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At one point in life,
everyone has been exposed to bullying. Either they were the
victim, the bully, or just a witness. Most people look at
bullying as a mean person pushing around an innocent person,
just to be mean. Perhaps, though, it could sometimes be just
the opposite.
By this I mean a person pressuring another
with a good intent. Most people would consider this positive
peer pressure, but there is a point where peer pressure can
turn into bullying. In young adults it happens quite often
without anyone’s acknowledgement, mostly when trying
to prove a point or discourage a bad behavior. An example
of this would be if a person’s behavior were offending
somebody. One person might say something and, whether they
stop or not, more people join in scalding that person. Pretty
soon an entire crowd has ganged up on that one person for
something they did. This shows that the victim of bullying
does not and isn’t always totally innocent. However,
it still makes bullying wrong. With all this in mind, how
do we draw the line between standing up for yourself and being
a bully? It is one thing to defend your rights and beliefs,
but it is another to victimize those who challenge those rights
and beliefs. As soon as the other person begins to feel threatened
of alienated, it has become bullying. This can come about
by becoming overly defensive (which can trigger a fight-or-flight
thought process) or when more than one person is rebuking
another.
If, in fact, this were true about bullying,
then I would have to admit to being a bully on one or more
occasions. This is because, at times, I get defensive along
with other people. I can recall a time when I was with a group
of people at a basketball game. One girl took off her sweatshirt
only to have a revealing top on. This made us all feel very
uncomfortable, especially the young men. Instead of just asking
her to please cover up, we made discreet efforts to try to
make her feel uncomfortable with what she was wearing. I was
the one to start it by coughing under my breath, “Modesty!”
Someone else followed by expressing how hard it was for her
to find a dress for the dance that was appropriate. The girl
took a hint, but didn’t seem to care. She answered by
saying that her top wasn’t very appropriate, but at least
it was cute and attractive. So finally one of the boys told
her that he didn’t like the view he had and asked her
to put her sweatshirt back on. She did. However, as if that
wasn’t enough, we still continued to basically try to
shame her of her actions with the comments we made.
Now I realize that we were making her feel
very uncomfortable and alienated. She probably won’t
display her revealing attire to us anymore; however, she won’t
hang around us at all anymore either. She has her own free
will, and it was not our place to try to take that away from
her. If any of us were offended by her actions, one of us
simply needed to politely express that and leave the rest
up to her. I try to remember that every time a similar situation
arises. I respect that person’s freedom of choice after
I politely voice my opinion or concern.
The act of bullying is not always
the product of ill intent, but can sometimes be from good.
Too easily does standing up for what’s right turn into
battering the offender. Although some good can come from this
“positive peer-pressure,” the person being pressured
might be feeling forced to do or say something and often times
feel ganged up on for not being good enough. We need to realize
that it is not always our responsibility to try to improve
of change others. We all have our own freedom of choice to
be who we want to be. We, as a whole, need to draw the line
between defending and offending so that we don’t go from
being the Good Samaritan to a plain bully.
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