Let Me Tell You About Bullies

A contemplation on bullying, ego-death, and cultivating awareness of systems.

Let me tell you about bullies…

The transition from grade six to seven was a shock to my system. That summer, the handful of friends I’d had in elementary scattered in various ways. I felt like the same person while the rest of them had transformed, as if given a secret script I knew nothing about. I still wanted to play kick the can and Lego and epic sweeping soap opera-style games with action figures or dolls. They were smoking and sneaking out at night to meet boys behind the school.

My old friends started avoiding me. I was lonely, but I thought it wouldn’t matter. School would start again and there would be new friends.

When I started grade seven I realised I’d been popular in elementary because I was anything but in junior high. Junior high bullying was a low level constant but particular incidents stand out, episodic moments from my teenage memories.

One such episode I’ve told many times. A classmate cornered me in the locker room, mocked and laughed at me for not shaving my legs. She hit me over the head with a small baggy of ice when I dared to stand up to her.

The other episode that stands out I have shared less often.

For a brief period, no more than a few months, I attempted to be like the other girls in the hope that it would stop the bullying. This required a change in wardrobe. I could no longer wear leggings and baggy t-shirts with cartoon characters printed on them. I convinced my mum to take me shopping even though we had already done my new school outfit shopping for the year. Of whatever clothing we got that day, I only remember the silk rose coloured short-sleeved shirt with shell buttons.

I wore it once.

People complimented me from the moment I took my coat off:

“Nice shirt!”

This is what I heard all through the day:

“Nice shirt.”

Only, it didn’t feel right. Something was off.

“Nice shirt,” a boy would say with a smirk.

“Nice shirt,” a girl would say, barely suppressing giggles before she joined a group of friends and they broke down.

“Nice shirt,” the grade eight science teacher, a grown adult man said, as he passed me in the hall, his cheeks going pink before he looked away.

In the last class of the day a girl of middling popularity tapped me on the shoulder. “You should really get a bra,” she said, in a hushed voice.

I was barely an A cup. I was rail thin. I was a child for whom puberty was two years away. I didn’t understand why she was telling me this. I didn’t need a bra.

I looked down to see my nipples sharp against the soft fabric of the shirt. I crossed my arms over my chest. When the final bell went I carried my backpack in front as I walked to my locker. I put on all the layers I could and when I got home I shoved the silky shirt I’d started the day loving into the back of my closet.

I stopped trying to dress like the cool kids.

I opted to wear long sleeve t-shirts under baggy short sleeved t-shirts under extra large pull-over hoodies and baggy pajama bottoms under jorts cut to just below my knee.

When I was twelve I did not have the language for gender policing. I did not know how to articulate my discomfort at being sexualized when all I did was wear a shirt. I didn’t get that there was a system bigger than me and my peers that we were all trained in upholding.

Let me tell you about bullies…

For years I carried a lot of resentment about my junior high experience. I was bitter about my parents not helping me more. I was bitter that school staff would make generic announcements about how bullying was wrong and we should report it but when I did no meaningful change occurred. I was bitter that so many people told me it was ‘Part of growing up.’

Resentment carried through my late teens and into my early twenties. People saw me as a well-adjusted, confident adult. They saw me as someone who had overcome a hardship, who must have some insight into how to navigate the inevitability of childhood bullying. They saw me as proof that bullying wasn’t that bad, and there must be a trick to “overcoming it” that I had figured out.

People would ask me for advice to pass on to some teenager in their life who was being bullied.

For years I had a response that satisfied the enquirer, but I never felt satisfied by it because it came from advice I had long resented. Basically, I ‘stood up’ to a bully. Not because I found the perfect comeback, like in my fantasies. Not because I had support from adults. Not because I felt confident or empowered. I did it because I had reached a point of not caring anymore—by grade nine I was so deeply depressed that life had lost meaning. I was at the lowest point I’d ever been. I had no fucks left to give, so when yet another girl following me in the hallway casually called me a loser or a freak or something like that, I turned around and asked her why? I asked what I had done to her, why she even cared? I asked her what her problem was with me and what I had to do for her to Just. Go. Away.

It flabbergasted her. I may misremember, but in my mind she sputtered—actually sputtered—before calling me a bitch. And then she did walk away.

All of this was back in the late nineties. This happened while the Internet was just becoming a thing, long before the larger social conversations of #MeToo and the It Gets Better Project. This was also long before I came to the dharma and began awakening to systemic oppression. It was before anyone talked about victim blaming or scapegoating individuals as a way to avoid genuine, meaningful social change.

