BS: Sticks and Stones.

Subject: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Acorn4
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 06:53 PM

When I was young one of the oft quoted proverbs was "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."

Have we perhaps forgotten this somewhere along the way and are we too concerned about what people say the "might offend" someone rather than their actions?

A government can pass legislation which causes untold misery to thousands of disadvantaged people.

A comedian who makes a distasteful comment which perhaps they didn't think through gets lambasted as if they've caused a world war.

Are there any other of you out there who like me belong to the sticks and stones generation?

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 08:25 PM

Me, now aged 68.

I'm right with you, but there's such a thing, I think, as hate speech, that which can't just offend but which can actually put people in harm's way. No-one has the right to not be offended, but that distinction has to be made.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 09:17 PM

There are times when I really regret not having the option of saying to someone, "Sir, my friends will call upon you" and the thing is settled with a discussion, swords, or pistols. Usually it was by a discussion of the "friends" and a handshake between the two principals.

Should it go to swords I recommend the sabers carried by heavy dragoons. With pistols, smooth bore flintlocks in .69 caliber, loaded with a single unpatched .45 caliber ball, should suffice.

One meeting between two principals, ever, in their lifetimes and those of their descendants (if any).

A big problem today seems to be that no one takes responsibility for what they say. And by the by -- prior to the Civil War at least one US Congressman was killed in a duel and others were beaten by their colleagues, even on the floor of the House and Senate. Guns, loaded canes, and Bowie knives were regular parts of the attire of Congressmen.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 09:48 PM

People being "offended" is not something I care about. It's usually based on some high and mighty moral certitude. Some "holier than thou" crap.
Words that wound are a different story.
being bullied in grade school, I had to hear that "sticks and stones" shit a lot. It was what adults told kids that was possibly meant to make them feel safer and stronger, but mostly just let them know they were weak and stupid for feeling hurt by other people's words. Sticks and stones used as weapons can result in the law being involved. Words? You're pretty much on your own. What "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me" really means is the adults who tell you that are powerless to protect you.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 09:56 PM

"Sticks and stones" was a silly saying. It meant well, perhaps, but there are as many damaged people in the world because of what was said to them as are affected by what was done to them. And I'm old enough to know that from my childhood in the 50's and 60's.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 Aug 19 - 11:02 PM

In school we had a teacher who used to hit us round the back of the head with a hardbound text book...

Those words hurt plenty enough...

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Aug 19 - 11:01 AM

Having been both bullied and beaten, I can say the words caused far more lasting harm than the fists.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Aug 19 - 06:30 PM

I think a line has to be drawn, based not on the subjective magnitude of the hurt, but on the appropriate recourse. In civilization, if attacked with sticks & stones, we are expected to take recourse, not to bigger sticks & stones, but to government, which is supposed to keep the peace by quelling cycles of revenge. With words, however nasty, we are reasonably expected to retaliate (if retaliation is called for) with our own words, and not go crying to the police (or teacher). Bullied people should band together and practice giving shit.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:08 AM

That might work if there were a lot of bullied people. I was the green monkey, everybody picked on me and not on anybody else. Not to mention the victim-blaming inherrnt in any senyenve starting with Bullied people should. No, *bullies* should. Not bully, for starters. Man, American school was torture. Bullying wwas just not a thing in French school. Then.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:08 AM

Sentence, sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:54 AM

Stephen Fry reserved the ' right to offend ' people.

Fully agree with him, I also reserve this right.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 11:25 AM

Me too. Bugger off.

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 11:31 AM

and you.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 11:55 AM

The visible damage. People are bullied, and it makes them/us feel a lot of bad things.

Then, what happens (if you're a kid, and adults can't, or won't, get involved) is to think you'll take the bullies' power away by saying the bad stuff before they do. By admitting you're defective, just so they back off.

After that, the negative self-image, and the thoughts that you're undeserving of anything good can become reality. You become the role you played. You faked it until you maked it. Made it. Whatever.
So these days, I encourage people to underestimate me, then I get pissed off when they do.

I'm trying to overcome all of this, but the main point is that words said to children can affect them for the rest of their lives, and it's up to them to notice the hurt and figure out how to heal themselves.

With sticks and stones, you get bandages and x-rays right off the bat.

The solution, like with so many problems is for the in-group, the "cool kids" to see that bullying is wrong, and stop themselves. I thought that happened with race, but current assholery makes me think that, as humans, no progress we make is permanent. We just have to have some common view of what decency looks like, and we need to keep paying attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Joe_F
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 05:51 PM

Mrrzy: You are quite right in pointing out that I am a dissenter from the stultifying taboo on blaming the victim. Victims are often partly to blame. Everybody knows that.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 06:22 PM

I prefer "accountability" to "blame,"
as someone who has both
sinned
and
been sinned against.
Pardon me for using the religious word "sin"
but in my mind, for some reason,
the word "blame" has a dogmatic ring to it
that borders on religious propaganda.

