i do my bully's homework

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I Do My Bully's Homework

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Rodney is your typical nerd. Shy, lonely, has no friends. A perfect target for a school bully. But what if the nerd actually enjoys the bully's company?

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My Daughter Was Being Bullied. I Thought It'd Eventually End — Until I Had A Chilling Realization.

A rriving early to pick up my daughter Nina at the elementary school, I pulled my car into a parking spot across the street and scanned the playground for her. Most of the boys charged across the playground in a hilarious Mad Max version of soccer. A handful of girls played four-square with a red playground ball. And the rest either dangled from the jungle gym or crouched underneath it in small clumps.

I spotted Nina sitting on one of the benches, back hunched, head down. One of the four-square players lobbed a sneering taunt in her direction. The other three players followed up with more. Nina didn’t move, so the player with the ball threw it at her. Nina lifted her face, grimaced — in pain or anger, I couldn’t tell — and shouted something back at the other girls.

The playground monitor materialized — where was she before? — and put her hands on her hips while she spoke to Nina. The other girls didn’t even try to cover their smirks. Then the bell rang, and the children lined up to go back inside. It was a miracle I didn’t wreck the car when Nina told me on the way home that the teacher had made her stand in front of the class and apologize for being disruptive at recess and for not respecting her classmates. 

That day, my overwhelming desire was to take her back into my body, to hold her there where no one could reach her without first going through me. I wish I could say I swooped in and saved Nina from her tormentors, but I would have to accept failure — and acknowledge my own powerlessness — in order to do that.

The bullying began in earnest in second grade. The town was small, the school even smaller. Most of the children in Nina’s class had played at our house and ridden in our car and eaten the snacks we always brought to various events.

They were nice kids, we thought, but something changed over the summer between first and second grade. Each day our formerly lively daughter came home to us quiet, pale and withdrawn. For a while, Nina asked me why the girls were so mean to her, but my answer, my assurance that we loved her, was useless, because the real answer was that I didn’t know — I didn’t know! Nina’s first grade teacher had been at a loss as well, when I’d asked her the same question. 

Since the beginning of first grade, I had visited Nina’s class once a week and listened to the children read aloud. Some were hesitant, making their way haltingly through “Hop on Pop.” Others moved quickly through “Frog and Toad” and were well into “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” I thought each one was performing miracles.

I continued to volunteer in Nina’s second-grade classroom — “Frog and Toad” never gets old for me — but as I sat listening, watching a brow furrowed in concentration or a still-soft hand turn a page, I wondered about these children. I thought I knew them: One could burp the ABCs, another had a soft spot for babies and another was a fountain of fascinating, esoteric facts. I couldn’t reconcile their sweetness — they were so young — with the pain and destruction they had wrought. They were real, three-dimensional children, not cardboard-cutout villains, but still, whenever I thought about my daughter, all tenderness drained out of me, replaced by bafflement and, more and more, anger.

When I talked to Nina’s teacher about the playground incident, he said, “Nina is responsible for her own behavior.” True, and we would be the last people to deny that, but surely the teacher had witnessed—

But no, he insisted, he hadn’t. 

The school counselor confirmed that our daughter was being treated badly — by students and teachers alike. He found it personally distasteful, he told me, but was not in a position to change it, and when I asked, he discouraged me from approaching the principal. “I wouldn’t expect a positive outcome there,” he said, without elaborating.

I tried talking with the parents. “There’s just something about Nina,” one said.

I turned to books about bullying for guidance. I tried to prepare Nina by coaching her, as suggested, to not show the bullies that she was hurt. It is the victim’s weakness and isolation that makes her a target, they said, and it is her show of pain that incites the bullies to torment her further. If she could just pretend that nothing was happening, that she didn’t care, the bullies would grow bored of their sport and move on. I sometimes wondered how those “experts” could live with what they were implying: that the bullies would move on to another target and that this was somehow an acceptable solution. 

