Why Were You Bullied? (and my attempt to answer it)

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I think some of it was because I would say or do "weird" things, and didn't understand why anyone would see my behavior as NOT being "normal". And admittedly, I wasn't as careful about personal grooming as I am now.....that may have had something to do with it.

I tried fighting back when I was littler but I was physically weak & not well coordinated so I didn't have much of a chance against an average peer 1on1 let alone a group. I took karate classes but dropped out after making it to blue 2nd stripe & failing the test to get the 3rd because it was overwhelming for me physically & mentally & with my downtime I needed after school. Trying to fight back made things worse because the bullies got more aggressive & I got in trouble when I did anything to them. They told the teachers I hit them or whatever I did to them & when I tried explaining to the teachers that they started it; they wouldn't listen to me because I had a bad history & all the bullies stuck together with the same story that I started it so it was my word against a group. I never understood the logic of a weak kid trying to bully a group but maybe I cant understand because I'm autistic.

1)I was loud and obnoxious. I went up to other kids and asked them if they wanted to be my friend ......the same kids .....repeatedly. I loudly informed other children when they were breaking a rule about how to line up for assemblies and recited all the rules ect.
2) stimming- I twirled string or scrunched up ends of paper in front of my eyes and ripped paper to make these stim toys -pachkas, my mom called them, during class, I scrunched up my face like a bunny rabbit while twirling paper in front of my face. I sung, talked and made noises to myself during class, at recess, in the hall ect,
3) clumsiness, funny walk ect.
4) I didn't know how to react and would sometimes yell back at kids or make odd movements in response to teasing which the other kids found amusing.
5) I was very naive and trusting so I could be tricked into thinking kids who obviously hated me wanted to be my friends or wanted to "kiss me" ect. which the other kids likewise found amusing.

I was probably the perfect target for bullying.

I was bullied throughout school for many of the same reasons as the others in this thread. As a young child (4-7 i.e. around the beginning of school) I was very frail and weak. I also didn't socialise well (being an aspie), would talk about my special interests rather than anything else, would refuse to participate in their activities - you all know the story, it's been covered thoroughly in this thread so I don't have a lot to add in relation to the causes. So, like the others here all these factors combined to make me the prime bullying target. As I reached about 8 I had a massive growth spurt, put on a LOT of weight and was suddenly MUCH bigger and stronger than the other children. They still bullied me but would often get their asses kicked in return. Then the type of bullying changed: the goal would be to get me to have a meltdown, lose my temper and hit somebody and then rapidly summon the teacher to get me in trouble. As such I was labelled as the troublemaking child and was constantly on report, in detention etc etc throughout the rest of my compulsory education.

As an adult I am no longer often bullied. This is partially as a result of being a large and (at times, so I am told) intimidating looking person. Of course this doesn't prevent e.g. workplace bullying of the more psychological type. I'm quite good at spotting when people are doing that to me and I have no problem calling them out on it, in public and ideally in a way that makes them look as crap as possible and makes them feel as humiliated as possible. I may not be socially gifted but I *am* intelligent, quick-witted and good with words - on many occasions people who tried to bully me in adult life have been left as the one feeling embarassed as a result. Of course this is not always the right thing to do in the workplace for example; if the bully in question is a superior then it can lead to dismissal. I have lost more than one job that way.

november children are the oldest and biggest next to october children because they miss the cutoff.

TRIGGER WARNING: Violence

Well, about the time that two kids discovered that if they pushed me against a wall hard enough they could make my shoulders touch, and then preceded to do that every day while I screamed and other's watched, I stopped trying to justify their behavior.

I will say though that being picked last/ picked over always wasen't really bullying by the kids, they wanted to win sports/do good in group assignments(I did too). I was seen as a liabillity instaid of an asset almost always. heck I still can't walk right today and I was normally a low performer in group work unless I got to build something or was in my current personal intrest range. Those who can't perform up to par get left out. While it left me very sad/lonly/low self confidence and resentful I can't really put the blame on the kids, after all it was the same 2 or 3 getting picked first mostly. That was the fault of the school allowing such interpeer compitition to exist over and over.

