Bella

With September approaching, I am seeing videos and discussions all over online about going back to secondary school (I am British to preface) and can't help but wonder why my peers were so cruel. Not to me specifically no - I did get bullied from Y7-9 but only by one specific group of boys due to my race and being autistic, but I'd say it wasn't as vicious or systemic with how other people who were 'weirder' than me were targeted. The others who were targeted in an all consuming way were done so by the entire yeargroup, and I will admit I didn't do much to help.

Do I have my reasons? Yes. With living with a lunatic family I couldn't afford to burden my mother by being more of a target of bullying due to defending someone, it's not like she cared I was really anyways. She always asked me 'What do you want me to do about it?' ever since I was little about most problems I came to her about, so what would even be the point. I thought back then if no one would protect me then it was futile to do so for someone else.

Though my reasons I don't see as valid in the shoes of those who were thoroughly isolated and treated as untouchable by my peers. I can claim I did try to talk to them when I could, try to be friendly and helpful when I could because I know the pain of being shut out of small, micro acts of niceties most people take for granted because I've been excluded from them due to my race by fully grown adults. I can claim I tried my best in small increments, but what truly haunts me is that it likely wasn't enough to overshadow the sheer volume of vitriol they received.

These people had their existence turned into a joke and entertainment in a way that frightened me so, so much - it wasn't like they were a person anymore in the eyes of these people but an object to poke at to dispense as much entertainment from. Whether these abusive bullies were consciously malicious or not, it doesn't matter.

Maybe it is me being separate to my British peers who grew up without war being close to them or their families, but I know what dehumanisation directly leads to. There have been so many killings and cullings and genocides in my country for decades on decades fuelled by the same ideology behind the entitled nature of bullying I saw in my school and it frightened me very much. It may be a ridiculous comparison due to the consequences being wholly different, but what is truly grim is that the mechanisms are similar in some aspects. It's easier to remove oneself from an inhuman 'unperson' to escalate in what you do to them, an insult becomes a chant, a chant becomes stolen objects, stolen objects become destroyed objects, destroyed objects become shoves, shoves become slaps, slaps become punches, punching becomes grabbing, and it goes on and on and on depending on if someone intervines, or if something changes. The person getting this maltreatment cannot even react the 'right way' either, it is a closed loop system of every emotion they show being twisted into something nefarious, weird or manipulative.

Sometimes I think about how certain people who were treated this way on the escalating ladder of mistreatment and how much danger they were in, and how narrowly they avoided being physically harmed or maimed in a serious way. Of course they didn't leave psychologically unscathed but I just have to think because the worst case scenario can happen and already has.

Was thinking about my mother saying I 'bring things onto myself' to justify her abuse of me as my problem - and probably was also implying that whatever other people did to me was also my fault because I am apparently the type to bring things onto myself because I am an apparent 'drama queen' and 'attention seeker'. Her classification of things I bring on myself is apparently being kicked out, threatened with being killed, being called every awful thing in the book possible and taunting me about how she's going to make me suffer after 18 but not supporting me.

The contempt and smugness from adult figures in certain situations especially when I grew into puberty always confused me - for example it was almost always gleeful for my mother and other folk adjacent to her to lecture me on things. There's a difference between teaching and taking enjoyment in adding little digs and reminders of 'I am superior to you thus I am better and if you object I will abuse you as loving correction'. Of course many of my teachers, social workers etc were never overtly like this in comparison to my direct caregivers, but on some level they operated on that same logic swapping the word abuse with something like 'correct' or 'tough love'. Perhaps my autism made the smug superiority especially confusing because socially, I have always been behind my peers and found the whiplash from usual childhood patronising care to outright abusive corrective glee even more confusing because mentally, I could not understand it as fast. I understand it now but it took longer than my peers too who caught it intrinsically. It made me very, very sad when I tried to reach out and talk, because as an autistic child sometimes you are more naive and trusting because of how you just are and what you know. And that attempt to understand just gets hurled back at your face just because adult figures are now seeing you through a lens of a rebellious, outrageous teenager?

My experiences are possibly influenced by the fact my caregiver has always been abusive and unpleasant to me from a very young age - though I still saw it in how my peers were treated when struggling. None of them fit the stereotype cleanly because I still managed to see them as whole people and not caricatures even when my social understanding has been underdeveloped for most of my life. For example many girls I knew with eating disorders were dismissed as merely frivolous or overly sensitive whenever it was largely the fault of the adult figures in their lives putting such contrived poison in their heads about their body image or unhealthy notions about food. Or when bullying took place, something rampant within British secondary schools these girls, and boys yet again were dismissed as being overly sensitive and I suspect being looked down upon as silly and especially 'not to be believed and protected' with being visibly queer or disabled. It disgusted me to no end especially with my experiences of being brown within a white majority school. A common pattern I picked up from this wasn't only who was deserving of protection and not, but also just the dismal way especially teenage girls are seen by adults as hysterical and beyond reasoning or going through 'phases'.