I taught cooperative games on the playground at recess — that way I could at least keep an eye on Nina. I joined the PTA, baked pies and brownies for every bake sale, volunteered as a chaperone for every field trip, showed up for the class Halloween party with a witch hat, green face paint and a whole cauldron bubbling with rage. 

Third grade arrived as bleary-eyed as I felt. My daughter was visibly shrinking, her blue eyes shaded a dull grey, her shoulders permanently bent. I became a freak, a wild animal. When Nina’s third-grade teacher ridiculed her for using manipulatives in math class — “Only kindergarteners need those,” he announced, to the delight of the rest of the class — I welcomed the chance to go in and scream, first at him, and then at the principal. “Since when did humiliation become a teaching tool?” I demanded.

A welcome respite came for Nina in the form of the “Harry Potter” books, which she read over and over, lost in his world — and, for a few moments, no longer inhabiting her own. 

On the first day of fourth grade, each student was provided with a spiral bound day-planner with the school’s newly updated bullying policy printed and highlighted inside the front cover: Bullying “will not be tolerated.” It was almost too good to be true. 

It was too good to be true. Nina’s lunchbox tipped me off in November. After Nina came home from school, I opened it to wipe it out. It was full. Again. 

“I’m just not hungry, Mom,” she told me when I asked. 

I squatted down in front of her and took her hands in mine. “You’re not on trial, my Sweet Pea,” I said. I was looking up at her face as she stood next to the counter, next to the unopened yogurt, the still-wrapped sandwich, the container full of sliced cantaloupe — the evidence. Her long lashes shadowed her cheeks, so soft, so vulnerable. Her chin trembled.

“I need to know what’s happening so I can help you,” I said, and I shook my head to silence the voice that sneered at me: Seriously? Like you’ve helped her so much before. Tears dripped down Nina’s cheeks, her shoulders slumped, and she sank down into my lap. She curled into an impossibly tiny ball, and said from somewhere inside my arms, “It will only make it worse.”

Later, I called Nina’s teacher and explained that Nina was being attacked on the way to the cafeteria. “They’re pushing her into the snowdrifts and holding her there until she panics — the girls are doing this — and we need your help.” He was sympathetic, outraged even, and he suggested we meet with him and the other two class teachers to see if we could address the problem together. For the first time, I was hopeful that we might make some actual progress. 

The day before the meeting, the phone rang. I picked it up and, without a greeting, the principal growled, “There’s no bullying in my school. I can see the playground from my window, and I know there isn’t any.” She canceled our meeting and forbade the teachers from discussing it with us.

The next day, my husband stalked into the principal’s office — no appointment — and gave her a piece of his mind using words that got her attention, like “duty,” “negligence” and “lawsuit.” It makes more of an impression when a father comes to school. 

The principal agreed to have an adult accompany the children when they walked between the two schools — fat lot that would do, but it was something. Then three girls attacked Nina on the playground at recess. They knocked her down and hit her and kicked her while the rest of the crowd watched. At that moment, with absolute clarity, we knew what we needed to do — what we should’ve done right from the start. We got her out. Finally, we got her out.

Over the next few days, several mothers pulled me aside. Each one told me in a low, confidential voice that she was so relieved we had taken Nina out of school. Her child, she would say, had often come home in tears over what the other kids were doing to Nina. They felt terrible. It had been so very difficult for their kids, they said, and now it would be better. 

It was not better. 

For the first two weeks after we pulled Nina out, the incident on the school playground was the talk of the town, but it was just gossip. There was no real conversation. 

One mother, in a feud with the school administration for her own reasons, maneuvered the principal into administering a survey to the student body in order to confirm the principal’s claim that there was no bullying. When asked if they had experienced cutting remarks, pushing or other aggressive acts at school, a majority of the students answered “yes.” The school administration responded by hiring a motivational speaker to teach the students how to identify bullies, as if they were just a few maladjusted kids — a performative way of abdicating responsibility and changing neither policy nor behavior.

Nobody asked me what I thought — probably a good thing, because I was drowning in so much guilt I could barely breathe, let alone speak. If I were a painter or a photographer, I could have filled a whole portrait gallery with the faces of the bullies, faces from school and dance class, from the pool and the playground, from the grocery store and the post office. Everywhere we went, every day, we saw those faces.

