Bullying column by Jeffrey Deutsch is lousy.

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I'm pretty underwhelmed with some of what JD has written about bullying. When I got bullied at school my parents took the line of, "What did you do to provoke it?". My Nana was much more helpful. She was 4ft 10ins tall and afraid of nobody. She told me that nobody would help me and that the best thing to do was kick the s**t out of anyone who messed me around.

So the next time a school bully picked on me, I pretended that he had injured me (thus worrying him), waited for him to help me up, got him into a neck lock, got him onto the ground, sat on top of him and kept smashing my fists into his face until school prefects dragged me off him. He was taken to hospital with severe facial bruising and didn't come to school for the rest of the week.

For some reason or other NOBODY ever bullied me after that ...


The worst mistake a school bully can make is to pick on someone who is not afraid of him.

Moral No. 1: NEVER BE AFRAID OF A BULLY.

Moral No. 2: NEVER BE AFRAID OF HURTING A BULLY.

Moral No: 3: Never start a fight.

Moral No: 4: If somebody starts one with you, FIGHT DIRTY TO WIN QUICK

Screw Queensberry Rules. DAMAGE YOUR OPPONENT AND KEEP ON DAMAGING HIM UNTIL OTHERS SEPARATE YOU. That is *the only kind of treatment that registers with a bully*. When I did it that way, I channeled every last ounce of anger into pulping the guy's face. He never even gave me a dirty look thereafter *and he never bullied anyone else again*.

It may have made me look like a violent psychopath - but that's just the kind of person that people avoid messing with. Pleasant? NO. Effective? IT WORKED FOR ME.

Straight up, I am going to disagree with some of this. All the same, I am glad you made your post because this is the very kind of discussion I think we need to be having.

* I advocate tight, defensive boxing to a draw.

* If you happen to "win," don't brag or make a big deal about it. In fact, if you hear someone bragging on your behalf, maybe say something like, "Hey, I'm sorry it came to this. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. I don't want to make a big deal about it."

Perhaps you are envisioning elementary school and junior high. I am more envisioning high school and college. And yes, when I went to a large state college in 1982 and lived in the dorm, I was surprised and disappointed to find there was more physical bullying and threatening behavior than there had been in high school, but less than junior high. It was kind of a throw back in that regard. I guess it was guys who didn't know each other jockeying for position on a hierarchy.

I remember a news item about a 9th grade (age 14 or 15) Japanese kid in an American high school. He was very good with karate and his Dad told him, if you need to fight, fight with your left hand. Well, another kid started a fight and the Japanese kid, with a single strike of his left hand, knocked him out. Well, the police arrested him (!) the Japanese kid, because if the police get involved, it's generally going to be a clumsy, clunkily institutional response. And it's largely judged by outcome, okay, this kid got hurt, therefore this other kid is to blame. In addition, the older brother of the kid who started it made some threatening statements, including some anti-Japanese statements. (probably the assault charges were later dropped)

Okay, with boxing, here's what I generally recommend. If you are right-handed, your left hand is a little higher at cheek level to protect your face. Your right hand is a little lower to protect neck and abdomen. You lead with the left, a quick in-and-out jab to the face, in large part for distraction. You power right hand is primarily for quick hook shots to the rib cage. This is your money shot. A good blow to the ribcage, you just might knock the wind out of the person. Take a step back and see if they also discontinue. The fight might be over then and there. The whole time stay balanced and centered with quick, shorter blows in case you need to keep fighting. Including your power hand, quick in-and-out shots, stay balanced.

Find someone good in your area and perhaps take a couple of individual lessons, and then do some practicing on your own. This is what I generally recommend.

And please don't take a bunch of blows to the head during practice because all that stuff about post-concussion syndrome, and even cumulative lesser blows, is largely true. And just like football helmets don't really protect, neither does boxing headgear.

Tight, defensive boxing to a draw. One week
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt134616.html

Secondarily, I also recommend karate and taekwondo. In fact, I recommend self-defense in general. But a school yard fight can start with boxing and if escalates "naturally," so be it.

My own preference is for the kind of unarmed combat taught to special forces, mainly because the techniques are so effective. Naturally one must stop short of killing the bully with a single blow, which, nevertheless, I know how to do ...

... but nice to see some responses here advocating robust responses to bullies. On balance I think that giving them a dose of their own medicine is the best way of dealing with them, if only because it tends to stop them bullying others too.

Venceremos!

Very interesting points!

AardvarkGoodSwimmer, when I said "I for one would love to delve in depth as to just how bullying can be provoked (not justified, but provoked). Thing is, my column in that case would have been much longer" you responded "But that still would be the only sub-category we would be talking about." What do you mean by that?

You make a good point in that sometimes it's a good idea to say something that's false like "It's beginning to be a problem" when it's been a problem for some time, if it will get people on your side.

Thing is, honesty is a tightrope walk. No one's suggesting becoming a lying, cheating, sneaky scumbag. On the other hand, like it or lump it (and you can put me in the "lump it" category), you just can't survive - except maybe as a hermit in the wilderness - always or even usually saying what you feel when you feel it. Some things may be factually correct, but would upset people. Heck, some things are factually correct, but not even appropriate to say (for example, if they're out of context).

Rosewood, congratulations on beating the bully! I completely agree with you that sometimes the only way to stop bullying (not just by one individual bully but also by others) is to make someone sorry s/he started with you. You're also right about not starting a fight - that said, in the heat of the moment it's awfully easy for part of your mind to persuade you that it's the other guy who started it no matter what happened.

On the other hand, continuing it until someone separates you can lead you straight to jail. In the eyes of the law, self-defense begins when the threat does...and it ends when the threat does too. That means that if you knock somebody down, at that moment and for as long as they stay down you need to stop fighting. Otherwise you become an attacker, and you're at least as bad as the other guy. (And if you kick or stomp someone when you're wearing shoes and s/he's down, or you bang their head on the ground, you can cripple someone for life or even kill them.)

