School Won’t Let Bullied Boy Bring ‘My Little Pony’ Bag to Class

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School Won’t Let Bullied Boy Bring ‘My Little Pony’ Bag to Class.

Thank goodness they weren’t bullying him over having red hair, or the school would presumably have told him to shave his head. Because giving the bullies what they want is always the best solution, and furthermore whatever it is the bullies have currently fixated on is sure to be the root cause of the bullying. Right?

The article notes that Grayson Bruce, the subject of the article, isn’t the only North Carolina boy to deal with Pony-related bullying:

Grayson Bruce isn’t the only North Carolina “Brony”—a popular term used to describe male “My Little Pony” fans—to make headlines for being bullied about his interest in the show. In January, 11-year-old Michael Morones, of Wake County, tried to commit suicide because he was tormented at school for his love of “My Little Pony.”

I don’t think that Grayson will suddenly stop being bullied if he leaves his My Little Pony bag at home. In fact, I suspect that being an open MLP fan is Grayson’s way of resisting the bullying that takes place anyway. Grayson is unwilling or unable to go along with what’s expected of him as a boy, and boys who don’t fit in with gender norms are always punished. I’m sure he loves My Little Pony as a show, but at some level, I believe he’s using his MLP bag as a way of openly defying the bullies, both among his peers and (it seems) in the school administration, who are trying to force him to conform to the norms of boyhood. And in my eyes, at least, Grayson’s defiance is nothing less than heroic.

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33 Responses to School Won’t Let Bullied Boy Bring ‘My Little Pony’ Bag to Class

  1. 1
    80smetalman says:

    You have a point, leaving the MLP bag at home won’t stop Grayson from being bullied. Bullies will always find an excuse. I had a similar problem in fifth grade and used to wear a cub scout jacket. I got teased for being a cub scout to the point that I ripped the CSA patch off the jacket. It didn’t stop the bullying.

  2. 2
    RonF says:

    Good for the kid. And screw the school. They’re not worried about what’s best for the kid, or for teaching everyone what the right thing to do is. They just want to make life as easy for themselves as simply as possible.

    80smetalman, I was short and fat and wore glasses and the smartest kid in school and I got bullied a LOT. As in hauled into the boys room, thrown on the floor and pissed on bullied. That stopped when I got some size on me and my older brothers taught me how to throw a punch. The school administration didn’t do shit about it.

  3. 3
    Kathy says:

    Of course they’re going to punish the boy who would be different. Being a unique snowfake of originality is just going to get the kid bullied his whole life. May as well start conforming at an early age.

  4. 4
    Lori Heine says:

    School officials are a MAJOR part of the bullying problem. This has been true for years — it was when I was in elementary school more than thirty years ago.

    What those of us who would stop bullying in the schools must do is hold school officials accountable. When those in positions of official authority stand by and do nothing (except possibly blame the victims), they have become bullies themselves.

  5. 5
    John says:

    He’ll have to come to terms with it or (try to) leave the image of being a fan behind. There’s simply no other choices right now.

    Irrational hatred for male My Little Pony fans has been getting worse and worse, and it will only get more violent as he gets older. Especially now that attacking people for being “neckbeards” has been legitimized to the point of being mainstream.

    You either learn to get used to people randomly screaming at you and hope they won’t get physical… this time. Or, you learn to hide.

  6. 6
    nobody.really says:

    How appallingly sexist. It’s 2014 already! When will people realize that we need to treat all MLP fans, male and female, with equal distain?

    Fortunately the kid can sue. I’m sure the courts won’t let threats of private wrongful conduct become an excuse for government (public school) censorship. That is, unless the kid lives within the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

  7. 7
    Grace Annam says:

    “Just ignore them and they’ll stop.” That was the advice I got. I did. They didn’t.

    I don’t remember when I finally realized, consciously, why that was, but I think it was young adulthood, long after the bullying had ceased. My misery wasn’t the objective; it was a side effect. I was just a prop. The objective was to score points among themselves. Whoever could score the best hit on ME (and others like me) gained the most favor amongst THEM.

    Also, ignoring someone IS A REACTION. They’ve poked, and you’ve jumped. They knew I was ignoring them, and it was funny, because it didn’t hurt them at all, and it was THE BEST I COULD DO, because I was ten years old and had no acting ability and no other tools in my tool box, having been taught non-violence by highly principled and well-intentioned adults who didn’t think to accompany those lessons with lessons in verbal sparring or social acuity.

