The bares and the bulls
Yeah, you read that right. Bares, not bears. Because I’m really baring myself in this post. If word play really bothers you, feel free to move on. My post will not be apologetic and I feel I’ve crossed a threshhold of moving past apologizing for who I am and that definitely includes how I communicate. #notsorry
If I sound confrontational or abrasive, try to understand. The last 24 hours have been extraordinarily revealing and culminating. I’ve experienced a sort of climax to a situation that has been developing for some time. What am I talking about? I’m talking about a culture of bullying, gaslighting and shaming - even amongst people who, one on one, seem like people who would never do such a thing.
Why does this happen? Why does this culture exist? That’s probably more than I can get into in a Tumblr post but it did really make me stop and think and start asking questions. It also made me ultimately take a stand for myself that was, frankly, overdue and probably took my some people in my life by surprise since I usually would laugh along with their jokes at my expense or at least let them “get away with it,” by and large. Why? Because I dislike confrontation amongst people that I have to be around. Because it seemed easier. Because I hoped it would magically go away or get better or any of 900 other reasons while internally, I was actually starting to internalize the comments that, collectively, were abusive and bullying and starting to make me question my every move. That were making me feel ostracized and like I had a target on my forehead.
In my various experiences going to therapy (none since moving to Texas, though I am reconsidering that), it has come up, “why do people seem to react to me in a certain way?” - a way which is unmerited, undeserved and almost seems like I have a target on my forehead that says “attack/make fun of me!”. I don’t remember my therapist’s exact words but she essentially reminded me this is not a flaw in my character (even though it can start to feel like it is!) but rather it indicates a tendency in some people to gang up on the person that seems easiest to scapegoat - completely unwarranted, mind you - but for whatever reason, they’re “easy”. Add to that, of course, that some people apparently never learned how to feel better about themselves without putting someone else down and that others tend to “follow the leader” especially if there’s a sense that that will make them more popular or “cooler” and there you have it - a recipe for disaster. Bullying, often referred to as “joking” - at someone else’s expense.
That brings up a great question. When does friendly teasing take a more sinister turn and become bullying? We’re all different - we all handle things in different ways and we can’t expect Person A to feel the same about x comment as Person B since they likely come from very different backgrounds, may be different genders and could be from different cultures, belief systems/world-views or nations, etc. In reality, similarly to many other things, teasing turns into something more sinister MOSTLY based on how the person receiving the teasing interprets it. Is it wanted? Is it distressing? Does it cause them to feel alienated, criticized, unwanted, attacked? While this is something the teasER cannot know unless the teasEE tells them (which can be very difficult to do - more on this below), the teasER is also responsible for their part in causing that person to feel attacked. Not only should they have a general idea of what would cause a person to feel inappropriately teased (leading up to bullying or attacking), but they should also keep their eyes open to that person’s responses to the teasing. If the teasEE shows distress OF ANY KIND, the teasER should be able to see that and back off or apologize. It is NOT the responsibility of the person being teased or attacked to figure out what is an appropriate way to approach the person inflicting the teasing or bullying and convince them to change their behavior.
This is what I was really thinking about today. I was thinking how we have likely all been on both sides of this (aside from an unlucky few who have only been on one side of it). Someone made a joke at someone else’s expense and we laughed and/or even added to it. While our intentions may have been friendly (and friendly ribbing is a way to show affection in our culture!), it can have the unintended effect (especially if multiple people are partaking in the teasing) of alienating that person and making them feel criticized and attacked and put on the spot - often when they did absolutely nothing to warrant it. In my personal experience, when I was doing nothing differently from other people, I was still the one put on the spot, singled out, questioned, and in my view, borderline harassed. Although it long made me feel uncomfortable, it still took some time for me to really see how far the tentacles of this behavior had reached - it took my job hiring someone new. It took seeing that new person make a joke at my expense where I was - predictably - the punch line of the joke and them basically saying they knew I was the one to joke about - for me to really get what had happened here. Even though I had seniority, even though I had knowledge & experience that was valuable for my job - even though I was an expert compared to the new person, they still knew, almost instinctively - that I was the weak link in terms of the social hierarchy and that if they wanted to fit in, I was the easy target & they’d better fall in line. When it happened (to my face), it so took me by surprise that all I could manage was a halting joking reply (the only “acceptable response” to people belittling you) but over the next few days, as the teasing continued and culminated in a barrage from virtually all sides one day, I realized it was really bothering me. Not because the new person should be exposed to a sort of hazing ritual of being relentlessly teased until they proved themselves to the rest of us but precisely because this hazing type ritual of teasing was going on and somehow, the people “in charge” had skipped right over the new guy and continued on with me even to the point of teaching him I was the easy target. It did not feel like it was coming from a place of affection. It felt like I was easy and they wanted to tease someone and not be teased themselves. And it felt like whoever had the strongest bully-type energy at my work, others would just follow suit so as to not risk being teased and bullied themselves.
