No, it doesn't. Teenage boys are bullied physically, not emotionally -- and you can't ignore physical damage the way you can trivially ignore some mean words.
I was never hurt or even just beat up. I don’t think I was ever in a fight or ever threw a punch (to this day). I can recall two incidents of physical bullying. One was two bullies blocking my path to the school with their bikes (I drove into them full speed which made them call me crazy and go away), and one was the same two bullies taking away my backpack and throwing it down a bridge.
Also, I find the way you discount non-physical bullying extremely troubling. No, you can’t just ignore mean words if that means isolating yourself from many vital social interactions. It’s not like you have much choice on who to interact with in school. You will be together with those people, you can’t flee it, you can’t close your ears. They can get to you if they want to.
This pervasive violence must be an American thing or something, or maybe it’s a class thing in Germany (where I grew up, middle class, school that directly qualifies you for university)? It just never happened to me at all.
I also don’t have a solution when you are being bullied. For me it just stopped at a certain point. Bullies turned into people who just left me alone. They didn’t want to have anything to do with my, but they also didn’t bully me at all. I think they grew out of it and it had nothing to do with me at all, only them.
(Hm, maybe I should add an example of emotional bullying to balance out the descriptions of physical bullying: We were on this trip to Berlin in the huge lobby of the foreign ministry and a kid was driving around the huge space, all alone, on his tiny tricycle. I was really into photography at the time and this made a great motive, so I snapped a few photos … which lead one bully to constantly call me a pedophile for the next two years or so. He even managed to sneakily and in an obscure way put a reference to that in our graduation newspaper. That’s emotional bullying and it was much worse for me than any physical bullying I ever received. Also, hard to ignore. We were lining up to get security checked before going into the ministry, so hardly a place where I could ignore him. Also, am I supposed to ignore our graduation newspaper?)
> I drove into them full speed which made them call me crazy and go away
haha ... yeah! good on ya. I'm curious, was this a case of straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back and you snapped; or were you ... you know ... kinda crazy back then? :P
I don’t know … I didn’t really know those kids, to this day (I don’t even know their names). I have no idea why they started. I think my frame of mind was mostly set on ignoring that and not even investigating where it came from. Or maybe I just wasn’t very perceptive.
I think I was just grumpy that morning and really didn’t want a vocal confrontation. I suck at those. I can’t deal with them. I wanted to do something else, anything else and driving into them was apparently the only thing I could think of. It kind of worked. (“Full speed” was slight hyperbole. I was fast enough to make us all fall over, but not fast enough to make it really dangerous.)
Yes it does. Maybe not as often but it does. And you can't always ignore mean words either. I can, and I assume you can, and it is a very useful ability to be sure, but not everyone has such an easy time discarding the opinions and words of others. My son, for example, cannot. I am still hoping to teach him the skill, but it will be something he learns through difficulty, not something he comes by naturally.
A minute percentage of abnormal cases will exist in any natural corpus. That doesn't mean it's generalizable to the entire category, or even worthy of any attention at all. For you to claim otherwise is simply intellectually dishonest. In short, no, it doesn't.
With that out of the way, yes, anyone can ignore mean words. Absolutely anyone. If they're very emotionally immature, they might require some coaching first, but that's about it.
That's just not how people work. You can maybe ignore that you're feeling bad, but I doubt that. You definitely cannot just decide that words will stop making you feel bad now.
I contend that the percentage of what you refer to as abnormal cases is non-trivial. I would argue that the ability to ignore harsh remarks is the non-normative example that should not be generalized to the entire category. For you to make your claim based on what I can only assume is a sample size of one male is intellectually lazy. In short, yes it does.
I agree that anyone can learn to ignore mean words. However, the overwhelming example from public discourse suggests this is not a common skill shared by most of what society considers the emotionally mature:
* Olympic Swimmer, Bronze Medalist, Rebecca Adlington. surely she's dealt with pressure and has attained a high level of mental fortitude:
"I did get upset about it. I couldn't get my head around why someone would go to the effort of looking someone up, and then sending them a nasty tweet. I still can't really," she said. "What's going on in those people's lives?"
