From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Aggression in boys (Was: Re: BARBIE
Date: 12 Oct 92 15:00:20 GMT

lauraf@classy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Laura Floom) writes:

> In article <TVHHsB1w165w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richa
> >lgsax@igc.apc.org (Lynn Gazis-Sax) writes:
> >
> >> 
> >> Girls *do* get attacked on school playgrounds often
> >> enough.  I personally was attacked from first through
> >> eighth grade.  I fought back every time, and made
> >> sure no blow went unreturned, but my attackers both
> >> outweighed me (I had skipped a grade) and outnumbered
> >> me.
> >> 
> >> Lynn Gazis-Sax
> >
> >Are you sure your memory is accurate on this?  My impression was
> >that anybody who fought back wasn't bothered again.  Did two or
> >more heavier girls  repeatedly attack you in the schoolyard, get
> >hit back every time they hit you, and keep coming back?
> >
> 
> My brother was a wimp, but a determined one. He was always getting
> beaten up on in school, and ALWAYS fought back. He got suspended at
> least twice, and was hurt several times, but he always fought back.
> He was pretty strong.

If he was strong he must have been able to hit hard.  So why did
the other kids come back for more?  Did he do something to annoy
them?  Was he a showoff (which might just mean was he smarter than
they were, with no deprecation intended [see below])?  In what
sense was he a "wimp," since the working definition of "wimp" is
someone who is physically weak and doesn't fight back?  Maybe he
was really a "nerd," which seems to connote either studiousness or
lack of interest in "cool," i.e., currently "in," things, or maybe
a "creep," which seems to connote "difference" that is not due to
either ethnicity or physical disability.  Or a "wuss," which seems
to connote an unwillingness to assume physical or social risks,
although if he fought back as you say that is unlikely.

> >Is it possible that either you didn't hit very hard or that you
> >were doing something that made them dislike you.
>
> What are you saying? That Lynn deserved it somehow? I cant figure out
> what point you are trying to make here. First you doubt her memory of
> what happened, and then to make her memory fit your impression, you are
> asking the most bizarre questions. Maybe she wasnt hitting them as hard
> as they were hitting her. That still doesnt change the fact that she tried
> to fight back, and continued getting picked on.
>
> Laura Floom

No put-down intended.  It always sounds like "blaming the victim"
when you look systematically for characteristics that might be
associated with victimization.

Questioning her memory?  Of course.  Don't we always remember
things to our credit in conformity with contemporary norms? Memory
distortions, especially of unhappy aspects of childhood (NB: I
said unhappy _aspects_, I did _not_ say "an unhappy childhood"),
are the rule rather than the exception.  Sometimes if you jog a
person's memory they can reconstruct the real events the way they
really happened.  [This is the net and that comment could lead to
a convoluted epistemological thread or a recapitulation of
historicism as individual psychology, but I do think that the
average reasonably intelligent person can usually reconstruct the
actual events with a little effort, sort of like seeing through an
optical illusion, none of which persist under close scrutiny.] In
other words no insult or put-down of Lynn Gazis-Sax was intended.

The point is that if she hit her tormentors back and there was a
cost to them for picking on her, why did they persist?  The
conventional wisdom is that bullies only pick on kids who don't
fight back.  There is evidence that they do pick on physically weak
kids, so if Lynn hit back but her blows didn't hurt, that would
explain it.  If she could hit hard then there must have been
another reason why they kept at her.

The really interesting question is: why do you think it was
admirable of her (and your brother) to fight back when that
strategy was, by her own account, unsuccessful?

--
Richard Carlson
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