Bullying represents the politics of conformity. The mechanism for coercion and control which enables power over someone, intertwined with other forms of oppression that include race, class, gender and sexuality. And it is reflected in all areas of life (and believe me, the Left isn’t immune to it either!) as it is about power and control.
They say school is the happiest days of your life. It was the most unhappiest times for me, unrelenting fucking misery. Reading this grim and tragic article today made me very sad and angry, what emanates from the piece is the teenager’s smile, hopeful. How life can be one scary nightmare, unrelenting misery.
It reminded me of my own school days, pushed to the edge dangling over the precipice. I contemplated suicide like scores of young people. Like scores of kids and young people I tried to conform and be part of the in-crowd, yet I didn’t fit into their world. I didn’t look right, I was too fat (funny enough I starved myself when I was 13 to become that magical size 10… that was the popular size circa 1982 before Size Zero… but even then I wasn’t accepted into the in-crowd…and the jibes, put downs, and physical violence still continued).
It made me wonder what the hell was wrong me, there must be something wrong me….those thoughts constantly existed inside my head. I blamed myself for the bullying like countless other young people. And it didn’t help when my mum would say, ‘Why can’t you stick up for yourself’?…
And like most things in this fucked up alienated atomised dog-eat-dog wretched society it is easier to blame the victim, in whatever the situation, as a distraction. School bullying seemed to me a combination of that pack animal mentality, sniff out a victim, along with peer group pressure. I know some of the worst bullies were kids who were being bullied in their homes, therefore their way in dealing with that was to reclaim power by kicking someone more powerless than them.
I think I was only happy from 8 to 11 years old as I was taken out of a school riddled with vicious bullying. If I hadn’t been then my ‘sanity’ would certainly have disappeared into a void, I spent the latter days in that hypocritical and contradictory god fearing hell hole on antidepressants and sleeping tablets, sleep walking through my life while staring into space. Those childhood years highlighted obsessional compulsive behaviour (to give it a label), anxiety and depression.
Thankfully, I spent 3 years in a more inclusive and understanding school which brought me emotionally out of my wounded shell. But secondary school beckoned, by the time I was 14- 15 I decided to do ‘my own thing’, I was part of a group that eschewed the usual stuff we concentrated on academia, that was the focus, I was still a non-conformist existing on the margins with my odd tastes in music, clothes and political beliefs (I got the ‘fuck off back to the Soviet Union’ a few times but that made me laugh more than anything…and recently I got..’fuck off back to North Korea’ which also made me laugh as it gives a new twist…and spin!). I think I was seen as an eccentric, there was an uneasy truce, and I was left alone by the bullying in-crowd.
Naively, I believed things would be easier once I left school, thinking that people are more mature. Well, I was proved very wrong there. Again, I was seen as a weird eccentric where people thought they could dissect my life, create pathetic gossip about me. I didn’t conform to stereotypes, and a whispering campaign started about my sexuality culminating with some guy in one of my classes badgering me, shouting at me and goading me about my sexuality. That was soul destroying, the ritual of humiliation.
I stumbled out of the class room where I ended up in the toilet crying, desperate and despairing, the fog of depression sucking me in, slipping further into the abyss, wanting this to stop, wanting to find the exit. It felt never ending and never stopping. I wanted out of this shitty life along with the dehumanising cruelty. I just couldn’t fight it anymore and the worst thing was feeling so alone. Loneliness is the killer.
I turned around and there was this young woman who had witnessed all this homophobic bullying shit happening, she hugged me. Her words were simple enough, ‘Don’t let them destroy you’….
Simple yet hard to put into practice. And today reading about this teenager made me remember all this, it brought it all back to me. How all life is so painfully fucking unbearably hard. Another lost life.
A very sad story of Holly and a moving and honest piece from yourself. It certainly made me sit up and take notice.
I do wonder if we’re moving forward with respect to bullying. Sometimes it just seems to me that technology and the media seem to be introducing new mechanisms to enable bullying, but the underlying conditions that make it acceptable don’t seem to have been addressed.