I have been schooled in verbal abuse
by those elders who were accountable to me
for my very existence, survival, and well-being as a child.

As long as I blame those who schooled me in the past
for my circumstances in the present, I am a victim.

If I want to be something other than a victim,
I have to put blame aside
and focus on being accountable.


Now, having said all that,
Acorn4, I actually do hear you and your OP, loud and clear.
The mass-media, social-media focus on
what people say and how they say it,
especially if the people are celebrities,
is an obsession beyond reason these days.
The tone has gone beyond sensitivity to something else.
Too much emotion and not enough common sense for practicality's sake.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: JennieG
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 06:47 PM

Offending someone is different to hurting them, I think hurting goes deeper.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:06 PM

When is the victim partly to blame?

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:19 PM

In the UK, every second Tuesday and one week in November..

Days may be different in other geographical regions...

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Aug 19 - 10:56 PM

"When is the victim partly to blame?"

In my case, it's when I had the bright idea that if I mentally trashed myself before they had a chance to do it.

I'd love it if we could forget about "blame" and think about what happens, and what we can do to make it better.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Megan L
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 02:31 AM

A bully is a bully is a bully I have seen a few folk on fb who don't realise who I am most of them still have the same tendencies they did as children. Being different is not being partly to blame being a non fighter is not being partly to blame..

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:08 AM

So if I provoke and taunt a bully who then punches me and breaks my nose (an illegal act in the eyes of the law), am I partly to blame for my injury?

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Iains
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:28 AM

Yes and would probably be guilty of incitement.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:45 AM

The internet has given bullying a new lease of life by allowing anonymous web-creepers to hide in the shadows and spread their bile with impunity
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 07:20 AM

I can't remember ever hitting anybody in my life though I don't consider myself a pacifist
I must have been subjected to bullying - it was one of the inevitabilities of somebody my size and stature experiencing 1950s Secondary Modern Education where I came from, but I have to say I can't remember a single case of being physically abused.
I can remember some of the taunts from some pupils, but what sicks out is the bullying we all received regularly from a number of teachers.
I was told just before I left school that all we (the class) needed when we left was to be able to tot-up our wage packets at the end of the week - societal and long-lasting bullying of the very worst kind which, in my opinion, permeates and shapes our society
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 11:05 AM

Jim Carroll, bet you never went to an American grade school.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 12:33 PM

Is bullying as prolific in American schools as the media would have us believe then? If so, is anything being done about it?

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 12:37 PM

...on a lighter note I was reminded of the BDSM motto.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 12:38 PM

"Jim Carroll, bet you never went to an American grade school."
Tell me more
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:05 PM

Oh. It was *awful* - coming from French school.

I didn't know Brainiac was an insult. I was used to admiring the ones who could get good grades.

I thought black people were human beings. I didn't know talking to them would make the white kids hate me.

Also I spoke French to them so they hated me too, to be fair. All the Africans I'd known were francophone.

I was taunted mercilessly on the playground. No adult ever noticed or intervened.

I was beaten to a pulp after school by groups, unless I cowered in the bathroom long enough, hours and hours. Thhe groups were either all white or all black but the both thought I should go back where I came from.

I didn't know that girls weren't human beings. If I talked to them as if they were, a group of girls would beat me to a pulp. If I talked to the boys, boys would beat me to a pulp.

They would push me off the top of playground equipment, dig their nails into my arms, kick/punch me, chase me all over. The smartest thing I did once was leap over a stone wall and then cower against the far bottom of the wall while I listened to them wondering where I was. I waas sure if they caught me they would kill me for trying to get away. I cowered there till night, 9ish. They had started chasing me at about 2:30.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:11 PM

But like I said, it was the horrible things they said that wounded more deeply than all the beatings. Yeeeears of therapy. It was a good 8 years before I could even talk about that year without weeping. The therapy came later.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 04:18 PM

Shit! :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 05:31 PM

Almost 50 years ago. I would love to find 2 particularly bad ones and ask, what were they thinking. Still awful.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 08:40 PM

Mrrzy's history is not out of the realm of what I believe bullies would do. I never got beaten up. I was strong, and I think they were afraid adults might catch them, but if they'd been somewhere where they wouldn't have been caught, who knows?

The problem was (and probably still is) that they DON'T get caught, and the victim can often feel like it's more trouble to tell someone than to just pretend everything's fine. Especially if they feel guilty for being a target.