No, not the children. The adults: the bystanders who, by their inaction, gave tacit permission for the bullying. The onlookers who, by their silence, confirmed that the chosen victim, my daughter, was expendable. It would take a village to stop the bullies because, I learned, it takes a village to make one.

Why do bullies bully? Because they can. Bullying is about power, and in a sense, it is very democratic: The power of the bully comes from the people. It starts with an opening gambit, a first salvo. The would-be bully makes some sort of move, a taunt, a swipe or a snub. The test is not for the victim. It is to see how others will react: thumbs up or thumbs down. In many ways, the victim is powerless. It doesn’t matter how she responds. Only the bystanders, the audience, can give a red or green light.

Onlookers play a vital role, and therefore, they must be included for a solution to have any real effect. An example of a community shutting bullying down occurred in 1993 , when a rash of hate crimes swept through a small city in Montana. Someone threw a brick through the window of a house where a Jewish boy had displayed a picture of a menorah. The community rejected the attack. The local paper published a full-page picture of a menorah. In days, 10,000 menorahs lined the city’s windows, with the message: not in our town . The police chief said, “Silence is acceptance.” 

Why do children bully? Because they have learned from adults who model it for them, who single out and disparage difference. A small but beneficial step schools and families can take is to include as wide a range of people as possible in their lives. Invite neighbors to your home. Seek out guests from all walks of life. Encourage them to tell their stories and model listening with courtesy and curiosity.

Another way of doing this is to read widely. It is normal human instinct to be on guard or even act defensively when we are faced with the unfamiliar, but we can learn — and teach our children — to honor difference. Instead of defining ourselves by who we are not, we can show children that we are all bound together in some way, and we can choose to make that connection positive.

When bullies came for my daughter, our village made their choice, which left us with only one: We moved away. Only by gaining physical distance have we all been able to rekindle our internal sparks.

For the longest time, I searched for a way to help Nina heal. I often felt powerless — and overwhelmed with guilt at not being able to protect her. I had to fall back on the only thing I had left to offer: love. Her wounds healed, but scars remain.

My daughter’s experience with bullies is a foundational part of who she is — highly protective of misfits, underdogs and outsiders, but also forever wary. After we moved, Nina found friends in our new town. But even now, two decades later, there is not a single room that she doesn’t scan before entering and ask: Will the people in it give a thumbs up or a thumbs down? 

Lea Page’s work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and River Teeth, among others. She is the author of “Parenting in the Here and Now” (Floris Books, 2015) and lives in the mountain west with her husband and a small circus of semi-domesticated animals.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for  here  and  send us a pitch at [email protected].

• I Was A School Bully. Here's Why I Terrorized My Classmates.
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My Worst High School Bully Is About to Be My Daughter’s Teacher. I Worry My Kid Is Her Next Victim.

I cannot believe that this is happening..

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column.  Have a question for Care and Feeding?  Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

I was bullied all through middle school and high school. Not just occasional name-calling or rude remarks but vicious harassment that didn’t end until I graduated and went to live with relatives in another state. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my daughter “Lucy” and I will be moving to my hometown this summer. You can imagine my shock and anger when I learned that the girl who was the ringleader of my bullies will be Lucy’s fourth grade teacher this fall!

I try to tell myself that high school was 12 years ago and things will be fine. A more visceral part of me doesn’t want that bitch anywhere near my little girl. What should I do, if anything?

—The Past Isn’t Past

Dear Not Past,

This sounds like a nightmare, or the premise of a horror novel. I’m sorry about your school-age experiences and sorry too that circumstances are forcing you to revisit them. I know that if I were forced for some reason to interact with my middle-school bully on a regular basis—much less deliver my child to him—I’d be a wreck, and that was nearly 40 years ago.

