A bit of gay rambling here....

[Zix]

I'd be interested to know your thoughts and hope you don't mind this brain dump I'm about to unload on you.

When I was 14 and at high school the same bunch of 4 guys, all substantially bigger than me, would chase me around the school and beat me up. Not seriously, just enough to let me know who was boss. It was widely suspected at high school that I was gay. They did this pretty much every day.

They were bored.

I didn't realise this and thought that their activities were somehow directly connected to me, that I was causing what they were doing in some way. It took some time for me to realise that I was selected because I stood out and not because I was in some way bad.

I tried to make it stop in all sorts of ways, being friendly, being angry, fighting back (that just made everything worse - I've little patience with people these days who say standing up to bullies is the solution - these guys had made the decision that I was their fun and I wasn't going to be allowed to take that away from them).

It wasn't until we were in the middle of a chemistry class and one of these guys was pouring some liquid into a tube to try and get a certain measurement and remarked to me - "aw check it out I got it just right!" with a big, friendly grin, that I realised he had nothing against me personally at all. He seemed to think I was his pal, it was just that he was allowed to screw with me.

I should point out that I've totally forgiven these guys. One day they just stopped. I think they just grew up. Kids do dumb things sometimes. I'd rather they hadn't done it, of course, it took me a good decade before I could walk down the street without crossing it to avoid other people. These days I've no fear of pretty direct confrontations with most people but I wasted a lot of time being afraid. But that wasn't their plan. They didn't have a plan, it's just that they had this idea they were allowed to play with me however they liked and it wasn't possible to convince them otherwise.

It wasn't malicious.

I see this pattern everywhere now. With black people, disabled people, women, immigrants, people all over the world are stuck in this box where everyone's allowed to play with them. There's no plan to cause damage as such, it's just that there's a kind of switch that people use around certain groups that they seem to need to use, some people seem to need to treat other people as playthings. I think a lot of racists, homophobes and other bigots just don't get that they've flipped a switch. You listed to the way they talk about the groups they don't like and it's as if they're talking about objects or animals.

I no longer think of it as evil. I think it's just a cognitive error.

I think there's more than one kind of bigotry, I do believe in malicious bigotry, the kind that used to get black people lynched and gets gay people executed overseas, but there's flip-switch bigotry as well where the discrimination is more like a kind of release from internal stresses, taking comfort in the knowledge that there's someone worse off than you, that however poor or bad you think you are or are told you are there's always someone who's worth less than you and can be screwed with. I think most bigotry is a symptom of a kind of sadness, a feeling of helplessness.

I'm guessing a lot of you will be quite angry with that idea. Certainly whenever I see people asking victims to forgive bullies and move on it still makes my blood boil but as I get older I find I just can't sustain the anger. I don't want to stop being angry with the bullies but it's as if the fire is just dying away. I'm sure it's got a lot to do with the improvements in gay rights and not just that but improvements in the way ordinary people in my country (Scotland) react to gay people now (it's no different from being left handed or Polish or something). It's completely transformed over my lifetime. When I was a teenager I was a disgusting freak that should b exiled from society - now I've had three or four straight guys tell me up front that if they were gay I'd be the guy they'd want to be in a relationship with! The bizarre contrast between these two ways of being treated has given me a slightly skewed and cynical view of the world. "Yeah," I think to myself, "That's what you're saying now. What happens when it benefits you to change your opinions back, hm?" That probably isn't a reasonable idea, but it's difficult to avoid. I'm never really going to know if this shift in opinion is anything more than a society-wide fashion statement, am I? I don't want it to be, but seeing the way immigrants are being treated in my country and they way the Iraqis were treated by the soldiers of my country I have far less faith in the depth of my fellow citizens' conviction than might keep me comfortable.

People tend to believe what they think they're supposed to believe.

For a long time homosexuals were one of the playthings of British legal institutions. It changed but there's n reason to suppose it won't change back.

I don't want to be society's plaything. I don't want ANYONE to be society's plaything.

How do we go about getting human beings to take each other seriously?

I'd be really interested in the view of anyone who feels that an aspect of them over which they have no control has lead to their being slotted into a non-malicious "plaything" category.

I think there's a really astonishing amount of unintentional abuse of people going on that's based on a need to release internal stress. I think most abuse is of that form and that the kind of automatically accepted sadism we are now seeing all over the world grows from it.

I am slowly and reluctantly coming round to the idea that I can't maintain my anger with the world's abusers. I don't want to forgive them but it's beginning to look like it's the only way I can find peace.

[HillbillyBob]

1. I was treated in a similar way, malicious or not

I am not a play thing, and ocassionally have opened up a can of whupass..
Surprised the hell out of one guy who came to in the nurses office and I was put out of school. Even though I did nothing, but defend myself after being slugged in the nose and then slammed headfirst into a locker door. I cracked the sobs jaw and nose.

Then there's the kreestian bullies who tried to set fire to a cross propped against my house. Which I answered with like violence. Malicious or not my home would have burned pretty quickly since it was a 100 yr old wooden Victorian cottage (as in small 4 room house) Those bullies really freak out when you start shooting at them for havin a bit of 'fun'.

They are sorry pos as far as I can determine, I do speak up and speak out.
I operated on the premise that if folks realise they know gay people they will realise we are just like everyone else for the most part.

