(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); What is your view on bullying? Have you ever been bullied or have you ever bullied another. Do you think it is right or wrong?

I'm getting the cross-dressing statements from the original post by The Dirty Cuban, which you quoted initially. He mentions cross-dressing in his third sentence. Ever since then I've been using it as an example of unusual behavior.

Yes, it's true that safety would not be an issue if people took your approach. In fact, bullying wouldn't be an issue at all if kids could just be more civilized and be more friendly. I sincerely hope, I dream, that one day the world will be as you describe - a world where there are no bullies. Unfortunately, that's not reality. It's a fantasy world. I completely agree that bullies need adapting, but the fact stands that they're not adapting. Bullying is an age-old problem, it's been happening forever, and it's possible it will go on forever. Those who are bullied cannot control the bullies, they cannot manipulate their minds. Those who are bullied can control themselves. Which is why I propose a practical (hopefully temporary) solution - one that can actually exist in the real world: self preservation. If you can come up with a realistic and proven method of implementing your approach, I'd love to hear it - so would millions of others.

There's nothing wrong with being unusual, if anything breaking from the norm in today's society is a good thing. If you think cross-dressing is a bad thing, you'll need to say specifically why.



Right...



Today's world was a fantasy world to black people, women, irreligious people and so on at one point. It's called progress.



Why's that I wonder? If you're an adult and you assault someone, you get punished properly(that's debatable actually, to be fair, regardless). If you're under 16, 13, whatever the age is and you assault someone, you get a detention and a letter home. Maybe even time off school. The punishments kids get for violence are ludicrously lenient and kids take advantage. If bullies knew they'd end up properly punished for bullying others, 90% of them would stop at the very least. The other 10% would be taken out of school and alas, problem solved.



There will always be brutes that can't be reasoned with, sadly.



No, but adults can through proper punishment.



You cannot - cannot - ask people, regardless of their age, to pretend to be someone they're not due to someone else's fault(s). That's outright immoral.

Admittedly I can't think of a good analogy at the moment, however progress has never been achieved through "self preservation". Ever.

First of all, I never said there was anything wrong with being unusual. I personally don't find anything wrong with cross-dressing. If you believe otherwise, please point to where I stated "cross-dressing is a bad thing". I do have two friends, one of whom was a cross-dresser in high school (of course, that's heresay because I never knew him in high school) and he had a really rough time (he no longer cross-dresses, but does so by choice, rather than by force). I have another friend who performs as an amateur drag queen. I have no qualms about cross-dressing.



That's true. However, I'd say that there isn't particularly apparent progress in preventing bullying. There are movements against bullying, but they aren't working. Even at that, I'm not trying to discourage those movements - they should continue. However, flaunting one's oddities probably isn't helping the cause. It likely offends the bullies even more, and it just gives them more to use against you.

Anyways, I think it's rather silly to compare bullying to slavery, torture, and murder.



So how do you propose such a punishment system is implemented? How will you verify cases of bullying, when most cases of bullying go unreported anyways? What punishment will bullies face? And where are you getting your statistics?

Kids have, for a very long time, been receiving more lenient sentencing because they are kids. They aren't fully developed. I personally do not believe that shipping kids off to a detention facility will solve their problems, because it doesn't solve problems in adults - a majority of criminals are repeat offenders (as in they were caught, tried, and punished - yet they committed a crime again). If you can find a good way to rehabilitate and retrain kids to prevent against bullying while in detention centers, that would be something of great interest.

Also, bear in mind that a lot of bullying isn't just physical. A lot of it is psychological (I speak as someone who has been bullied before). Whether or not you believe sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you - sometimes the words are the most painful. However, swearing at someone or calling someone "gay" or a "loser" isn't technically illegal - as long as you're not threatening someone, it's freedom of speech.



I'm not asking people to pretend to be someone they're not due to someone else's faults. I'm asking some people (not even everyone who is bullied, just a small set) to slightly modify - to tone down - their behavior for the purpose of self-protection. If they believe that standing up to the bullies will fix the problem, then by all means, I encourage them to do that. But, in my own experiences, and those of my friends, that does not work. Which is why I would recommend the next best option: self preservation until they get to an accepting place (namely adulthood and maturity, on behalf of their peers).

Have you ever heard of the term "it gets better"? It's a very popular slogan these days. Effectively, this slogan says, "don't worry, things will be better for you in the future." It's not a call to action, so much as a "wait for things to improve". All I propose is that instead of just waiting, you take action by taking firepower away from the bullies. And perhaps become involved in support and anti-bullying groups - although, as a victim of bullying myself, I can say that being outgoing in such a way is not natural. I was personally bullied, mostly verbally, for my race. On so many occasions I wished I could just change my race to Caucasian, but race, unlike clothing, cannot be changed.