My first question is: Does this school have multiple fourth grade classrooms? If so, you are well within your rights to petition the school’s principal for a teacher change. You don’t need to be specific, but you may consider saying, “I grew up in this town, and this teacher and I have a history that would make it very difficult for me to communicate with her during the school year.” There’s no guarantee of success, but I do think many principals would make the change—fulfilling the request now, they may (correctly) surmise, will head off a litany of problems they’d just have to deal with later.

But what do you do if, for whatever reason, you can’t make a switch? Just as we must acknowledge the possibility of change in your former bully—she may view her behavior during those years with great regret—we must acknowledge the possibility of no change. Some people remain bullies, and some of those people are teachers. I can see an argument for being forthright: making an appointment with the teacher in August, writing yourself a script ahead of time, and telling her, “You were not kind to me in school. I will be watching carefully to make sure you are kind to my daughter.” I can also see an argument for staying as low to the ground as possible, making it through the year with polite emails, and skipping parent-teacher night. Only you can decide what course to take with the teacher. More important, I think, is the course you take with your daughter.

Once the school year begins, ask your child, as neutrally as possible, what her days are like and how her teacher talks to her students. You don’t need to bring your childhood trauma to bear on those conversations (that’s not a problem your daughter needs to face), but you can listen and understand your child’s experience. If it’s a positive one—if she loves the Trunchbull—great, amazing, incredible. If it’s a negative one, you can affirm her feelings, be on her side, and, perhaps, gird yourself for battle.

My entire family is moving to a new state in July, and so my children start at a new school in September. I’m particularly worried about my oldest child, “Grace,” who is a young teenager. Grace is autistic (diagnosed three years ago) and has issues with fitting in at her current school. She already has plans to completely change herself for her new school (including learning to do makeup and modifying her personality entirely). I don’t think that this is healthy, but I don’t know how to bring it up to Grace since she didn’t tell me. I found out because she left a notebook with her plans to change herself on the kitchen table.

I’m worried about Grace, and checking her phone last night didn’t ease my concerns. (Lots of YouTube videos about becoming “that girl” and being popular at school are saved to her Watch Later list, and her subscriptions on Webtoon contain the likes of “True Beauty”—I didn’t get into it too much, as it was an uncomfortable read, but basically: The main character is ugly and unpopular in middle school, then, over the summer, changes her looks and personality and interests to fit in, starts high school, and immediately becomes popular.) How do I talk to her about this without letting her in on the fact that her mom read her notebook? (She knows I check her phone.) Should I even bring it up to her at all? Is this actually completely normal and healthy behavior and I’m just overthinking it?

—She Shouldn’t Have to Change

Dear Shouldn’t,

Ah, the ol’ New School Glow-Up. To answer your final question first: This is completely normal behavior; like everything a young teenager does, it’s not entirely healthy; and yes, you’re overthinking it a tiny bit.

The teenage years are often when kids see the banal lessons of so much children’s entertainment— just be yourself, and you’ll be happy! —repudiated by the harsh realities of middle school. It can often feel to a middle schooler as if the very root of their unhappiness is whatever it is that makes them unique. After all, that’s what other kids torment them about! So, what’s so great about being myself? What if I was … someone else?

Your daughter sees an opportunity, in this new school, for a new start. It’s not surprising she’s considering trying to make the most of it. You’re naturally worried about your child burying her true self under some kind of mask—and worried too that if it doesn’t work the way she wants it to she’ll be hurt. Her diagnosis may be adding particular concern for you, given that for some people with autism, the act of “masking” can be damaging to their mental health.

And yet: Teenagers are unusually mutable! It’s not at all uncommon for a young teen to experiment with multiple looks, attitudes, and personalities over the course of a single school year. Many teens are trying to figure out who they are and trying a lot of selves on for size. That’s a normal, and in some ways laudable, part of adolescence. Expressing an interest in makeup might be the least surprising thing a young teenager can do. Honestly, going to a new school is intimidating. What your daughter needs most going into this new environment is confidence, something that’s been hard to come by over the past few years. If a little makeup and an artificially sunny disposition helps her ease this transition, well, she wouldn’t be the first person who faked it (a little) until she made it (a little).