    Finally, I was not physically bullied, like Ron was. I was “merely” taunted, called “faggot” and other such, and belittled for having no athletic ability. As ineffective a strategy as ignoring it was for me, try giving that advice to someone who’s getting peed on.

    Bullies do not respond to disincentive. Within their group, they are internally motivated. Bullies respond to consequences. Make them look foolish, or make them hurt, and they’ll find other targets, or a way to control their sadistic impulses.

    When did the bullying basically stop? When my best friend, C, broke his hand on a bully’s face. The face healed faster, being soft tissue. C’s hand was in a cast for a long while, which served two purposes: it was a constant reminder to the bullies that he was willing to break his hand in order to hurt them, and it was a hard object which no one could take away from him.

    I’m not proposing that we create a system where young children must lash out physically in order to stop the abuse. I don’t have to; we already have that system.

    You don’t stop bullies by imposing consequences on the victim, as this school has done, any more than you stop racism by segregating the victims “for their own good”. Where there is abuse, properly, any change, any discomfort, any consequence, should accrue to the abuser.

    Grace

  8. 8
    mythago says:

    The only way to stop bullying is if the school takes it seriously and makes it stop, or if the parents impose consequences on the school. If the school doesn’t take bullying seriously, or if – and this is weird, but I have seen it a ton – the adults act as if they are intimidated by the bully, consequences are going to be meaningless because they won’t be enforced by anyone who wants a better outcome.

    When my oldest child was bullied in middle school, she would throw things at the bullies. This was effective not because she had a good throwing arm (she does), but because the bullies learned very quickly the consequences of this would be: The principal would give Child a stern finger-wagging, while the bully’s parents were called in for a Serious Talk and told that if it happened again there would be extremely serious consequences, including calling the police. This worked because the principal had strong personal feelings about bullying and make it clear it would not be tolerated.

    When my youngest child (different school) was bullied, the school did a lot of ineffectual hand-wringing. Since it was approaching the end of the year, we simply kept Child out of school for a ton of unapproved absences. These cost the school a significant amount of money and did not look good on the truancy reports it had to send up the chain. Of course, because the truancy process was bureaucratic and cumbersome, we knew there would be no actual consequences for us or Child (who transferred to a new school the following year). And yes, I made it clear to them, in language that would be difficult to put in an official report, exactly why we were doing this. I’m not sure it changed their stance in the long term, but it kept Child away from bullies, and it was a nice demonstration to the school that siding with bullies carried actual consequences.

  9. 9
    Jake Squid says:

    Bullies do not respond to disincentive. Within their group, they are internally motivated. Bullies respond to consequences. Make them look foolish, or make them hurt, and they’ll find other targets, or a way to control their sadistic impulses.

    When did the bullying basically stop? When my best friend, C, broke his hand on a bully’s face. The face healed faster, being soft tissue. C’s hand was in a cast for a long while, which served two purposes: it was a constant reminder to the bullies that he was willing to break his hand in order to hurt them, and it was a hard object which no one could take away from him.

    Oh, yeah. I was bullied from the middle of fourth grade until the middle of my freshman year in high school. I remember exactly how I made it stop. A few of them had me up against a wall, yet again, and I told them that if they didn’t stop I’d firebomb their houses. A few weeks later I tossed a firebomb in the street in front of one of their houses. The following school day those very same bullies asked me if I’d done it and I denied it. I was never bullied again.

    My experience is why I sympathize with a large percentage of school shooters. Do I think they should shoot? Fuck, no! But I do understand that they are kids, the torment seems endless and inescapable, and they see limited options to stop the bullying. I would never have had to use an incendiary device to stop the torment if school authorities had taken bullying seriously and put an end to it at any time during the 5 long years I was targeted. If I’d had access to a gun I probably would have been one of those shooters.

    Tangential anger:
    I was 13 years old and I could have killed somebody with that bomb. Looking at it from this long, long distance, I can’t place the blame on my 13 year old self – I was a kid, what the fuck did I know about the real possible consequences of that act. All I knew was that I needed to get them to leave me alone. I blame it on the school authorities who were not unaware of the bullying for all that time. Yet, when a bullied kid kills people I never hear of any consequences to those charged with running the school and protecting their students.

