Teasing

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Are you teased a lot? I am, and I don't like it.

Have been at times.
Sometimes quite cruelly.
Sometimes repeatedly teased in pre-adolescent fashion by people in their 50s or 60s.

Yeah...I've been teased and bullied.

But I always knew I had to learn the difference between "good-natured" and "vicious" teasing in order for me to survive in the "social world."

I'm still not good at "dishing it out," though I'm better at "taking it."

In what kinds of contexts do you get teased, and by whom? Neighbors? Family? Co-workers? Classmates?

I got teased a lot by classmates when I was little. Then I went to the Bronx High School of Science, where I got teased a lot less, probably because (1) most of the students there had better things to do and (2) that school attracted students from all over the city, from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

IMO hostile teasing is most likely to happen in a culturally homogeneous (or nearly) environment, where anyone who doesn't quite manage to fit in is considered ipso facto ridiculous. Therefore, the best way to get away from teasing is to live in a highly multicultural neighborhood with immigrants from all over the world and no one dominant ethnic group. In such a neighborhood:

1) People are accustomed to making an effort to understand each other.

2) There is no single cultural mold that people are expected to fit in to, beyond basic courtesy.

My supervisor teases me, but in a jokey way. And I encourage it anyway by being humourous and a bit daft.