Mention to Grace that you noticed some videos about makeup on her phone, and offer to help teach her about makeup this summer. You don’t need to punctuate your lessons with explanations about how she’s beautiful just as she is. Just connect with her while embarking on this new and interesting task. Indeed, if she has watched enough tutorials, you may end up learning quite a bit from her. (Like, what the hell is the point of “setting spray”? Is it like glue you apply to your face ? Maybe she’ll know.)

Is Grace truly going to attempt a total personality transplant? Who knows! Your job as a parent is to remind her that she is always going to be loved, no matter what experiments she embarks on, and to continue instilling in her the kindness and generosity that will remain in her core no matter what new identity she tries on.

I have a 3-year-old son, “Toby.” Toby is mostly a good kid, but he does have some tendencies that drive me up the wall. If he sees you with something, he wants it, no matter what it is or that he can’t do anything with it. And he’ll come up with some sort of ridiculous toddler argument for why he deserves it, then haggle relentlessly until he gets something. So, for instance, I received some Mother’s Day cookies as a gift a few weeks ago. I was nibbling one, and Toby came toddling in and wanted one. I told him they were a Mother’s Day present and only for mommies, which he took a moment to absorb and said, “You’re only a mom because of me. I should get half.” It was kind of funny, and I couldn’t stop chuckling, at which point he wanted to know what the joke was. That led to another round of negotiations, and eventually I managed to disentangle him. I just don’t know how to deal. The simplest of things turn into 10-to-15-minute-long discussions because he has grabby little fingers and never stops arguing. How do I get him to calm down already?

—OMG Stop Arguing With Me, Toby

Dear Stop Arguing,

It is very funny to me that your example of Toby’s maddening behavior is him seeing you eating a cookie and asking for a cookie, something that every 3-year-old on the face of the earth would also do. (It is also funny that you tried to convince him there is such a thing as a cookie “for mommies only”—though perhaps the reason this was the last straw was that you spend most days thinking, Cripes, isn’t anything just for me?! ) Anyway, I’ll leave that aside and take it as a given that Toby does this about everything in your house, not just delicious cookies.

The Dutch would say that Toby’s willingness to endlessly discuss and negotiate every point is a positive trait, one you should foster in order to encourage the building of consensus in family decisions. I, however, agree with you that this is annoying. Toby is endlessly haggling with you because you respond to the haggling. So if you want him to do it less, you need to engage less. The traditional way to cut such discussions short is to choose an answer (“Power saws are not safe for children,” “I’m reading this book now, and when I’m done you can look at it”) and stick with it. If he keeps pestering, repeat the answer in the most disinterested tone possible. Definitely don’t end the haggling by giving in and handing him the power saw!

However: You could follow this technique perfectly, spending your entire day repeating “This setting spray is not for children” in a robotic monotone, and he might still continue debating you forever. Some kids are just debate-me bros from birth! Eventually, they lose interest—or else go to law school.

I would be remiss if I did not point out: Another way to cut this short is to reconsider your initial response. I spent a lot of my kids’ childhood saying no on instinct because in some way I viewed that as my job—only to then find myself defending semi-absurd positions I’d knee-jerk declared out of a sense that I needed to remain consistent. Eventually I learned that a lot of the time, if it isn’t actually important, you might as well just give a kid the item when they first ask. Not when it’s a power saw. But definitely when it’s a cookie.

My baby is the only grandchild on both sides. My husband went to work for my father, so we moved here and built a house after we got married. My father-in-law sold his company, and my in-laws took an early retirement and now live across the country.

They extensively travel—just not to see us. They dislike our state and our city’s lack of local culture (despite the fact we are near a performing arts college). But they constantly complain about not getting time with our child! They haven’t seen her in nine months, and every conversation is centered on how unfair it is that my family sees her so much but they don’t.

They have visited Europe twice in the past six months. I don’t see why they can’t hop on a plane to see us. We have a guest room, and I very much don’t want to travel with our child until she is older.

My husband says that this is just how his parents are and not to let it get to me. Whenever we FaceTime with them, it’s the same old guilt tactics.