  10. 10
    NoxiousNan says:

    Jake Squid, you responded dangerously, it’s true. But you were successful where adults failed you. My response was to disappear, and I didn’t even begin to reemerge for 25 years.

  11. 11
    RonF says:

    “Just ignore them and they’ll stop.” That was the advice I got. I did. They didn’t.

    Two things stopped it for me. First, between 7th and 8th grade I went from 5′ 6″ and 156 pounds to 5′ 10″ and 156 pounds and had spent the entire summer (not just a couple of weeks) running around Scout camp with lots of physical exertion and not a lot of snacking opportunities. The first couple of days of 8th grade there were some marked double-takes as various people saw me for the first time in a few months. The second thing that stopped it completely was to move from Massachusetts to Illinois and leave behind all the history of “Ron is a valid target, even if we can’t remember why”.

    As I reflect on it, there were a couple of minor factors. One was that Freshman year I ended up in a relationship with an attractive girlfriend, so “Hm, no way Ron can be a faggot” ran through some people’s minds (I was actually told something like this by one guy). And the increased academic demands of High School made it somewhat less uncool to be smart.

    Yet, when a bullied kid kills people I never hear of any consequences to those charged with running the school and protecting their students.

    Preventing public employees from suffering the consequences of not doing their jobs, or doing them improperly, seems to me to be a major function of public employee unions.

    Jesus, Jake – I only ever made stinkbombs and rockets and flares. God help the kid who gets caught now doing what you did then. They’ll pull him out of school, bury that kid in counselors and drugs and he’ll be lucky to get out with his sanity.

  12. 12
    Ruchama says:

    I was told “Ignore them and they’ll stop.” It, of course, didn’t work. I reported it a bunch of times, but usually nothing was done. So, when it escalated, I didn’t bother reporting it, since I knew it would be pointless. (There was only one time when something was actually done. On my sixteenth birthday, my friends decorated my locker. The birthday tradition among girls at our school was that, a few days before your birthday, you “casually” happen to tell your best friend what the combination to your locker is. Then all your friends get to school early on the morning of your birthday and stuff your locker with candy and streamers and cards and stuff, and decorate the outside of the locker door with signs and balloons. That year, one of my friends actually went through the trouble of cutting out from construction paper individual letters spelling out “Happy Birthday [name]!” and taped them to the front of my locker. When I went back to my locker at the end of first period, there were a bunch of boys standing around it. I pushed through the crowd, and saw that they’d been rearranging the letters to spell out sexually explicit stuff, or at least trying to (they just wrote letters right on my locker when they didn’t have the ones they needed.) One of my friends was with me, and she insisted I report it. I told the vice-principal what had happened, and named as many of the boys who’d been there as I could remember. Three of the names I said were kids who had recently gotten into trouble for some other stuff, and had been told that they’d get major consequences if they did anything else wrong. So, those three got suspended for a day or two, and had to write me letters of apology. Not all of the bullying stopped after that, but my locker stayed clean from then on.)

  13. 13
    closetpuritan says:

    My bullying experience had some similarities to yours, Grace. I was never physically bullied. I clung to the “ignore them” advice, long after I knew it didn’t work. I think that I thought that if I kept doing it the “right” way, someone would notice that I was doing what I was supposed to, but the advice wasn’t working, and would intervene somehow.

    I was bullied exclusively on the bus (I forget if it was 7th or 8th grade or both) by two boys. Off of the bus, they would rarely interact with me, and when they did they would act like I was just another student which was confusing to me. It reinforced the idea that they were bullying me not because they had any feelings about me, but primarily because they were bored and had made it into a habit. There was one other girl my age also on the bus, who didn’t really join in but would laugh at the boys bullying me. (For some reason, even in adulthood, I always seem to have more trouble getting along with/mutual dislike with the opposite gender than the same gender, even though it seems like with most people it’s the same gender, and even though as a kid most of my friends were same-gender.) Eventually I think I told my parents what was happening and the school changed the seating on the bus, but then some other boy a couple years younger started doing the same thing; I was sort of stuck in disbelief because he was younger and therefore, in my mind, lower status than me. But I didn’t change my strategy of “ignore them”.

    It’s only recently that I realized I could have moved up to the front of the bus as soon as they started bullying me, and I might have gotten some kind of token disciplinary action but they probably wouldn’t have really stopped me. But, at the time, token disciplinary action would have been pretty upsetting for me.

