The definition of bullying.

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Bullies are envious of autistics.

I don't know about envy, but I do think they see a vulnerable target and they latch on to that.

I wish people were kinder to each other. The would could be a beautiful place if it were more accepting, tolerant, understanding and fair minded.

To much discrimination, prejudice, ignorance, lack of acceptance and pain out there. It hurts me. It actually hurts me to think about it. Humans have so much capacity for good. It would wonderful if they made the choice to use it instead of hurting each other. But I am an idealist...

Autistics are easy targets because they are different.

Partly because of that, maybe.

I have 6 younger siblings. I had to babysit them here and there when my older sibs weren't available. I thought I did a good job (I always planned fun stuff for them when mom and dad were away) but now a couple of them say I was a bully. I think it's their perception and not what was going on. I was merely doing my mother's job and they didn't accept my authority. They saw me as a usurper. Plus, they were selfish brats who didn't think they should have to clean up after themselves. (In a way, I feel bullied now by these younger sibs over this issue...)

There were other times that I wanted my way and tried to manipulate things so that I would get it. It's easy to manipulate little kids because they have less experience. But, I don't think I was ever actually mean to them. I certainly didn't hit them or make them cry.

Am I a bully?

I was called a bully in a professional situation the other day and it about knocked me over. I lost my patience with a man who was being intentionally stupid. He was blatantly disregarding facts as they were presented and wanted us to only make a major decision based on limited, misrepresented facts that fit his scenario. I repeatedly tried to reason with him, as did others. Finally, I made a rather direct statement that might have embarrassed him, that he couldn't counter and he accused me of being a "bully with words."

I think I was just being right.

Sometimes people are intimidated by my size. I'm very tall for a woman, and large, with good posture. Like most people, I get angry about things, but I dare not express it. People actually cringe if I raise my voice or frown.

Am I a bully?

This!

I am an example of how someone would not know they are bullying. I posted about it here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4202320.html#4202320


Here be another example. I remember when I stumbled upon People of Wal Mart and STFU Parents. I did not get those websites. They looked like silly sites where you post screen shots of what parents post on their Facebook and on the other website looked like just pictures of things at Wal Mart of something unusual. Okay so what if I decided to join in that fun to contribute to it so I take screen shots from my old school mates who are on my friends of that they post about their kids or about their jobs as parents and submit them there or I bring a camera with me to Wal Mart and snap a photo of something I think is unusual and submit it there? Okay I never did this stuff because I never got around to it but I did find out eventually the point of STFU parents was to make fun of parents for things they post on their wall and I had no idea it was a bullying website. I found out later it was the same for People of Wal Mart, to make fun of people there. But let's say I did contribute to those websites and then I found out they were to make fun of people. Did I just bully intentionally? Did I knew what I was doing? This be an example of how someone not know they were being a bully because they misunderstood what those places were about. Yes it be their intention to join in the fun and it was their intention to post those photos but they didn't intend to be a bully because they didn't know. But are they silly websites or was the intention of them to make fun of people? I remember another time I stumbled upon "Too Big for a Stroller" website and I found it hilarious and wanted to join in too. It was pictures of older children sitting in strollers and I just thought it was another silly site. But instead I noticed months later there were angry comments about it and they were saying how it was bullying the blogger was doing and they were throwing the special needs card around because they were saying "what if the child is special needs" and I thought "that be discrimination because why should they be excluded from the sillyness. I'd be offended if I wasn't allowed to submit a photo of myself because of my disability. Let's say there was some silly place to submit movies of people doing freak outs at places and I wanted to submit one of myself having a meltdown in public and they tell me they can't take my video because I am "special needs" because I have an anxiety disorder and Asperger's and I would be offended that I am being excluded. So that is how I felt about Too Big or a Stroller because they wanted to exclude special needs kids in strollers and even the blogger of the site said she always makes sure the child isn't special needs and I did read that she only did the blog as a joke to be silly but she didn't realize people take it the wrong way and get upset by it so she took it down I assume because it no longer exists.


I am not sure if this was bullying but I remember being eight years old and these kids decided to ditch one of my best friends. I had no idea what was going on and I thought they wanted to throw my friend in the ditch and I told them no because there were no ditches there. Then one of my friends asked her to go over there and cover her eyes and count to ten. She did that and then my other friend said we would count to three and we all run. I thought we were playing tag and I didn't know what they were doing so I went along with it. I don't know why they did it, maybe my friend was being mean and the other kids got sick of it so they decided to ditch her or they just wanted to be mean. But I did it because they were doing it and I didn't really understand what was going on and what we were doing and why we did it.

I also remember another time in middle school I was in choir and we were practicing a song. The girl in my choir class was picked to sing a part in the song but she kept messing up and kids laughed. Then they started to clap and I joined in too thinking we were rooting her on to do it and to keep trying to get it right. I didn't realize they were making fun of her and she started to cry and the teacher yelled at all of us and I got upset because I didn't know why she was mad and a girl next to me explained what the kids were doing. Did I bully intentionally? Did I know what I was doing? Another example of how someone wouldn't know they are being a bully. I was just following the other kids and didn't know what they were doing.

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Last edited by League_Girl on 02 Dec 2011, 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

League Girl's post made me think of something. Is making fun of someone, when your intention is not for them to see you, bullying? Is it bullying the people whose pictures are on People Of Wal Mart? It's obviously meant to show pictures of people who are dressed wierd while they are at Wal Mart. I don't think it's usually done to offend the actual person, because they probably won't know that somebody took their picture and posted it there. I could see telling them that they are on the site and laughing about their hurt feelings as bullying, but is laughing at someone behind their back considered bullying?