That brings me to gaslighting. What exactly is gaslighting? I could provide examples but I don’t intend to get so specific in this post. Mostly, gaslighting is anything from teasing to the point of making the person being teased question their grasp on reality and their own judgement to poisoning relationships between others and the person being harassed. Promoting a divide between them. In more extreme cases, people might use out & out lies to gaslight. More often, they will probably just talk behind your back and also say things perhaps to your face that show you that they have the upper hand in the relationship or dynamic you find yourself in. This causes you to further question yourself and your sanity - are you imagining this? is it really this bad or can’t you take a joke? - instead of questioning THEM and their ABUSIVE behavior.
Like I said, most of us have actually been a part on both sides of this. It’s an easy trap to fall into and can be as simple as having a laugh at someone else’s expense. Sometimes it’s having a further critical comment to add to one that was already made at someone else’s expense. Undermining them. De-legitimizing them. And when someone says to you “it’s just a joke” - don’t believe it for a second. Believe how what was said made you feel. Believe how the whole dynamic feels. Listen to your intuition and gut. Do you feel you need to flee the whole situation (job or otherwise)? Do you feel there is no hope or no way out & everything you could do would only make your situation worse? Do you feel beat down? Maybe you’re not just a hopeless pathetic snowflake who is too sensitive. Maybe you’re actually being gaslit and attacked by people who should know better and pretend to be on good terms with you. Maybe you’re being kicked when you’re already down & unfairly expected to bounce back up for more abuse. It’s typical for those doing the attacking to say “it was just a joke” or worse when confronted. They have no real excuse for their comments or behavior and it’s uncomfortable for them when they’re confronted with the results. They want to defensively put the blame on you - that you’re not psychologically sound or culturally rounded enough to take a joke but chances are, they would not handle it so well if the tables were turned. And EVEN IF THEY COULD (and this is important!!!), that doesn’t excuse their behavior towards you nor them ignoring or not caring about your distress.
If you find yourself the subject of abusive comments, harassment or bullying and you just want to be left alone to live your life - the first step can be reaching out to a third party who has an objective view on the situation. This helped me a lot. It helped separate me from how I thought those people would react (because honestly, it had been going on for some time and after some time, it poisons your thinking) and think more about how messed up it actually was (as harmless or unconscious as the intentions may have been) and what I needed to do to change the situation. A friend helped me see that what was happening was entirely unacceptable, especially for the workplace, where I had to be every day and was trying to work as hard and professionally as possible and that I needed to take a very firm stand against it in my own words - even if this made me less popular. Thankfully, I can say that the immediate effect, anyway, was some apologies from the people who were doing the relentless teasing when they realized how it made me feel. Some of them responded in the group thread and others also privately messaged me and acknowledged they didn’t like what was happening and felt I was unfairly a target. It was interesting to see what that action (that felt so scary to do) resulted in. You can’t know what will happen when you take a similar stand for yourself and I contemplated things getting so bad I’d essentially feel forced to leave my job - but truth be told, had things continued the way they were, I’d have felt that way anyway. There was not much in the way of true friendships to salvage by sparing people’s feelings and not telling them this was unacceptable & I wouldn’t tolerate it any longer. What I did was show them my boundaries so they COULD stop if they wanted to, once they realized what a detrimental effect their teasing was having on me.
I’m including a link to a site with both a chat option and a helpline you can call if you are being bullied and it’s really getting to you. My hope is that, as a culture and a country, we will start to be more kind to those around us, stop assuming they are in the same headspace or situation as us and that they SHOULD be able to deal with whatever teasing and instead acknowledge what’s happening around us and have a spine and be willing to take a stand for others who are being bullied, as well.
My hope is that we will learn, grow and become kinder individuals.
Namaste.