    My dad had a somewhat similar experience (I think in high school) where another boy would insult him every day and he finally punched him. He got in trouble with the school, but the boy stopped doing it.

    My dad said something at the time about the boys bullying me because they “liked” me–i.e. were attracted to me. I didn’t and still don’t believe that was the case, but the idea of that was pretty scary to me, not comforting as he had meant it to be.

  14. 14
    NotLikely says:

    That taught you a valuable lesson, Grace Annam, namely act weak and helpless and some brave man will step up and fight your battles for you.

    And that can be extended to politics: Everyone should be weak and helpless and get lots of assistance from the government.

  15. 15
    closetpuritan says:

    Also, Amp, I think you’re right that the MLP backpack is merely the excuse that the bullies latch onto, here. I’ve seen before that kids will latch onto a perceived weakness/marker of difference not because that’s what makes them want to hurt others, but because it’s an easy way to hurt them. I remember a group of students making fun of a teacher who had a Southern accent, and my sense was that we weren’t really making fun of her because she had a Southern accent, but because we didn’t like her. Recently, my mentee was talking about calling a boy “the N-word” (which turned out to be “negro, not the other N-word”) after getting in a fight with him, and feeling bad about it after because she had cousins who had one black parent and she didn’t actually hate black people.

  16. 16
    80smetalman says:

    Jake, you should read my book called “He Was Weird.” It is about the very thing you posted about here, a boy who is bullied so badly and those in authority do little to stop it that the boy takes matters into his own hands.

  17. 17
    KellyK says:

    What is it with “Ignore them and they’ll stop”, anyway? That’s what I was told, and it worked just as well for me as it seems to have for everyone else, which would be not at all. I mean, I guess it’s true that ignoring the bullies makes it *less* fun for them than if you’re visibly angry or humiliated, but Grace is right:

    My misery wasn’t the objective; it was a side effect. I was just a prop. The objective was to score points among themselves. Whoever could score the best hit on ME (and others like me) gained the most favor amongst THEM.

    Hurting someone else might be fun for them, but it isn’t the main, or the only goal.

    The other thing about “ignore them” that makes it completely useless is that you have to be a *hell* of an actor to actually give the impression that you don’t care and aren’t hurt. Usually, it’s blatantly obvious that you’re deliberately ignoring them, and then it becomes a game to see who can make you react.

  18. 18
    Grace Annam says:

    NotLikely:

    Ha! Not to worry. I’m not a sixth-grader anymore. It was later in life that I filled my toolbox with useful strategies for dealing with sneering assholery like yours, NotLikely. Lessee… *rummage, rummage* Ah, okay. First, recognize it for what it is and call it out, check. Second, if there’s anything funny about it, point and laugh. Whoops, got that one out of order, but whatthehell, check.

    The lessons I actually learned, of course, were rather different, among them, these:

    1. Bullies don’t like it when you hit them, so that can work well.

    2. Learn how to punch correctly (and by extension, how to fight) so that when you have to fight the hurt ratio is as much on the bullies as possible. Even better, if possible: use a utensil.

    3. In the end, as anyone of low-to-average intelligence could have gleaned from my post in #7, it’s not about the bully or the bullied, it’s about the audience. And you’ve chosen the wrong place to pick this fight, because here, whether they like me or dislike me, the members of this community know how often I let other people fight my battles for me. Which means they know how to judge your feeble contribution.

    As for your second point, as it happens, I do think there’s a place for government helping people, which is why I’ve devoted my career to helping to make that happen. Apparently I’m your worst nightmare, because “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.”

    (Also, ah, how lovely to be gendered correctly. This is one of my superpowers: sometimes I’m actually able to savor misogyny.)

    Grace

  19. 19
    AndiF says:

    Delurking because I just can’t (and don’t want to) resist stating my pleasure in getting to share in the wonderfulness that is Grace.

  20. 20
    Annonymous Coward says:

    I was an teacher’s kid in a Seine-Saint-Denis high school pretty much controlled by gangs and UOIF associated youth groups (some people think there is a difference). I was black, spoke literary French and was an atheist, which made me very unpopular with pretty much everyone… including that ordure my father.

