the neighbourhood then I suppose fighting fire with fire is ok. Personally I would probably just smack them one. But people don't like violence I know.

If the bullying is in work then it will have to be dealt with differently. I once confronted a bully at work and he sh!t himself. I am not joking he really sh!t it. I told him that I was on to him and questioned him about several incidents. I was really cool and confident and had a witness. I felt so good after doing that.

Ferdinand never said anything to indicate that he was assuming the "victim" always knows whether an insulting comment is intentional. I think he was just saying tha,t by definition, true bullying is always intentional. That doesn't mean that unintentional insults can't be just as harmful as intentional ones, or that the person on the receiving end of an unintentional insult won't think they're being bullied or react as if they had been bullied.



I think people are much more likely to interpret an unintentional insult as intentional if they feel genuinely hurt by the comment. Its not easy for anyone to analyze the intentions of someone who just insulted them in a detached logical manner when they feel genuinely injured by the remarks.

I think in a lot of cases though there are people who use retaliation for unintentional insults or annoying behavior as an opportunistic reason to bully someone. They might simply feel annoyed by someone, not deeply hurt, yet they somehow feel entitled to retaliate in a way that's extremely damaging. It seems to happen in groups that derive a sense of bonding by gossiping about the "annoying" person, and then gradually this escalates into direct bullying.

I think this latter scenario is more akin to what most aspies experience in adult life, and what leads them to distrust and resent NTs in general. I do think a lot of NTs need serious sensitivity training in this area regarding their treatment of aspies.

Last edited by marshall on 10 Jun 2010, 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

I see what you mean but if you start feeling like an aggressor during a bullying incident then you're basically just adding self-inflicted insult to injury - we already live in a world where trying to defend yourself is looked down upon and the only way we'll oust this, quite frankly, stupid attitude is if our kids feel like they can stand up for themselves without fear of repercussion.

In school I was bullied from the very beginning to the very end and it was only just as I was about to leave that I learned that the schools justice system meant s*** to me so one day I lashed out during the daily humiliation rituals and hurt one of the bastards, yes I was reprimanded for it but for once in my scholarly life I felt happy with myself. I only wish I'd learned this earlier because perhaps it would have saved me years of misery. Perhaps I might even have stayed on.

So basically what I'm saying is if they want to make your life hell then I don't see any problem with returning the favor. I realize many of them are having a hard time at home but my life wasn't exactly peachy outside it and I managed to keep my cool so why the hell couldn't they?

I hated being bullied in school but at the same time I had it coming from day one.
I can understand why people would find us aspies annoying and bring out the agressor in them. I'm not saying what they did was good, noooo, they were dickheads in every sense of the word.

I was tormented in middle school. It completely ruined me and lead me into a mental hospital. The harassment was that bad and I have extremely thick skin. Yet one day I decided I wasn't gonna take it anymore. I stood on top of my desk and threw a chair at one of the girls who had been harassing me. I was suspended. When I came back to school I was seen as a rock star. Go figure.

Thats cool. I am glad you stuck up for yourself. Yeah people like that.

Good on yah
When I was in highschool I ended up getting my main bully expelled because she was that nasty to me, it was bound to happen anyway because of other things but I was the tip of the iceberg/icing on the cake (idk which saying is right). I feel really awesome about that, and in the bullying session that got her expelled, I hit her and that was satisfying too.

Yea. Sometimes having the reputation of being the "angry psycho" is the only thing that will get people to take you seriously. And people act all surprised when school shootings occur. It seems like the way the system operates, it teaches kids that rage and violence is the only solution. I don't see why it's surprising that some kids who are already mentally unbalanced occasionally go completely off their rocker.