In the Wake of Bullying

In a world where our individual differences are deemed to be a nightmare rather than a dream, or a curse rather than a gift, we tend to distinguish others from our own image. We separate them from our own identity and instead we create a persona that could make it happen. We give others the identity that we do not want to be, like nerd, dumb, black, or ugly. These people are elbowed or shoved in locker rooms, namecalled, humiliated in front of the public, and treated in some other ways that can leave the victim physically and emotionally bruised. This came to be known as bullying. Violencepreventionworks.org defines this to be an aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power; most often, it is repeated over time.  Bullying, in its many forms, is not a foreign issue to us anymore. We walk the earth everyday and witness the harsh reality that there are those who are being picked on because society stereotypes them as “different”.  We see this scenario every day; even though we may not know that it is bullying itself that plays before our consciousness. Bullying comes in various types and it could also create different upshots to the victim. It can cost the life of a person, or it may cause him to cost other people’s lives.

The first and the most commonly seen type is physical bullying. Rebecca Fraser – Thill, a former Topic Writer  who also works in the field of developmental psychology, argues that physical bullying occurs when a person uses overt bodily acts to gain power over peers. Physical bullying can include kicking, punching, hitting or other physical attacks. Unlike other types of bullying in schools, physical bullying is easy to identify because the acts are so obvious. Physical bullies tend to demonstrate high levels of aggression from a young age and are more likely to be boys. Take Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, a book that tells of this hot-button issue. The story tells of Peter Houghton, a 17 – year – old high school student from Sterling, New Hampshire who has endured years of physical torments from his classmates. His everyday school experiences include broken eyeglasses, bruise, wasted lunch that his mother personally prepared, and locker room humiliations. His painful experiences led him to commit a violence that shook the whole of his community. He turned up at his school one day and shot everyone who went his way, leaving ten people dead and a lot more wounded in its wake.

Bullying may also come in a form of a verbal torture. Rebecca Faser – Thill says that verbal bullying occurs when someone uses language to gain power over his or her peers. The verbal bully makes use of relentless insults and teasing to bully his or her peers. For instance, a verbal bully may make fun of a peer's lack of physical capabilities, may tease a peer for being a "dumbie" or "nerd", and/or may call a peer names based on appearance. Verbal bullies are the hardest of type to identify because their attacks often happen in the absence of an adult. This type of abuse may not be capable of doing any physical harm, but it can surely leave a lasting psychological impact to its victims. A fine example of this is the case of Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14 – year – old New York student who committed suicide after constantly complaining about his painful experiences at school where he was being bullied because of his gay sexuality. He even made a Youtube video where he talked of his optimism for a brighter future. After his death, the bullies that led him to his suicide even taunted his elder sister that, “We’re glad you’re dead. You’re better off dead.”

There is a type of bullying that is even more difficult to recognize in relation to the bullied person. The National Center Against Bullying defines this to be covert bullying. It can be carried out behind the bullied person's back. It is designed to harm someone's social reputation and/or cause humiliation. Covert bullying includes lying and spreading rumours, negative facial or physical gestures, menacing or contemptuous looks, playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate, mimicking unkindly, encouraging others to socially exclude someone, and damaging someone's social reputation or social acceptance. The Australian Covert Bullying Prevalence Study reveals that within this concept, covert bullying has been broadly defined as a more subtle, often hidden, form of non-physical, aggressive behavior aimed at inflicting harm through peer relations, feelings of acceptance, friendships, and self-esteem that can result in social and psychological bruises that are equally, if not more painful than physical ones. Take the case of Rebecca Black who opted for homeschooling when her song “Friday” went viral. During an interview with ABC, the 15 – year – old said that, “When I walk by they'll start singing 'Friday' in a really nasally voice. Or, you know, they'll be like, 'Oh hey, Rebecca, guess what day it is?'" Her critics called Rebecca’s song the “worst song ever” and she became the object of spiteful comments and even death threats.

Cyber bullying is the fourth and the last type of bullying identified by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s Building Respectful and Safe Schools (2010). It is delineated to be overt or covert bullying behaviors using digital technologies. Examples include harassment via a mobile phone, setting up a defamatory personal website or deliberately excluding someone from social networking spaces. Cyber bullying can happen at any time. It can be in public or in private, and sometimes only known to the target and the person bullying. Whatis.com also goes far to say that cyber bullying is the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to harass, threaten or intimidate someone. Cyber bullying is often done by children, who have increasingly early access to these technologies. The problem is compounded by the fact that a bully can hide behind an electronic veil, disguising his or her true identity. This secrecy makes it difficult to trace the source and encourages bullies to behave more aggressively than they might face-to-face. Just last August 2011, James Soriano, an Ateneo De Manila University student got cyber bullied because of his article published in the Manila Bulletin entitled “Language, learning, identity, privilege” where he espoused English as the “language of the learned”. He received a torrent of malevolent comments from the netizens especially when his article spread virally in the internet. The remarks even attacked his personal identity, his upbringing in such a school, and other things that shouldn’t have been brought up as he is also another individual that is subject to right to privacy. Another example is the case of Faye Gibson, a 13 – year – old Denver student who turned to the internet for help when she became persistently bullied in school. She posted a video in Youtube asking the viewers if she was ugly or not. But it turned out that the comments she received for her video were even more devastating than the words and treatment that were thrown at her in school.

The variations of bullying and its accompanied examples tell us that there is more to bullying than how we actually perceive it. It is not just about those people who suffer from it. More importantly, it is an issue that threatens to haunt our society as long as it exists. It is a termite that could eat the very woodwork that we have set up to protect our individuality, much less our community. Bullying is the antithesis of the ethics that we have laboriously established so that we can live true to our names of being human. It may take any form and it may inflict different damages or effects upon the victim but at the end of the line, there will always be nothing okay with bullying.