    Nothing works 100% against bullies, especially if they think that you deserve death because you have renounced Islam. (As far as I know, there are no Muslims amongst my ancestors, since at least the 18th century, but try explaining this to a slavering religious nut of any stripe)

    I was big enough and strong enough, but I still have four very visible defensive knife wounds scars on my forearms, and the only reason I did not end in jail was that France has an extremely involved juvenile justice system. Eventually I did get sent to an internat spécialisé, which was the best thing ever happened to me, because it took me away from my father and gave me a very straight path to the Army, where all of my baggage disappeared, and from where I could apply to come study in the States.

    I know what advice I’d be giving my kid, if I ever have one and s/he gets bullied. Be strong, know how to fight, and resort to violence as soon as you feel that you are morally justified and have a decent chance to get away with it. S/he will be able count on support at home, and good lawyers.

  21. 21
    RonF says:

    What I’ve seen is that even if the bullied kid fights back and loses, he/she still gains enough status points for being willing to fight that the bullying stops or becomes much more limited.

    I think there’s a place for government to help people too. But I have seen through experience that very often it’s about as effective in other areas as it is here. Wait around for government assistance if you like, but it may never show and it may be completely ineffective – or make YOU the bad guy – when it does. Or at least require that you remain a victim. Learning a new skill and then attacking the problem yourself with your own resources generally gets you a faster result and one that is more effective long-term.

  22. 22
    Jake Squid says:

    What I’ve seen is that even if the bullied kid fights back and loses, he/she still gains enough status points for being willing to fight that the bullying stops or becomes much more limited.

    Not in my case. It may have just been that I was sooooo much smaller than everybody else. In fifth grade I might’ve been 4’2″ and 50 lbs. By seventh grade I was up to 4’6″ and 65 lbs. Ninth grade? 4’10” and 85 lbs. By comparison, one of my fifth grade bullies was 5’6″ and 165 lbs and by ninth grade they were all 5’8″ or over. They just thought my attempts to fight back were funny. It’s no coincidence that I started being bullied in 4th grade – that’s the point at which the difference in size between me and my tormentors became insurmountable. Before that happened, I’d never lost a fight.

    Fighting back is almost always going to be better advice than the dreaded “Ignore them” canard. But it isn’t good advice. This is a situation where the adults absolutely need to step in and put an end to it. Children just don’t have the tools necessary to overcome their bullies most of the time.

    2. Learn how to punch correctly (and by extension, how to fight) so that when you have to fight the hurt ratio is as much on the bullies as possible. Even better, if possible: use a utensil.

    So when 4’6″, 65 lb, 7th grade me (at a Bat Mitzvah one spring Saturday) was told by an 8th grader I’d never met before in my life that he was going to beat me up at school on Monday, I was terrified. It didn’t take me long to decide to take a bicycle chain to school with me. I was unable to stop thinking about it what was going to happen on Monday.

    As I was walking down an empty hallway on Monday, who should come walking towards me but that 8th grader? I took out the chain and started swinging it. He took one look and turned and left quickly.

    So, yeah, a utensil was helpful that time. But it should never have come to that. I should have been able to tell an adult and have the situation addressed. Years of experience had taught me otherwise. If I’d been able to get hold of a gun, that kid would’ve been dead that day. The fear and desperation created by bullying creates a very real danger for everybody involved.

    (35 years later I remember the 8th grader’s name. He probably has no memory of me and definitely no idea that he could’ve died that day.)

  23. 23
    Grace Annam says:

    RonF:

    Wait around for government assistance if you like, but it may never show and it may be completely ineffective

    Sure, but since no one here is talking about “waiting around”, this is a straw man. In fact, people are talking exactly about taking things into their own hands with some applied violence, something which conservatives seem completely at their ease with.

    And, as you know, I have no problem with people using reasonably necessary force to protect themselves and innocent third parties. However, because of the high chance of resultant mistakes and/or human suffering, as much as possible we should arrange matters such that force is not reasonably necessary. Especially when the people in question are children, whom it is our obligation as adults to protect from abuse.

    As Jake points out, fighting back may be the best choice for the individual circumstance, but that does not make it a good choice. Sometimes all the choices suck and it’s a question of which one sucks least. As adults raising children (and specifically, as teachers and administrators in a school) we should supply environments where the kids have better choices. And since most kids (and many adults) are manifestly unsuited to making use-of-force decisions under stress, we should definitely arrange matters so that there are better choices than THAT. Jake’s right; it should never come to that.