Yes, she "learn[ed] not to take it personally" but it was just that, a learning process.
I became extraordinarily paranoid, wondering if any of the women I encountered in the street or on public transport were my online nemeses. I would show girlfriends my iPhone on nights out and we’d spend the evening deep in speculation, just like we used to dissect the daily goings-on in our respective school lunch halls during our youth.
This is an adult women, emotionally mature, still rattled by words of people she doesn't know. Again, she learned how to ignore and let the words slide, but again it was something she had to learn after going to the police over it.
The judge said the effect of the abuse on Criado-Perez had been "life-changing".
She described "panic and fear and horror", he said.
He added that the abuse had also had a substantial impact on Creasy, who had had a panic button installed in her home.
Professor Mary Beard describes herself as having a thick skin. But over the past 10 days, during which the 58-year-old classicist has been subjected to a stream of vitriolic online abuse after an appearance on Question Time, even she has struggled to keep on an even emotional keel.
She overcomes, but even this professor with a lifetime of experience ignoring mean words cannot always just ignore them.
"It was abusive and threatening, making threats to my children and saying I would have to choose which one would die. I felt powerless and scared that my children had been targeted."
Writing on her own account she told her 51,000 followers: “How is it that someone in the US is free to send me vile racist Tweets on a daily basis yet twitter does nothing to stop him?
“Can’t keep quiet any longer. *It hurts too much.* RTs of tweets coming up. He/she is US based. Pls RT to put pressure on Twitter.
“Ps. Have blocked and reported him/her/it but they keep opening different accounts each time. Have also contacted UK police.
* Megan Meier, teenager driven to suicide because of mean words. You might argue that she wasn't "emotionally mature" but I would counter that if words were so easily ignored (just some coaching first right?) then why didn't the coaching she received give her enough mental fortitude to avoid suicide?
And these are just the incidents that are so huge that they register in international publications. Mean words cannot just "be ignored" by a large percentage of the population. And the abuse is from random people. It can be much more difficult when the abuse is coming from someone who used to be your friend, from family, or from people who know you well enough to know your insecurities.
Psychiatrists stress the importance of positive self talk because of how much of an impact words have upon us. People spend years in therapy overcoming the abuse others have wrought with their words. "Some coaching first" doesn't cut it.
You are either incredibly naive or so self-centered that you are blind to the point of being offensive. Yes, you can ignore them. I can ignore them. I believe that anyone can learn to ignore them given time. But open your eyes and have enough empathy to realize that it is not easy for everyone.
Yes, females mostly lack emotional maturity. Thank you for demonstrating the obvious. But males mostly don't. You preposterously claim that they do, and it is outright wrong.
Weren't you just saying men are more prone to violence when bullying? What's a less mature way of dealing with your emotions than resorting to physical violence?
Hm. So females are an abnormal, minute percentage of the population not worthy of any attention at all? And when you said absolutely anyone could do it, I guess that doesn't include women, right? They're not really people I guess. Or at least, they're not adults. Just emotionally immature children we should shepherd and guide. Obviously they should not be allowed to affect important things like work or politics, since they don't have the emotional maturity. /sarcasm
Wow, I almost forgot people like you really existed... Who let you into the civilized portion of the internet? Can somebody check this guy's pass? I think he's in the wrong section. His misogyny is leaking out.
Physical wounds heal in a very short amount of time. Psychological/emotional damage can take years to correct, sometimes it never goes away. "Trivially ignoring some mean words" isn't always possible. People have insecurities and some people a good at finding and exploiting them; this isn't a gender exclusive trait.
Rather, on average, teenage boys are bullied more physically than emotionally. It's been a while, but I remember. I received both physical and emotional, but the physical was worse. I didn't take the long way home to avoid people who mocked me.
That wasn't my experience. I received issues with both. I wouldn't say that one was worse than the other, but types of bullying aren't specific to gender.