I notice when ever someone mentions they were bullied, the first response from someone is "why didn't you defend yourself?" or "you need to learn to stand up for yourself". I myself have heard those words (being as I was a victim of bullying) and I don't think people understand how annoying that is to hear or how it somehow makes it seem like it's all your fault for not putting a stop to it, which is SO not true. So, I'm going to take this time to explain to people why defending oneself isn't that simple or always the best solution and why I never defended myself.
Most things that happen to us are not something you can anticipate to happen. So unless you're naturally defensive person and always waiting for a fight, it's a little hard to defend yourself when you're not expecting anything to happen. So, when it does you're just so shocked and confused at what's going on, that you don't really know how to react.
That's how it is with bullying, they pick someone at random who's just minding their own business and not bothering anyone and decide to start picking on them. I know, that's how it was for me. I'm a very shy/ quiet person and I just usually keep to myself. Though, I have never moved I did attend two others schools before the one where I was bullied.
I never had any problems at my first two schools. Aside from your typical kid squibbles and stupidities there were no major upsets. I was shy / quiet at those two schools and no one seemed to care. So, when I went to that last school and I did get bullied, it was not something I had expected. I've never encounted that level of meaness and cruelty, so I wasn't really sure how to react. Also, I'm not the type of person to complain or get other people involved in my problems. So, I just kept to it to myself because I felt it was my problem.
Also, one time I did tell. And, you know what that did for me? It just made things worse. I'm an observant person and I could tell those kids had the teachers wraped around their finger. Their parents had money, they were striaght A students and whatever those kids wanted they would get. So, I always knew if I defended myself the teacher would probably walk in at that exact moment and all they would see is what I was doing and then I would get in trouble. I've never been in trouble in school in my life and I was a good kid, so I wasn't going to ruin that for some jerks who could get anyway with anything.
And, as I said I did tell one time when a kid in my class offered me a dollar to stick my head in a garbage bag and when I said "no" he grabbed my arm and tried to put my arm behind my back to stick my head in the garbage bag, I pulled away and he started laughing. Though, nothing happened it still creeped me out because that's an odd thing for a person to do. The next day I didn't want to go to school and I was crying, so I had to tell my mom and she told my dad and my dad called the school and the principal called my house and interrogated me like a criminal. Then when I went back to school, the teacher called me out in the hall and told me "they would never do that, their parents pay good money to the school". That whole incident just made things worse for me because everyone called me a liar after that. I always knew no one would ever be on my side and no one believeing me when that incident occured proved that.
All of that is why I'm writing this, so people can understand it's not always that easy to defend yourself and it's not always a wise move either. So, now let me tell you why
First: When someone is picking on you (as I said above), you're so shocked at what's going on that you're not really sure how to react. It's hard to know what to do in situation you never expected you'd have to deal with.
Second: There are certain people in this world that no matter what they do, they can always get away with anything. So, if Kyle the Quaterback on the high school football team is accused of bullying Chris the science club nerd, you think anybody is going to believe that? No, they won't. You know why because "Kyle is our star athlete and would never do a thing like that", that's why. Whether you choose to believe or not sometimes people being bullied know that the people bullying them would NEVER get in trouble, EVER. That's why they don't tell because they figure no one would believe them or they don't defend themselves because they'd probably be the one to get in trouble and not the one who should be in trouble.
Third: Sure, maybe some bullies will back off after you put them in there place but others may just come at you even harder or it will make things that much worse for you. So, instead of solving the problem, it just makes the problem worse. Why would a bullying victim want to risk it will make it worse instead of better? Why risk that?
Fourth: Nowadays, a lot of bullying for kids is through social media from there peers but there's no way to know exactly who's doing it. So, how can you defend yourself against someone your not even sure is the one picking on you? And, sometime the more you fight back the worse it makes it and again why would you want to make it worse?
Bullying is a HUGE problem and it's made even worse by the people who make the victims feel it's somehow their fault for not "defending themselves". Not everything in this world is so simply solved or easy, sometimes it's more complicated then people realize. So, though I'm sure for some people defending themselves against bullies works. It doesn't work for everybody and the ones who didn't defend themselves don't need people making them feel bad for it. Being bullied is bad enough, it doesn't need to be made worse by people telling you what you should have done to stop it because there's no promise it would have worked anyway.
Truth be told, I'm having a rough day and I'm not sure any of this makes any sense to the people who read it but I felt I needed to write this for the people who were bullied and are told "you should have defended yourself". Also, for the ones who say that so they can understand it's not always as simple as just defending yourself and all your problems magically get solved. Life's more complicated then that and so is bullying and hopefully my point (in one way or another) was made.
Thank you.
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