    It mystifies me that some people argue against anti-bullying efforts, considering the scope of the problem, and the consequences.

    Look at the scope: is there anyone who participates at Alas who wasn’t bullied?

    Grace

  24. 24
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Look at the scope: is there anyone who participates at Alas who wasn’t bullied?

    I wasn’t, at least not to any significant degree. In Israel – at least at the time and place I was growing up – bullying went along ethnic lines, not individual behaviour. And while I was always considered a weird, nerdy, kid, I belonged to a high-prestige group (secular Ashkenazy) which was well-represented at all the schools I went to, which meant that I was never considered a valid target.

    The only time I really remember being bullied was when I was 10 and we lived in Washington DC for a year. But that was bullying by a teacher, not by students. And I think the fact that an unpopular teacher was very overtly picking on me actually played in my favour, because a lot of the other kids became quite protective of me.

  25. 26
    mythago says:

    So RonF is in favor of school shootings by bullied children? Color me astonished.

  26. 27
    Ampersand says:

    So RonF is in favor of school shootings by bullied children? Color me astonished.

    This strikes me as very unfair. Ron favoring a policy which – in Jake’s opinion – will then lead to more school shootings, is not the same as favoring more school shootings.

  27. 28
    Ruchama says:

    Learning a new skill and then attacking the problem yourself with your own resources generally gets you a faster result and one that is more effective long-term.

    This is a completely unfair burden to put on a kid. What sort of “new skill” was I supposed to learn at age 11 when the boys started making sexually explicit comments to me? I didn’t even know what half of them meant. (The couple of times I tried saying stuff back to them, including one or two comebacks that were actually pretty good, all they did was repeated whatever I’d said back to me, in a mocking voice, exaggerating my lisp. So that was utterly pointless.)

  28. 29
    mythago says:

    Amp @27, RonF is fully in favor of schoolchildren eschewing the help of authorities in any way, because of course if they fight back they”ll always get a good result and blah blah nanny state blah self-reliance blah. You think that a child who is smaller and weaker than a bully – or bullies, if they run in packs – is not going to think of the obvious way to square the odds? So no, I don’t think I’m being terribly unfair to RonF. Unless, of course, what RonF is thinking of is a mythical world where the bullied are all boys who inevitably hit puberty and put on height and muscle just in time to defend themselves against the bullies (who will then back off out of respect for the bullied kid’s gumption), whose bullying largely consisted of little more than a few pushes and harsh insults. In which case, I was clearly mistaken in assuming that RonF is pro-vigilantism about actual bullying, instead of making stupid comments about bullying itself.

  29. 30
    80smetalman says:

    Some children just don’t have the skills to resist bullies, those with special needs who are often a prime target. That is one of the reasons why they are bullied in the first place. I used to get the fight back against bullies response. When I did, it was always me getting into trouble or seen as the trouble maker. All previous bullying actions against me were ignored.

  30. 31
    KellyK says:

    I have to say Mythago is right–if your preferred solution to bullying is that the bullied kid solve the problem on their own, you have to acknowledge the reality that not every bullied kid can do that just by hitting puberty and bulking up. That narrative assumes a heck of a lot:
    -that the bullied kid is male
    -that puberty actually has the desired effect*
    -that the bullies don’t gain as much or more size and strength than the bullied kid, negating the effectiveness
    -that bullies either aren’t attacking in a group, or will back down if you hit one of them, rather than just ganging up on you.

    I’m pretty sure Ron’s read Ender’s Game—if you teach a kid that he has no one to rely on but himself, don’t be real surprised when the bully ends up dead.

    *I certainly know plenty of skinny male adults or older teenagers who clearly didn’t fill out during puberty (or if they did, went from really skinny to just skinny)

  31. 32
    rain says:

    @ closetpuritan

    My dad said something at the time about the boys bullying me because they “liked” me–i.e. were attracted to me.

    You Didn’t Thank Me for Punching You in the Face

  32. 33
    mythago says:

    80smetalman @30: exactly. The only reason Eldest’s fighting back against the bullies worked is that the authorities punished the bullies. In a dysfunctional system where the school authorities ignore bullying and blame the victim, or even actively enable it, the bullied kid trying to fight back is the one that gets punished.