Now, obviously the site is public so nobody knows who looks at it and if it's really behind their backs, but would making jokes about someone, however cruel the jokes, to your friends about someone else while the person is not there, and no one has any intent to tell the person about the jokes because they don't want to hurt their feelings, but they still think they are funny, bullying? Or is that just bad taste?

Also, would a site like Perez Hilton's be considered bullying celebrities? Would the National Enquirer be considered to be bullying celebrities? I'm wondering what others think, I really don't have an opinion on it, because I never thought about it.

Frances

That was unintentional, League Girl.

Bramble, that was a very interesting use of Milgram. I think the anonymity of the web might bring out more of the bully in some folks. Maybe.

People can hurt others' feelings unintentionally. Hopefully the perpetrator apologizes and avoids that action in future. That isn't bullying.

Here is an example of bullying that happened to my 10 yo daughter a couple of days ago. She is in a self-contained class of 13, she's the only girl. One of the boys leaned over and whispered "cry baby" repeatedly. Eventually (didn't take long) she melted down and had to be removed from the room. He knew she was sensitive and would go off and did it on purpose. That is bullying.

He didn't get away with it. KB couldn't tell the teacher at the time but she did tell me. The schools actually have anti-bullying policies now. It's far from perfect but at least the little booger wasn't excused. Oh, and he's special needs too. No excuse.

You bring up a good point, OliveOilMom. I laugh at those posts on FB and I pass them on.

I notice weird things about people all the time and I shop at Walmart. If I point it out to another person, am I being a bully? But, come on... if you hang thirty rings on your nose, ears and eyebrows, wear a thong outside your sweats and have a tattoo of a chair on your arm, I'm going to notice. Isn't that what you want?

Where do you draw the line?

Good point. When I said "At that point, Intent has nothing to do with it," I should have said, at that point, it becomes intentional. I meant that the original intent, though it may not have been to bully, doesn't matter anymore.

Rocking and stimming though, is a different thing. I am only referring to things that are done intentionally, but not necessarily to deliberately annoy, attack, or offend others. Stimming is not at all intentional, and doesn't qualify as bullying.

It's interesting that you brought this up though, because I actually deal with this problem on a regular basis with three autistic sons. All three of them stim in various ways. All three annoy their brothers with their stimming. I don't consider most of it bullying, even after they've been asked to stop, but that's because the action itself isn't intentional to begin with. Bullying behaviors, even unintentional bullying, are not unintentional. They are intentional actions or speech, that may not be intended to offend, but do offend anyway. Once you know the action is offending somebody, since it is intentional, it can be stopped very easily.

Unintentional stimming doesn't qualify as bullying, but the results CAN be the same. Continuing to stim and annoy others once you've been told it's annoying or offensive, LOOKS as if it's intentional when it isn't really. The problem is, it still creates the same retaliatory reactions in others that real bullying causes.

I don't allow that in my house. Regardless of intent, even in the case of stimming, whoever is annoying others must either stop it, or remove themselves from the group. It's a hard fast rule in my house, and the kids understand it clearly. They still need to be told to remove themselves if they can't stop it, but they do go somewhere else. In our case, it actually helps that all three of them are Autistic, because they each know they do it themselves, but they also each know they are annoyed themselves by their brother's stimming.

Even though it isn't bullying, it still has to be dealt with in much the same way, except that in the case of deliberate bullying, punishment is in order, but in the case of stimming, simply removing yourself or stopping is enough.

So my "bottom line" still holds, but it doesn't apply fully to stimming and other fully unintentional behaviors.

I don't think it is bullying to point out people who are purposely dressing or acting in a way that they know will get attention. It's hard to imagine but some people actually like getting that kind of attention. That's why they do it.

But if it's making fun of people for things they have no control over, like someone who is too disabled to dress themselves properly, then yeah I'd say it's bullying. It's hard to tell where to draw the line because you don't always know which is which.

I'm not talking about people too disabled to dress themselves, I'm talking about people with horrible fashion sense and don't know that something makes them look ridiculous, or that they are too old to wear a certain thing. I see a lot of that stuff where I live.

Frances

Yes, I would say so. Bullying is intentional IMHO, there is a clear purpose to humiliate and hurt someone. So yes, if there is no intent the person may just be a jerk or in bad mood.

I see a lot of that where I live too, I live in GA.

Well I just looked at the People of Walmart website to get a better idea. I've seen it before and thought it was hilarious but I haven't looked in awhile. Just what I see on the first page of photos does not come off to me as bullying. There is a girl wearing a bikini who is clearly smiling and posing for the camera. I don't know why a woman breastfeeding her kid is supposed to be a big deal.

I think if they start following these people around to get more photos it could turn into bullying. It makes me wonder what they did to get the pictures but you see some of the people smiling right into the camera. Taking pictures without their knowledge and posting them online seems more like a privacy violation than bullying. How the person is dressed, is how they chose to present themselves to the public, but maybe they didn't expect to have their picture taken.

I respectfully disagree. That's too broad and doesn't take circumstances into account. You may be doing something that is unintentional or completely legit. If someone doesn't like what you're doing it doesn't mean you're bullying them.

Or you may be doing something that annoys others, but it doesn't cause enough distress to make their complaint a valid one. Someone may be oversensitive and ask you to stop doing something. They may as well try to remove themselves from the situation rather than make demands of you.

If there is a person yapping on the cellphone on a bus and I ask them to stop because it annoys me, but they don't, that doesn't make them a bully. They're just a jerk. I can move away and the problem is gone and may never see that person again. Now, if someone at work knows that talking on a cell annoys me and they purposely come close to me and talk on their cell in my presence, repeatedly, despite of my numerous request to stop it, that would be bullying.

Bulying involves intent to hurt or cause damage and repetivness. One-off incident doesn't count as bullying.

Last edited by AdamDZ on 01 Dec 2011, 9:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.