Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words or more subtle actions. The bullied individual typically has trouble defending him or herself and does nothing to “cause” the bullying. – American Psychological Association

School bullying, like bullying outside the school context, refers to one or more perpetrators who have greater physical or social power than their victim and act aggressively toward their victim by verbal or physical means. Wikipedia

Bullying is cowardly behavior, in my humble opinion. Anyone who bullies another obviously has very low self-esteem otherwise why would the bully even feel the need to taunt another? There are many forms of bullying but it generally involves younger humans, such as children and teenagers, though adults often engage in this type of behavior as well – law enforcement bully people all the time. I have written about bullying before on my Blogger profile Hecate Maroon, as I was bullied off and on from about the first grade through high school. Most of my bullies were boys, but there were a few girls in the bunch – jealous bitches who probably have a house full of brats by several different men. (I know at least one of them ended up this way.) The bullying wasn’t constant but it happened and it depended on what kind of assholes shared the classroom with me.

Here are some facts on bullying from MedicineNet:

• The definition of bullying is physical or verbal aggression that is repeated over a period and, in contrast to meanness, involves an imbalance of power.
• While hazing also involves aggression over a period, bullying excludes the victim from a group while hazing is part of initiation of the victim into a group.
• Twenty-eight percent of young people from grades six through 12 have been the victim of bullying.
• Teachers often underestimate how much bullying is occurring at their schools.
• Parents are aware their child is being bullied only about half the time.
• Contrary to popular belief, bullies who have never been bullied themselves often have been found to have rather high self-esteem and to be social climbers.
• Bystanders of bullying tend to succumb to what they believe is peer pressure to support bullying behavior and fear of becoming the victim.
• Bullying can have significantly negative outcomes, for both the bully and the victim.
• There are a number of approaches that victims and bystanders of bullying, as well as parents, school, and work personnel can use to discourage bullying at school or in the workplace.

There are at least five types of bullying.

• Physical bullying can involve hitting, kicking, pinching, pushing, or otherwise attacking others.
• Verbal bullying refers to the use of words to harm others with name-calling, insults, making sexual or bigoted comments, harsh teasing, taunting, mimicking, or verbal threats.
• Relational bullying focuses on excluding someone from a peer group, usually through verbal threats, spreading rumors, and other forms of intimidation.
• Reactive bullying involves the bully responding to being a former victim by picking on others.
• Bullying can also involve assault on a person’s property, when the victim has his or her personal property taken or damaged.

I was the victim of verbal bullying and it turned me into a misanthrope by the age of sixteen. My mother actually had to get on a couple of these bullies, and that worked slightly but it did not stop the bullying in school, where teachers often said things to the bullies – if the abuse was within earshot – but often those sneaky bastards would make their snarky comments to me when the teachers weren’t around, such as at lunch, on the school bus out of the driver’s hearing, or at recess. To this day, I don’t like children of a certain age or teenagers and one reason I never had kids is because of the shit I went through in grade school. None of it made me want to take my own life, however.

Nearly half of American adults experience workplace bullying, and I can attest to this as I also went through a very brief period of being kind of bullied by a man nearly 40 years old, with a daughter graduating from high school in a few months (at that time). Later I saw him exiting a mental health clinic and thought to myself, no fucking wonder! Yes, grown ass people bully others – just look at the modern Republican Party; it is full of bullies male and female. When I was in school being made miserable by my bullies, I often daydreamed of the time when I’d be an adult and not have to go through that sort of juvenile behavior anymore. It was a dream that never came true and my conclusion is that people are simply assholes who want to make others as unhappy as they are.

With the Internet has come cyber-bullying and I have seen so many examples online that I could fill a book with it. I was a victim of cyber-bullying by a guy I broke up with after a mere two months of dating. Unfortunately, I had allowed this guy to take photos of me in lingerie and nude, which he used after our breakup to spread on various internet websites to promote me as a prostitute. I had no idea this had happened until someone called me about a job – he told me he had found my ad on Craigslist – and while I was confused about there being an ad for me on CL seeking a job, I was excited about the possibility of obtaining employment in a private home. I met the guy at a park, where he asked intelligent questions about my cooking & housekeeping abilities, and I wasn’t offended because he said he had two children. But then he asked to see my apartment, which was a mess. Wanting the job that badly, I allowed him inside and that’s when he tried to assault me. I later filed a police report but after they found the stuff my ex had posted online (which I still did not know about because the emails I kept receiving, I simply blocked or marked as ‘spam’). To make a long story short, I ended up with a record for ‘filing a false police report’ while my bullies got away with it. That is another reason I do not like cops.

As the social life of young people has moved onto the internet, so has bullying, with electronic bullying becoming a significant new problem in the past decade. Whereas bullying was once largely confined to school, the ubiquity of handheld devices affords bullies constant access to their prey. Cyber harassment can be especially disturbing because it can often be carried out anonymously; victims may have no idea who the perpetrators are. The anonymity of cyberbullying removes many restraints on meanness and amplifies the ferocity of aggression. It’s easier to inflict pain and suffering on others when you don’t have to look them in the eye. Constantly evolving digital technologies enable new ways of spreading false information about targets. Both direct harassment and relational aggression thrive on the internet. Cyberbullies can spread false rumors with viral speed on social media. They can falsely impersonate someone and conduct all manner of mischief in someone else’s name.  Sexual harassment and cyberstalking particularly target women. And long after the active bullying has stopped, malicious information can linger on the internet and continue to harm. – Psychology Today

How do you help someone who is being bullied?

To help a child who is being bullied, support the child and address the bullying behavior:

• Listen and focus on the child. Learn what’s been going on and show you want to help.
• Assure the child that bullying is not his/her fault
• Know that kids who are bullied may struggle with talking about it. Consider referring them to a school counselor, psychologist, or other mental health service.
• Give advice about what to do. This may involve role-playing and thinking through how the child might react if the bullying occurs again.
• Work together to resolve the situation and protect the bullied child. The child, parents, and school or organization should be part of the solution.
• Follow up. Bullying may not end overnight. Make sure that the child knows that you are committed to making it stop.
• Make sure that the bully knows that his or her behavior is wrong and harms others
• Show kids that bullying is taken seriously. Make it clear to everyone that the bullying will not be tolerated. – Medline Plus