Thanks for that Chris, I really value what you said. I wasn’t sure whether to write about it but I dunno I just wanted to say those things.
I agree as well that sometimes social networking sites, which can be useful, can be extensions of bullying for some young people. Indeed the underlying conditions aren’t addressed, you are right there.
“Why can’t you stick up for yourself?”
I love my mum and dad dearly but they said this to me too – and I know that they meant well, but as advice goes, it was rubbish. Completely unhelpful.
Whenever I hear or read about bullying, and in reading your really powerful and moving post, I always get the feeling that for all the crap I also put up with at school, in a small way I’m grateful to the bullies. That may sound completely and utterly counter-intuitive, but with the benefit of the distance of years, it really is true.
There are people I know from school who I still see fairly regularly and for all that I care about them, I know that they’re not that political and they’d struggle to know exactly where they stand on a whole range of pressing issues of the day.
But I never have that problem. I know EXACTLY whose side I’m on. Being bullied made some of us socialists of one kind or another, people who know instinctively that standing alongside those who are powerless, who are oppressed or who are suffering, isn’t just right – its impossible to ignore. I’d like to think that I’d have got to this position anyway, but getting beaten up regularly for three years at secondary school was as much an education as the scheduled lessons, with some apparently unanticipated consequences.
Some of the worst bullies MAY have been kids who were being bullied in their own homes, but some who were bullied chose not to take it out on others who were weaker than them, but to get angry enough to try and fundamentally change the world, no matter how impossible or unlikely that might seem.
Which you have to admit, shows no lack of ambition.
And even with the benefit of the distance of years, to still want to change the world after the severe lack of victories our side can point to shows remarkable willpower and fortitude.
Stay angry – and the bastards can never destroy you.
Respect,
Kevin
Absolutely Kevin! Your comment moved me as it was powerful and positive. Thanks for that.
I think my politics did indeed develop due to being bullied, the feeling of powerlessness made me aware of oppression and being angry about it. It did shape my socialism.
And wanting to change things, no matter how small, that’s why I admire and respect people who take things on, fight the system and the state, however small or big but fight for a voice and for justice, by saying, ‘no, you can’t do that’…
Btw: I am also reminded of the US film Welcome to the Dollhouse which is a very grim but realistic observation of bullying. I remember Mark Kermode (sure if what him) who introduced it for television and he said that all these film critics were crying by the end when it was shown in the cinema before it was released as it reminded them of their miserable school life. The film really touches a raw nerve.
That was really powerful and truthful from yourself, and there are these sad stories all the time. I agree with Kevin, that if you survive the crap and come out the other end – you won’t be undamaged, but you’ll be stronger and you’ll have survival strategies. And you’ll have a hatred of injustice.
Sometimes it’s so depressing when you think of how cruel kids can be. But that’s just the fucked up society and sense of values we give them.
Cheers Splintered, Yeah you come out the other side damaged but consciously aware of how fucked up this world is.
And then there’s left wing people bullying and ridiculing people with moderate right wing views.
I don’t want to compare my experiences to others – I was never beaten up badly, and there were other kids I knew who were bullied much worse than I was. But at my secondary school there was certainly a culture of bullying, and as a kid who was small, wore glasses, top of my class, liked classical music, was a Christian (one of less than 10 in a school of 700), etc etc I was an easy target.
More than anything apart from my faith, it was my experiences at my secondary school that informed my socialism – I was sent to an independent secondary school after going to a state primary. There were a few of us on assisted places, but the vast majority were spoilt rich kids. The culture of bullying was a direct result of the belief that they were better than everyone else and could treat people however they liked. The vast majority of kids in my year were incredibly selfish with very right-wing views who laughed at me (even at an older age) for being interested issues like global poverty & war. The only people that mattered were themselves – and to a lesser extent, their family and friends.
It certainly wasn’t deliberate, but my school taught me everything I’ve needed to know about class.
Thanks for that Tim. School is such an unbelievably tough experience. And it is those experiences that raise political consciousness.
Interesting what you say about class. I know people who went to public schools and some developed a class consciousness because of the experience.