The New Bullying: Casting Every Disagreement as Bullying

Have you been accused of the “B” word yet? I’ve had it thrown at me a number of times and believe that it’s time to address the situation.

What I speak of is the latest cliché amongst clichés: “Bullying” or its antithesis, “Anti-Bullying.”

It’s not like I’ve never heard the words before. However, when I was growing up it was pretty clear as to what it meant to be a bully. In fact, one has only to watch “The Christmas Story” with Darrin McGaven and Peter Billingsley to see a clear example. There were a gang of toughs who seemed to prey upon Ralphie and his friends with regularity. They were bullies. They used their size and/or physical prowess to get what they wanted from Ralphie and his friends.

“Bullying” has taken on a whole new meaning or at least been expanded, however, and I’m wondering if some people aren’t crying “wolf” too soon. The following information is collected from a link on the definition of Bullying from: stopbullying.gov

Bullying Definition - Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and kids who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

• An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
• Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once. 

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

Types of Bullying

There are three types of bullying:

• Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things (remember, while this is written with respect to children, we are all adults and should have thicker skin than children). Verbal bullying includes:

Teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, taunting, threatening to cause harm (in fact, one writer on Patch made threats towards my family).

• Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:

Leaving someone out on purpose, telling other children not to be friends with someone, Spreading rumors about someone, embarrassing someone in public.

• Physical bullying – (self-explanatory and needs not be further addressed.)

This information can be seen in full here: stopbullying.gov

So, we have Verbal Bullying, Social Bullying, and Physical Bullying. As you can see in the definitions this information is being applied to school-aged children. The point is that bullying usually involves one who is not able, due to age or physical prowess, to protect oneself. Once one has reached an age of maturity that person is usually able to speak up for oneself and not fall prey to the lies that are used by a bully to gain control.

Okay, I’m willing to accept that bullying can occur in the adult world but I do believe it is highly overstated; and when people voluntarily post on social-media sites and then cry “bullying” every time someone disagrees or posts a critical response, well… 

Here is the latest accusation made towards me, “But if you are just into bullying and misrepresenting what is written, find someone else or something else to keep your name out there.” This was in response to these two comments from which I have removed the names.

“Hey, …, this is Patch not your doctoral thesis. Give us all a break and write a book. I'm sure the latest failure of the B.O.E., Edward Pearce, was a direct appointment out of Trenton. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was appointed by Chris Christie. How am I doing, am I getting the conspiracy right? The GT school system and the BHP regional school system are both in the toilet and you're blaming Trenton. Could I interest you in buying your own private lane over the George Washington Bridge?” 

“I'm sorry to interrupt, …, were you through heaping accolades upon yourself yet? I've taken some post-secondary educational schooling myself but I never saw that as a feather in my cap that made me smarter than the next guy. Of course, you seem to want to wear your efforts at gaining a PHD (you know what even some PHDs recognize those letters as representing, right?) as a badge of honor. Far be it from me to bust your bubble, lecture on.”

Here’s the thing, most of the people on Patch use assumed names; I don’t. In this particular case there was what appeared to be a real name attached to the comments but I did not perform any verification of the writer based on his/her name. For one thing, I don’t go after people, I go after ideas. While others have insulted me over physical attributes, I have never gone down that path. So, I have been writing on the Patch extensively for a few years and not only is my picture posted but most people who have read me know where to find me. 

So, where exactly did I bully?

You can see my comments in context here: Special Education in Gloucester Township Schools Petitioned.