AardvarkGoodSwimmer, good point about fighting the other person to a draw. To paraphrase the old saying, nice outcome if you can get it.

Meanwhile, good question Evinceo. I actually don't recall whether I saw and read "My Bodyguard" before or after calling that guy "Ravioli". If before, obviously I missed that lesson!

Keep those comments coming!

I am glad you fought the bully. How I handled bullying is that I just stuffed my emotions inside of me until I had to take rage management classes

It wasn't self-defence. I deliberately belted the s**t out of him when he gave me an excuse.

Dr. Deutsch, you wrote a blame-the-victim column. Straight up.

You wrote about the one sub-category in which we provoke bullying because of inappropriate teasing, or perhaps because we tease in a different or more complicated way or in a way which is more a private joke to us and is not immediately perceived as good natured, etc. Yes, I can see that.

But what about all the other times in which a person is bullied merely because he or she is different, in some way other than a prohibited category (because even most bullies these days aren't going to pick on a black kid merely because he or she is black), or we don't visibly have friends and thus appear vulnerable, or appear vulnerable for another reason, or we like to read by ourselves and thereby aren't available to give the bully attention, or since we have patchy skills, we can come across as smart and that can be viewed as objectionable or a threat, etc, etc, etc. And maybe sometimes, we merely fall into the bully's field of vision when he or she is having a particularly bad day and that's about as close to random as you can get.

So, yes, I think it's valuable to take look at some of these other categories.

And what I would really like are some middle-of-road responses to bullying no matter how it starts.

For once it gets to the attention of a teacher, principal, parent, professional, and sometimes even a friend, it's somewhere along the way to an entrenched situation. And responding to an entrenched bullying situation is much harder than preventing it in the first place.

Reminds me a little of a large raise in Texas Hold'em Poker in order to drive out an opponent. Yes, it will often work, but it's kind of expensive when it doesn't.

All depends on how serious the fight is.

With boxing, a quick jab to the nose for distraction and then the money blow to the rib cage with your dominant hand (all the time, fast in-an-out blows staying centered and balanced), the person may step back and that may be the end of the fight.

A very serious fight, no, just because you're on the ground doesn't mean it's over. If the person becomes incapacitated and can no longer defend himself or herself, that's more of a hard and fast line. If you watch UFC fights, the referee is very good at moving in there and stopping the fight once the fighter can no longer defend himself. Sometimes the other fighter doesn't even get a single extra blow in.

And because of post-concussion syndrome and also cumulative lesser blows, please don't take a bunch of blows to the head during training.

And yes, I like my method of starting with boxing and if the fight escalates "naturally," so be it. And I also like my method of counting a draw as a win.

BOXING: Just a couple of weeks to learn some basic blocks and blows and how to make a good strong tight fist (which most people really don't know). And also quick in-and-out blows remaining balanced.

TAEKWONDO: a couple of months

AIKIDO: a couple of years.

And not to be great after a couple of weeks or a couple of months of boxing or taekwondo, but with someone your own size the odds are a little more in your favor (still might lose, a lot of luck factors, stay alert, hang in there). And obviously, walk away from a fight if you reasonably can and toward an area of more people. And the zen of it all, a baseline of greater confidence and a fight actually becomes less likely. Of course be aware of surroundings, all that good standard stuff.

I personally have gotten a lot more out of individual lessons than group lessons.

Again, primarily only someone your own size, if it comes to it, don't expect miracles.

Yes I agree with this. Sometimes it doesn't get better - it happens in workplaces too - and is condoned. It is usually not provoked at all. Some people just have really shallow lives and can't think of a better way to fill them than by attacking or manipulating anyone different. To suggest bullying is in some way " invited" is an insult

Perhaps they should have thought of that BEFORE they decided to pick on us.

Look, I know you mean well, But it doesn't make sense to have you (betting you are NT here) making out that we are the enemy. We are the ones GETTING PICKED ON Not the other way around, Unlike your belief.

Not gonna direct this at anyone in particular, just addressing something that seems to be a widely held belief on this board.

Saying that something can be avoided is not the same as saying that the victim deserved it.

Human nature is s**t, there always have been and always will be people who get their kicks from hurting others. This sucks, but it's a hell of a lot easier to teach kids how to avoid it than to change human nature. And, even if it were possible to stamp out bullying, it would take a very long time. Generations. And in the meantime there are kids who need to learn how to get by in the world as it is now.

There's the ideal; end bullying. And it's a great one. The world would be a better place. Only problem is, it can't be done. And then there's the less than ideal, but more practical; teach kids how to avoid it, how to handle it when it does happen, and how to not internalize it. When I have kids, I know which I'm going to focus on.

And what happens when avoiding it doesn't work and nothing they teach helps....I mean when I was a kid I did all that I ignored and avoided them so they would follow me, I'd try not to react emotionally which well I fail at especially once I get to that breaking point where I just can't suppress it anymore. I mean it's great to try and teach kids how to avoid and deal with bullying, it is also important to teach kids why bullying shouldn't be tolerated.

Didn't say it wouldn't happen. Just that teaching kids how to deal is more practical, more useful, than doing nothing but going on about how bad it is.

Bullying is a systemic problem. It is not just about the person being bullied and the bully, it is about the social environment that allows this to take place. A lot of times kids can't avoid it--that's the problem. I think the worst thing you should just tell someone to accept it.

So, is this how you solve problems these days (your age says 49), with people you can't get along with or are the boxing strategies only for kids? I find it interesting that people say things like this. Do you really advocate social problems with violence?