* on a side note: I actually agree with your argument more than mine, and I agreed with it from your very first post to this thread. I'm just making the claim for The Dirty Cuban's argument, which I actually disagreed with from the beginning. I thought it would be interesting (and it is interesting) to create something of a debate (and I was hoping that an interesting idea might be born). Oh, and you actually already had an example of where progress wasn't achieved through self preservation when you made the statement about black people and women - those are two examples where people stood up for themselves and fought back.

I totally think bullying is wrong and sinfull. I was bullied for one year in my school year when I was 12-13. It just kept going on and on and on. It all started with one popular kid and then gradually got worse. They followed me about tripping me up, making fun of me and pushing me. I remember during PE class every time they would grab stones and chuck them at me and hit me with sticks and just stand their laughing at me. I told a teacher, didn't do anything and I didn't have the courage to tell my mum or dad. I remember one friday night I was going to the video store and I seen them all and my heart sank. I remember one grabbed my arms and the other ones just hit me, like I was nothing. I had thoughts of suicide, but I'm better than that and didn't.
Just everyday was a misery for me but I put a brave face on at home and just sayed "Yeah, school was good today". All my friends had left me, till I had nothing. Nothing but misery and pain. Finally it just stopped.

One year later now, I'm 14 and have lots of friends and dont have to wake up dreading the day ahead of me. I wouldnt call the bullies friends but they all act dead on now, like it never happened. But if I ever see someone being bullied, I don't just stand their and watch or join in. I would help the person remembering that was me once. That's why I'm totally against it.

Bullies are attention seekers and get the attention from people around them. Kids can be so nasty.

Yes bullying is wrong. Personally I have been bullied and still am to this day, but it has died down a bit. I was bullied from about the age of 9. One of my so called friends made up a nickname for me which was hurtful, and spread it around. Everyone started calling me it and it was very hurtful. Most of the people who called me it, done it behind my back. Whenever I talked to them or was even out with them they didn't slag or bully me. They did sometimes yes, but they mainly done it behind my back. It was very hurtful and wrong and I told no one about it. Last year I took up going to the gym, and it has helped ease the bullying a bit as they know I'm capable of fighting back now. It was mainly due to me not liking sports when everyone I knew loved them and played them constantly, which they decided wasn't right that I didn't like them and slagged me over it.

I don't mean to tell anyone to do this, as it is wrong and badly hurt the kid, but one day one of my so called friends decided to walk up to me and stand their slagging me while I was with a girl. The girl got annoyed and walked away as I wasn't doing anything to stop him, so I got really annoyed and punched the kid, breaking his jaw. The bullying has really stopped since that, as guys don't slag me anymore much, but girls still call me hurtful nicknames some times. Don't do what I did if your being bullied. Talk to someone, a teacher or a parent and they can help. I got in a lot of trouble for hitting that kid and the teachers didn't care that I was being bullied. If you can do something about being bullied do it!

i've been bullied my whole life and i've debated suicide many times, but every time someone shows mes a little light in the world I decide to continue on in this horrible existence

You make good points, and I'll retract what I said about stricter punishments. Having said that, I've had issues with the way schools work for a long time and this is another issue that schooling brings forth. Ehh... I don't know, to be honest. What I do know however is that if people stood up against bullies as a group the bullies would quite literally not be able to do anything. As someone who's good with words but also well built, I've always been willing to stand up for people if I saw them being picked on, physically or verbally. Now, if more kids did that(I'm thinking secondary/high school upwards) there wouldn't be an issue. I only ever witnessed one fight at my old school, between two people - all everybody else did was ring around them yelling "fight!".

Or maybe I just grew up quicker than they, I always seemed a year or two ahead of my friends.

To be honest, I don't know. At all. Thanks for refreshing my opinion around the punishment aspect though. Perhaps more often than not there could be a problem at home for kids who are bullying others?

---------- Post added at 03:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:57 AM ----------



Yeah, I can relate a bit. I was only 10 but I was being bullied by this one kid... well, to cut a long story short, I hit him and he got a nosebleed. That stopped the issue. And there was this other time that there was me against a group of them, around the same age... that was stopped midway by staff, however me putting up a fight helped. Or at least I felt and still do feel it did. But as I said above, I'm well built and prior to my asthma intervening a couple of years ago I was extremely athletic. So... ehh, I don't know where I'm going with this either.


I think I'm considering this one of very few topics I simply haven't got a clue about, at least in terms of fixing it.

Same.

I had few that continued but once I spoke back and told them right in the middle of class to "Shut the fuck up"... they stopped.

Funny, they were doing it across the classroom trying to pick on me, "We were seniors" and then you just hear me yell it across the room. Class went silent. Got some rep for that shit. Lol.

Middle School was worst for me, about 10th grade was when things got easier and 11th, I had the support of many and had lots more friends.