Bullying: A Genetic Problem with a Social Solution
Are we going to tell our children to stand up and do the right thing, or to watch in silence?
How do we have a hope against bullying if so many of us are complicit bystanders?
There’s lots of talk about bullying
these days. While it appears there is
broad consensus that bullying is bad, we’re not quite sure how to deal with or
even how to define it. Is bullying
uniquely a youth thing, because adults have more emotional maturity to handle
aggression/not take harassment personally?
Does social media/violent TV contribute to bullying behaviour? Is micromanagement a form of bullying? How do we discourage bullies – and is it
possible to inoculate people against the emotional stains bullying causes?
The latest conversation has been
kicked off by the heart-breaking suicide of Amanda
Todd, a victim of the all-pervasive kind of bullying that has only become
possible thanks to social media. Before
her it was Jamie
Hubley, another high-profile youth who killed himself after merciless
torment; prior to that there was Greg
Doucette. Each of these deaths shocked
us into conversation and a retributive mood.
While these specific bullying-induced suicides grab the nation’s
attention, they’re a bit like the Attawapiskat
crisis; individual, visible examples of a pervasive, systematic issue.
One
in five students in Canada says they have been bullied. Between Canada, Australia, the US and the UK there
have been 41 cyber-bullying attributed deaths since 2003. Youth suicides are just one indicator of the
social impact of bullying – in Canada, one
in six employees reports they have been bullied. This pervasive, society-wide harassment has a
hugely detrimental impact on individual mental health, the economy, our health
care system, families – it goes on and on.
The problem is so significant that Political Parties from across the
system are trying to find ways to legislate against it.
If bullying is such a recognized problem,
you’d think we would have a clear definition for it. Public Safety Canada tells us bullying “is
characterized by acts of intentional harm, repeated over-time, in a
relationship where an imbalance of power exists. It includes physical actions (punching,
kicking, biting), verbal actions (threats, name calling, insults, racial or
sexual comments) and social exclusion (spreading rumours, ignoring, gossiping,
excluding)”. The “balance of power”
reference is key to our understanding of bullying; without that caveat, you
could easily include everything from heckling in the Legislature to the Obama
Birther movement as harassment.
How then do we define “balance of
power”? The man accused of kicking off
the bullycide campaign against Amanda Todd clearly had power over her, in terms
of the harmful video he’d conned her into providing. The tables turned, though, when
Anonymous outted this man, shifting the balance of power against him; the
bully became the bullied. Was
it bullying when the Conservative Party of Canada spread rumours suggesting
Irwin Cotler was going to retire?
Heck, aren’t all attack ads a
form of bullying?
Most would say no – because
politics is expected to be a blood
sport. Politicians should expect to be
attacked and be prepared to fight back. It’s through the cut-and-thrust of Question
Period, election campaigns and increasingly, every political interaction in between
that the public can determine not only which ideas stand up to scrutiny, but
which representatives/leaders are tough enough to do the job of governing. Somewhere in here is an unspoken notion that
the balance of power doesn’t apply to politics, due to individual agency and
public accountability of each elected official.
This notion doesn’t hold up to scrutiny itself, though; as politics
becomes increasingly aggressive, Political Parties are becoming increasingly
tribal. How can you not label as
bullying the dogged targeting of individuals by entire political packs?
What about micro-managing
employers? They have power over their
employees; does abuse
of the employer/employee relationship count as bullying? Again, there are those who would argue
against this, suggesting that individuals always have power over their own
fates and are therefore equals in the labour market. If employees are really
bothered by the treatment of a boss, they can speak to them about it and if
that doesn’t work, they can quit and move to another job. If they don’t do that, they’re just playing
the “victim” card. If this were
really the case, though, would we be facing an unheralded
business crisis in Canada?
For me, these aren’t academic
questions. I know what it’s like to be
bullied. A December baby, I was always
the youngest in my classes. Added to
this, I have Attention Deficit Disorder, a “disability”
which went undiagnosed until I was well into my teens. Being the smallest and a bit different in how
I interacted with the world, I was a natural target for those on the lookout
for someone to diminish as a way of aggrandizing themselves. From about Grade 1 all the way into high
school, I was on the receiving end of vicious taunts, torment and physical
abuse.
Decades later, I still have clear
memories of being chased home by older kids waving baseball bats (Grade 2). It made them feel powerful to instill terror
in a runt like me. Then there was the
time I was tied to a flag post in winter and left outside after all the other
kids went back to class, laughing at me (Grade 4). It got so bad that my parents eventually
moved me to a different school, but by then the damage was done. I had become a fearful child, mistrustful of
people and afraid to speak up, knowing that whatever I said would be used
against me. This hesitation morphed into
a stutter, which became just one more opportunity for my peers to mock me.