I carried resentment for so long because I was a twelve year old kid, and then a thirteen year old kid, and then a fourteen year old kid who needed help in the face of cruelty but when I brought adults my grievances, the burden to fix it was put right back on me:
“Ignore them.”

“They’re just words.”

“Walk away.”

“It’s just a few more years and then you’ll be in high school and it will be different.”

Let me tell you about bullies…

It seems so obvious to me now that the reason bullying continues to be a problem is because we are terrible at talking about what it is. Language matters. When we talk about bullies we talk about kids being mean but we rarely talk about the specific form the cruelty takes and what it is in service of.

A bully is a role, a performance, a part, played out in service of the status quo. The bully will often not realise they are playing a part. The victim will often not realise they are playing a part. I certainly didn’t when I was twelve and thirteen and school was a torment to be endured because of how my peers bullied anyone who didn’t conform.

Regardless of embodiment or identity, we are products of a culture that ranks human worth across arbitrary lines—lines handed down through every facet of society. We are taught this through history books written by the victors, media that relies on tropes and stereotypes, and by our families, friends, and community at large.

We are told that there are two genders on a binary and they are very different in these key, inherent ways. We are told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. That women want babies and men want sex. We are told girls are polite and quiet and “boys will be boys” which means “boys will not be held accountable for their actions.” That men are rational and women are emotional. That women should be pretty and men should be smart. That everyone is straight and genitals determine your gender. That you should want to be straight and cis and being straight and cis is better because being queer and trans is hard.

We rarely pause to consider who makes it hard and why.

Let me tell you about bullies…

When I was twelve I didn’t have the language to articulate that the bullying aimed at me was all about gender policing. I just knew that the things I liked and how I dressed and what I did with my time was suddenly being scrutinized and attacked.

My peers didn’t bully me because girls are mean. My peers bullied because I was not the right kind of girl according to cis definitions of women and girlhood. My peers didn’t bully me because “kids are cruel”. My peers bullied me because heterosexuality is considered the default and my queerness was seen as a problem. My peers didn’t bully me because that’s just part of growing up. My peers bullied me because we were all told there is a right way to be and anyone who fell outside that was threatening.

If the narrative from the dominant group about who is the Best Human or Most Normal Human fits how we know ourselves, we don’t question it. If we won the social lottery and happen to be classified with the in-group/high caste/default human, we don’t stop to wonder if maybe this emodiment is only a slice of human variance.

When we don’t fit, when the definitions don’t work, and yet, here we are: queer, two-spirit, trans, intersex, gay, ace, non-binary, lesbian, bisexual, masc and a woman, femme and a man, we are living proof that the story we have been told excludes a lot more humanity than it includes. We see the system is bogus, based on biological myths used to funnel power to the few by dehumanizing the many.

Let me tell you about bullies…

We contain multitudes and are often as likely to experience oppression as we are to be complicit in it. Sometimes, the story of the system fits. It fits so well we don’t see that there might be different perspectives just as valid as our own. I may have seen the lie of allocisheteronormativity, but it was years before I saw the lie of white supremacy.

Having our socially powerful identities pointed out, the ones that fit the status quo, can be painful. A challenge to the status quo can feel like a challenge to who we are. A threat to our ego. We become the bully when we protect and reinforce systems of inequality because our ego is bound up in the figurehead of said system. This is how systems of oppression function; This is why they are not broken. We are born into systems that give us parts to play to ensure the systems keeps functioning as intended.

But here’s the thing: None of us have to play the part.

We are under no obligation to uphold the status quo. If we truly want to get better at standing up to bullies, we need to get better at seeing what system the bully is defending, protecting, and reinforcing. It all starts with pausing and questioning who wrote the script that is being played out.

It can be as simple as asking: What system does this serve?

Every time we consider that bullying is about more than just kids being mean, we become aware of the ways kids police each other’s behaviour for not fitting the status quo, reinforcing false ideas about human worth. Every time we cultivate this kind of awareness, we are learning to see our own biases and the cultural narratives that can trap us in ignorance, willful or not. Every time we decide to hold ourselves or someone we love accountable for ignorance, we are creating an opportunity to chip away at systemic oppression. Every time we create that opportunity, we are refusing to let bigotry go unchecked.

Every time we do this, we are meaningfully addressing the issue of bullying.

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