In the end, it comes down to not believing things are a certain way just because it's convenient not to look too closely.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 19 - 11:08 PM

I was a pacifist. I never hit back, ever. Might could be things would have been better, but I just couldn't. Fear it would get worse couched behind principle.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Aug 19 - 02:36 AM

Sounds bad Mrzzy - I think that the kids im my school tended to regard the teachers as the enemy rather than each other - the few who tied to bully were usually ignored - we all came from the more or less same background with the same problems
The worst you could do at our school was support the wrong team (Liverpool or Everton) and if you did you were pitied rather than intimidated.
I hated sports and supported neither - I told a big Liverpool supporter this once and he asked me "What are you, a ***** atheist?"

I believe most people who share my (non) beliefs are "sort of" pacifists - you wouldn't use violence but it was there as a standby
My father was like that - he wouldn't strike a fellow human being, let alone shoot one, but in the 1930s he went to Spain and shot Fascists - i think that upset him more than the time he spent being mentally tortured in a fascist prison as a prisoner of war.
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Joe_F
Date: 05 Aug 19 - 06:17 PM

There is an interesting description of & rumination on being bullied, hitting back, and getting away with it in George Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys". It is too long to reproduce here, but toward the end he says: "The fact I hardly noticed is that although Hall formally challenged me to fight, he did not actually attack me. Indeed, after receiving that one blow he never oppressed me again. It was perhaps twenty years before I saw the significance of this...."

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Aug 19 - 11:39 PM

Key point there, Jim: discipline was so strict we French school students all banded together against faculty and staff. Sure, we'd give someone grief for being teacher's pet, maybe, but we didn't have the time to really harass them; too much time in actual class doing actual schoolwork. What a concept.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 06:47 AM

Jeri, in Mrrzy's case it seems like a throwback to the 19th century when bullying was normalised, a bit like what is happening with racism showing its ugly head again more and more. Since the mid 70s society looked down on racism and racists risked being ostracised for displaying racist behaviour more precisely the behaviour they tried to inflict on other people and found it backfired on them. Now along come the likes of Trump, Bannon, Farage who send out messages that it is OK to hate people for being different. How much of bullying in schools arose from people in authority and power procting their professional suppressed (or even no suppressed) behaviours?

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 06:48 AM

projecting

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 09:56 AM

I suffered from a bullying rugger bugger teacher because I had long hair,
and more interest in rock music and girls than PE and Games...

Years later he was arrested for fiddling with boys...
That might have come as a surprise to his mrs and kids...???

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 10:28 AM

Um, the mid 70s? Maybe not in the South.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 10:33 AM

Early to mid 70s...

He, and other teachers, turned a blind eye [encouraged ?] the school rugby team gang, and prefects
to make my non conformist arty-farty nerdy music and drama gang's life a misery...

We probably didn't help ourselve's by adopting a smug attitude of intellectual superiority...

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 11:51 AM

We had a set in the first secondary school I went to pfr. I had no problems but.

One was sort of nicknamed after Mussolini. His main threat was a big gym shoe but I think those he decided to dislike could be subjected to constant digs.

After I’d moved but another was sacked after getting into a very violent brawl with a big strong and older pupil.

Then there was the football one. Harmless to us lot but never showing much clue as to what was going on – he was a bit older and I guess one might question some form of dementia these days...That said, Musso was reputed to have crossed him once, apparently swiftly learning riling and challenging him was not a good idea...

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Aug 19 - 01:47 PM

What most amused me was...

after putting up with that macho sporty teacher
sneakily walloping me round the back of the head
and calling me a "long haired poof",
for all the rest of the class
to witness and take note of..

A decade later he was the one in the local paper accused of sexually abusing boys...

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: leeneia
Date: 09 Aug 19 - 03:21 PM

Mrrzy, I am so sorry all those bad things happened to you.

Adults have no excuse for lettings such things go on.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Aug 19 - 03:29 PM

Thanks. My parents and older sibs had a lot to answer for too, but they have. Yeeeears of therapy, great stuff.
That was the 1970-71 school year (maybe 71-72).
My elder sibs and sometime their kids used to tell me I should do X or Y (not let my kids be themselves mostly) so they (my kids) would not get teased. I always refused, and they never did (get teased) so good.

Subject: RE: BS: Sticks and Stones.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Aug 19 - 03:29 PM

Thanks. My parents and older sibs had a lot to answer for too, but they have. Yeeeears of therapy, great stuff.
That was the 1970-71 school year (maybe 71-72).
My elder sibs and sometime their kids used to tell me I should do X or Y (not let my kids be themselves mostly) so they (my kids) would not get teased. I always refused, and they never did (get teased) so good.