I see the urec pig(s) have been here. hey a%%hole bite me.

[Zix]

2. Fighting back does work sometimes.

But not all the time.

I did win once. There was a major bastard taking out whatever personal issue he had on me for days and days with all sorts of crap about me being sub-normal and he started stabbing me with compasses. I gave him what for in the grounds afterwards. Nobody was on my side, though.

[paulsby]

11. exactly

one case does not prove that fighting back "always" works, any more than one case proves it does

at least in my case, several cases it worked for me.

i remember one kid used to constantly harass me. this was in 2nd grade for pete's sake.

i used to jog during recess (i was always way into fitness). he ran behind me talking smack. i slowed down, so he was like a foot behind me and then swung my elbow as hard as i could backwards (exaggerating the normal elbow swing one uses in a jog).

he got hit in the nose HARD and as most people know it doesn't take much of a hit in the nose to draw blood

i NEVER had a problem with him after that.

heck, nowadays the school probably would have suspended me or some crap like that. they knew the kid was a bullying putz and i suffered no consequences whatsoever.

in another instance, in high school, i dealt with a kid who was always harassing me. i challenged him to a fight, and that was it. the mere CHALLENGE was all it took to get him to leave me alone.

it doesn't ALWAYS work. we are talking human behavior here. nothing ALWAYS works. people are different.

[d_r]

3. its hard to think about it that way

but "bullies" and "victims" have a relationship - it is a relationship over time. Most bullies (not all) were also victims themselves and some are victims and bullies at the same time. Bullies over estimate how others see them - they tend to think that other kids look up to them and respect them. Assertiveness training helps both bullies and victims - victims because they can say stop it, bullies because it gives them more positive strategies than the bullying ones they are using.

[Zix]

4. It's so destructive and it takes such a long time to change.

For years and years I was furious with them and finding people on the Internet who had been bullies just made me angrier. They seemed to be saying "See I was great for being a bully. Now I'm great for not being a bully." Like they deserve an award for just behaving normally. I just wanted to smash them in the face with crowbars.

It took me a really long time to realise that they were damaged as well.

I look at the way people on this site discuss abusers and they often refer to them as "sick" or "diseased". It's not really what they mean, because we have sympathy for people who are genuinely sick or diseased. There's something warped going on when people use those words to describe such people.

I suppose the thing that gets me down is that I just can't get into a bully's head. I still can't understand them.

[d_r]

7. I don't either

I don't think anything makes me angrier than bullying behavior - not just kids on kids, but I think it is the same thing when a husband beats a wife or a nation bullies another and so on. Basically using power to force someone to do what you want.

As an adult, I guess I can see that kids who are bullies are still kids and need help and guidance. When adults do it and/or encourage it it just makes me sick.

It made me sick when Sarah Palin said that the announcement that the US would not use nuclear weapons to respond to conventional attacks was like telling a bully you wouldn't hit them back, to go ahead and hit me. You would hope that adults wouldn't still think like school children and would have more mature strategies to deal with conflicts. Sadly some just don't.

[lunatica]

5. Sorry. I meant to respond to the OP

[lunatica]

6. Being used as a scapegoat is wrong on all levels

But the fact that you refuse to be angry at them shows a high level of maturity and evolution. You can't control idiocy and plain meanness in others but you can control how you choose to react to it. And you can control how you feel about yourself no matter what others do. I think you're the higher intelligence in this situation.

But passivity of any kind needs to be addressed, including the passivity of those who would never hurt others when they're alone but who, perhaps to avoid being the one who is beaten, will go along with the bullies to hurt another. Peer pressure is probably the strongest pressure teens can experience. At that age it defines them in their own mind. Teens are not yet mature enough to understand that what they do has profound consequences and they want to be accepted. Scapegoating is common at that age. And when this behavior continues into adulthood it becomes obvious that the person has left over emotional issues of bad self-esteem and unresolved anger.

You don't need to be angry when you understand them. Although they're always dangerous when hunting for victims in a pack as individuals they're almost always cowardly. Refusing to give them the energy of your thoughts and emotions simply means that you control your life and they don't.

[Zix]

8. Thank you.

Things have changed so much for me that looking back on the past I don't recognise myself at all anymore. The anger's shifted poles many times. Now I feel the anger almost as if it's on behalf of my previous self, as if I was angry about something that happened to someone else.

Strange and alienating, to say the least...

[Evasporque]

9. But some of those "kids" grow into young men and the "play" gets rougher

They don't change.

and their behavior gets worse...

They beat Matthew Shepard and left him to die on a barbed wire fence.

They bashed Krystal's head in and left her dead in a motel.

They shot a gay man in the head as he was getting into his car.

They beat Gwen to death in a basement.

They shot Brandon.

They drafted and passed laws to purposely institutionalize discrimination.

They made people live a lie out of fear.

I am mad. I will stay mad at the bullies in my life and the people that helped me deny who I was all those years.

No excuse. No forgiveness.

[Zix]

10. I don't know what to say to you.

I don't want ever to stop being angry with them but the anger's letting go of me as if it's tired of trying to beat me.

[paulsby]

12. that is part of the reason i became a cop

because i hate bullies, and i get to help bring bullies to justice.

bullies suck