What do we do here?

—Just Book a Flight!

For starters, you should just get the hell off these FaceTimes! They’re his parents, not yours. Until such time as your in-laws make an effort to establish a relationship with you that isn’t based around guilt trips, you’re completely within your rights to just … go do something else while your husband and child talk to them. Go for a swim! Take in a show at the local performing arts college! Whatever!

As a rule, retired grandparents with money should make it their entire jobs to visit their grandchildren. I mean, they’re allowed to have other interests, but if they really want to see their grandchildren, they should be the ones traveling—parents of small children have plenty to do already! As a next step, your husband should make a specific invitation to them during his next FaceTime: “We would like you to visit for five days sometime in July. Please choose those days. If July doesn’t work for you, name a month.” I hope they wisely take him up on his offer and get to see their darling granddaughter. If they remain recalcitrant and keep complaining that they’re being left out, well, at least you won’t have to listen to them.

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I Do My Bully's Homework

Aug 15, 2021

Comments ( 12 )

Top comment

bro his perception of the world is crazy different!! and damn, I was liking Michael’s friends but now I’m a little ambivalent..I rlly like all their designs though, the art is super lovely :))

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How to Check a Bully's Contempt, Mockery, and One-Upmanship

Bullies seek social dominance by sabotaging victims and controlling bystanders..

Updated June 4, 2024 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• How to Handle Bullying
• Find counselling to support kids or teens
• Thirty-one percent of Americans report having experienced bullying in adulthood.
• Common tactics of adult bullying are understated, subtle, indirect, and passive-aggressive yet insidious.
• Bullies often exhibit low levels of empathy for targets and high levels of victimhood that rationalize abuse.
• An insecure yet socially competitive mindset can lead bullies to feel powerful when publicly shaming others.

Adult bullying occurs at a similar rate as adolescent bullying. According to a survey conducted by Harris Poll, 31 percent of Americans report having experienced bullying in adulthood. The survey defined bullying as “being subjected to repeated, negative behavior intended to harm or intimidate.”

Despite its prevalence, recognizing adult bullying can be difficult. Compared to childhood /adolescent bullying, adult bullying is less likely to involve overt insults and is more likely to be subtle, indirect, and passive-aggressive . In the aforementioned survey, for example, a quarter of respondents had experienced the silent treatment from an individual or group on a repeated basis, and 20 percent reported having lies spread about them that no one refuted.

While the tactics of adult bullying are generally more understated than childhood bullying, the effects are no less obvious. Notably, 70 percent of respondents to the survey reported feeling anxious or depressed , and 55 percent reported a loss of confidence .

“A bully gains power in a relationship by reducing another’s and shows little regard for the consequences to a victim’s health or well-being,” says Charles Sophy, DO, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and medical director for the County of Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. “Bullying is a coping strategy used to assert control when faced with personal limitations, whether intellectual, physical, or otherwise.”

To Dr. Sophy's point, adult bullying often maps onto emotional abuse , particularly narcissistic abuse. Either involves a perpetrator seeking power and dominance––social, spiritual , romantic, professional, financial, and otherwise––over one or more victims. The primary motive is to avoid hyperawareness of one's own inadequacies by ensuring everyone else is too disempowered.

In narcissistic abuse, the narcissist escapes dealing with their own low self-esteem by social-climbing and/or seeking out those who have status because of wealth, fame, or beauty. Eventually, though, insecurity resurfaces, leading the narcissist to either fear abandonment, feel envious , or both.

Fear of being outshone or forgotten leads the narcissist to deploy a host of manipulative tactics: constant criticism, gaslighting , guilt -tripping, negative humor , projection , pretend ignorance, and victimhood, among others.

These tactics can overwhelm a target's nervous systems, chip away at their self-esteem, and cause them to walk on eggshells until they are unrecognizable to others and no longer any fun to be around. In this state, the target no longer triggers the narcissists's insecurities.

