Aggression

Over the summer, we were given a booklet of excerpts to read... one of which being a study of Aggression in girls. Here's my Response:

I found this excerpt very interesting, especially since the study was conducted in Mississippi. I find that the way aggression works is determined in part by the environment. While these girls' aggression was channeled indirectly, I found that many girls at Wood preferred to carry out their vendettas directly, often resulting in “cat fights” which then had to be handled by the administration through detentions and suspension. These girls were (and are) completely unafraid of consequences. I remember clearly an incident where I nearly walked right into one of these fights on my way to science; they were fighting right out in the middle of everything, and had to be torn apart by teachers, who they tried to beat on as well.

Though that wasn’t always the case… every now and then, an alliance was formed, and being “unpopular” my friends and I were usually the ones being harassed. Truthfully, I didn’t much care, if they wanted to confront me; they needed to do it themselves, to my face. Otherwise, all their effort was for nothing… after a while, the other “targets” picked up on the same tactic, and eventually the harassers left us alone, if we weren’t gonna react, they wouldn’t bother. Tough sometimes this wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed… sometimes the “bullies” would react poorly, resorting to treats of beatings if we didn’t do as they wanted. It was at that point we brought our problem to the administration.

Why do people bully? I’m not quite sure, but I have theories… one possibility is that they’re cowards, and just trying to give the impression of strength, another possibility is that they want to seem “cool” by picking on new or younger students, or in the case of boys, a few might want to have the whole “bad boy” persona, in the hopes that the girls would like them more (or less, as the case may be). Though in some cases, I believe that it’s just in the kid’s nature to pick on others. I have quite a few other conceivable ideas and reasons for people to bully, traumatic experiences, not-so-great living conditions, etc.

It’s not always girls. I’ve seen this behavior in boys too… specifically an incident in 6th grade where I was nicknamed “Dorky Dora” because of a haircut I had. There were two boys who ganged up and formed an alliance, eventually nicknaming my friends various things from the “Dora the Explorer” TV show. This is where I learned the valuable lesson in not reacting. Near the middle of the year I stopped asking them to stop, and instead completely ignored the two. As their alliances melted away, one of them stopped, and began acting like any other student. The other one built up his resentment, and redoubled his attacks.

I’m not sure who was the first to think that bullying others would make themselves feel better, but I do know they were completely wrong. Bullying won’t help you later in life, nor will it help solve whatever problem is making you angry. If you were to calmly ask for help, or talk to someone about whatever it is, you’d get a much quicker solution.

Who am I kidding? The likelihood of a teen to calmly do anything is fairly low, many think that there’s now way an adult could understand how they feel, and that they’re unique. When the truth is, they aren’t, at least in that aspect. If you can find an adult willing to listen, I’m sure they’d understand perfectly, even if their questions annoy you to no end.