When bullying is that pervasive,
there is no escape. Even when your tormentors
are gone, the anxiety remains, riddling your thoughts with disquiet and
doubt. I hated going to school. I
didn’t like interacting with others, period.
I dreaded every waking moment, never knowing exactly what sort of
private hell it would bring me. The ADHD
only magnified the pain, as I could never shut down the soundtrack of doubt and
self-loathing playing non-stop in my head.
Self-harm became a way out; if the pain was sharp enough, it would
cleanse my mind of the pervasive anguish that nestled there like a splinter. Of course, the relief was temporary, and the
fact that I was cracking my head against my desk hard enough to leave welts
simply put another arrow in my bullies’ quiver.
Suicide was definitely something I contemplated – there just didn’t seem
to be any other way out.
That was then. Today, I am a confident, positive person that
has a reputation for finding the silver lining around any cloud. There’s nothing life can throw at me that I
can’t handle. Why is that? Why is it that my name now appears in a
byline rather than having featured in a headline like Todd, Hubley and
Doucette? When moving schools didn’t
solve the problem, my parents decided to try an alternative solution; fight
might prevail where flight did not. They
enrolled me in a Karate class led by a tough-as-nails Sensei with the hope that
learning how to fight back might help.
It did, but not in the way they intended.
My Sensei was tough, but always
fair and never judgmental. He never
criticized mistakes – instead, he corrected them. The senior students who helped lead the lessons
were the same way; they pushed the class but were always, always supportive. They taught me how to fight back, which I
eventually did. The supportive attitude
of the teachers carried over to the students; we were all in the same quest for
perfection of technique, together.
Although I hated the class at first, it eventually became my
community. For the first time I could
recall, there was a place I felt safe and respected, plus a group that included
me as one of their own.
This element of belonging made a
huge difference, but Karate provided me with even more. The strict physical discipline and quick
reaction times required by martial arts nurtured in me a level of focus and
confidence that bled over into every aspect of my life. My stutter began to fade; I became more and
more comfortable in asserting myself. At
the same time, the experience of having been bullied combined with the positive
experience of the class shaped my understanding that individual strength is
nurtured within supportive communities.
I tell this tale not to gain your
sympathy or to toot my own horn but to show that it can
get better when we address the underpinnings of bullying proactively and cooperatively. The importance of collective
morale and promoting individual resilience is understood within our
military, if
not those who command it. The idea
of fostering social-emotional learning and positive relationships with teachers
and peers is equally a key component of Ontario’s
Full Day Kindergarten program. The
entire field of positive
psychology is dedicated to the development of cognitive grit the way exercise
builds physical strength. There is no
reason these principles can’t be applied more broadly, especially in the places
where bullying is most prevalent – schools and the workplace.
The other lesson to draw from experiences
like mine is that the tools for developing resiliency aren’t instinctive. As Colin Powell points out in It
Worked For Me, social functioning is learned behaviour; this is as true for
the human animal as it is in all social species. Left to our own devices, we tend to fight,
flee or circle the wagons and avoid – it’s just how natural selection works. There’s really not much difference between the
playground, Question Period or an episode of Animal Kingdom. It takes moderators – an elder, a teacher,
the Speaker, etc. – to referee social interactions, foster respect and maintain
order.
It also takes leaders to set
examples and develop the kind of work or school cultures that manage down this
bullying instinct. Former Ontario Premier Mike Harris famously fostered a
competitive culture within the Progressive Conservative Party, believing that ambitious
people would produce the best results. Instead,
the internal fighting became so toxic to the Party that Harris had to lay down
the law for his cabinet ministers.
It’s the exact seem scenario that’s being fueled by the heightened,
competitive rancor in Queen’s Park now.
Somewhere along the way, our political leaders have forgotten that it’s possible to be in total
disagreement with someone without denigrating them as a consequence.
If we, as a society, want to have
a hyper-oppositional culture that fosters survival of the fittest competition,
that’s fine – but we’ll also have to accept that victimization and its
consequences are part of the package, including the lost productivity, the
health care costs and the youth suicides.
If we’re really serious about addressing
bullying, we have to realize the only way to do so is proactively – by
providing universal resiliency and social-emotional training on the one end and
using programs like restorative
justice to stifle bullying behaviour on the other. The most important thing we can do to end
bullying, though, is lead by example.