While not every instance of adult bullying involves narcissistic personality disorder , many bullies do exhibit narcissistic traits. What can make narcissistic traits unbearable is not mere vanity but a low level of empathy for targets and a high level of victimhood that rationalizes the mistreatment of others. These latter traits go hand in hand with how bullies play god, play the victim, and play dumb as they normalize contempt toward victims and mask their own competitiveness.

Here are some suggestions for how to check for five common tactics.

1. When they “humble” you to offset attention

To “humble” someone is to burst their bubble. Often, the driving impulse is to divert attention away from someone who is being admired or celebrated, back to the bully. Examples include a backhanded compliment, criticism that is ill-timed, unnecessary, or unsolicited, or a patronizing reminder that someone still lacks seniority even despite their accomplishments. Special occasions are prime times for humbling because all eyes are on one person.

Checkmate: “I’ve always celebrated you during your special moments, even when I was down on luck. What would make you so negative during my special moment? Whatever the reason, thank you for your feedback. Please remember, though, that timing is everything, and I’d appreciate it if you considered that for me as much as I do for you."

2. When they distort your self-esteem into snobbery or vanity

“Let’s not pump up their head,” “I bet you took forever primping,” and “You love the sound of your own voice” can be jokes. Yet they also suggest that someone is arrogant or shallow. Such negative humor can put targets on victims’ backs since people generally rationalize hostility—scapegoating and schadenfreude, even—toward those assumed to be elitist, pretentious, selfish, or smug.

Checkmate: “That’s really funny…but only because I don’t actually show up that way in real life. Can you remember a time when I did? I hope you don't believe deflating my self-esteem is necessary for things to be fair or for you to be seen. We all have a right to like ourself. My confidence is hard-earned and powered by self-acceptance, not external validation or flattery."

3. When they recruit others into disliking you

When someone can no longer control you, they will attempt to control how others see you. Bullies who engage in defamation and slander may lack the maturity to view conflict outside of dichotomous, zero-sum thinking. They might feel suspicious about the idea that two things can be valid simultaneously. So, every conflict becomes a race to establish the dominant narrative and appear blameless or victimized, while embarrassing the other party.

Checkmate: “Since our conflict began, I’ve felt coldness or hostility from several people who were previously warm, and a couple have shared that you’ve embellished my part in our conflict while downplaying your role. I’ve owned my part because I gain nothing from pretending like I have no room to grow. But I refuse to be villainized or put in the position of fending off allegations or mistrust based on a biased narrative.”

4. When they play devil’s advocate facetiously

Critical thinking entails considering alternate perspectives and weighing counter-evidence. But bullying might be at play when a facade of objectivity is used to cloak facetious contrarianism. Especially during conversations pertaining to oppression, playing devil’s advocate can seem callous and uncalled for. Signs typically include someone using a dry tone of voice, relentlessly sifting emotional content through a hyper-rational filter of “whataboutisms,” and trivializing or oversimplifying complex issues to suggest you are overreacting.

Checkmate: “Just an observation here: It seems like you are using this conversation as an opportunity to push my buttons and test my patience. It feels like a debate where, by default, I’m in the less powerful position of convincing you to change your mind—and you’ve made up your mind already. Moving forward, please remember that your level-headedness during discussions about unfamiliar lived experiences is a result of privilege, not your objectivity or neutrality.”

5. When they twist your words to make you sound simple-minded or unreasonable.

This tactic often involves distorting or exaggerating your critiques, positions, or preferences. While an overview of logical fallacies is beyond the scope of this post, this tactic can take on the loaded assumptions and bad faith framings of several logical fallacies. A few worth looking into are the straw man fallacy , the red herring , the false equivalence , and the false dilemma or dichotomy.

Checkmate: “Can I be honest? It feels like you’re committed to misunderstanding me because you drew the most negative conclusion(s) possible from what I [just] said. It seems like you might be filtering my words through your own preconceived ideas about who I am, or projecting presuppositions onto my words without seeking clarification first. That feels unfair. Let’s stick to charitable and good-faith interpretations of what each other is saying.”

Araya Baker, M.Phil.Ed. , is a counselor, suicidologist, and policy analyst.

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