Same for me. I'm always the last one to be picked, but I don't really think it's bullying. It's only that kids want to win and be always the first ones.

lets see i was different thats basically the main thing
i was younger than most of my grade because of a november birthday so that led to an even larger developmental difference between them and me (that plus the fact of aspergers making me at a younger developmental stage as well)

i was awkward i had very curly frizzy hair that wasnt kept neat because i didnt know how to take of it.

i was short.

i could be very hyper at times.


in jr high mainly i was immature i wore way too much makeup in my attempts to fit in but had no idea the right wayto wear it. i was practically the only white girl in my grade.
so i stood out more.

in summer camp

i was awkward again same as before

but i also made a very bad first impression at camp so that was even more hell than it should have been

Well for me it certainly was bullying. Not to brag, but I have an outstanding glove hand as a (hockey) goalie and this is because I was such a great baseball fielder, both mentally and physically. I was average to above average in skills in most sports but guess who ALWAYS got picked last or second last? You guessed it! I remember playing a sport where BOTH teams cheered while I dropped a ball. Yes, some people cared more about humiliating their own "teammate" than winning in Junior High. Even when I was by far the best at something 'cool' (like video games) everyone always found a way to downplay it (oh, you just got lucky).


Oh that brings up a painful memory. There was this one 'bad' kid who seemed to want to be my friend. Even when I visited his house (and his father got their Rotweiller to jump and bark at me and laughed when I got scared) I still thought he wanted to be friends even as him and his father took turns insulting my heritage and mentioning how dumb and drunk people from my province are and mocked my family openly. Since they give me pizza, I assumed he still wanted to be a good friend.

I didn't clue in until I called him in excitement of a coming event and he said angrily "leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you." and proceeded to use everything I told him to completely humiliate me along with his 10-15 cronies the next day at school. Took me YEARS to trust anyone after that little event. Pretty much everyone at school knew he was a sociopath (I moved to that area only two years prior) and nobody tried to warm me what he was doing. I still see this little s%$# doing commission sales and still to this day wish to see him die a slow and painful death.

if you were good and blessed with good motor skills then thats bullying for sure, I would have not picked me for the team either to be honest, I just was so uncordinated. I know when it came to art I did def moved up the pecking order to the top, I often felt more used then accpeted as part of the team. they wanted my talent not me and they split after getting my A+ in their report with no thanks and the world returned to normal.

I was almost always one of the last ones picked in PE/gym & it honestly never bothered me at all. I liked being the odd one out. I have low vision & I react slowly to things that I do see or aren't visual so I just stood around while the other kids did their thing. At least when I was left out I didn't have to worry about a ball or anything hitting me & I got to do my own thing on the sidelines. Most of the classes I took didn't have us do many projects & most of them weren't group 1s. A couple of the times when they were group 1s the teacher had me do an independent thing. The couple times I had to do a group one I was lost as to what to do & the couple others told me exactly what to do or I didn't do anything. I interpreted being left out of a group as disability accommodations.

Yeah it happened to me a few times actually and for an extended period in middle school. These girls pretended to be my friends for several weeks in middle school and repeatedly humiliated me until I finally clued in. One example was these girls "gave me a makeover" during class but wouldn't give me a mirror to see myself . They put lipstick all over my cheeks and eye shadow past my eyebrows and made me look like a clown. The whole class laughed. Once a group of boys and girls convinced me that there was a boy in the class who liked me and wanted to meet me by the goalposts after school. When I actually went there they laughed at me and started saying they wouldn't kiss me for a million dollars, a billion dollars ect.

When I had a good teacher they often let me work alone and when the class had an odd number of kids I was alone by default, still remember that feeling of my heart sinking and stumich turing when the teacher said pick a partner, some teachers loved group assignments. Another side effect was that I normally got a poor/lazy performer or a mean kid the others wanted to stay away from and would often end up doing the whole assignment on my own at home, the kids knew I would do it if they pushed me. Then once again take my mark and run, will never understand how I can do most of the work and the partner can get a better mark sometimes? Reading and discussing this sure makes me understand why I found school a living heck.

My parents, siblings, relatives and peers at School used to make my life hell for me.

This one's easy to answer:

1. I am a girl who looks/acts like a boy.

2. I didn't talk much, and my voice tended to disappear when confronted by jerks.

3. I had/currently have weird body movements and an awkward gait.

That's pretty much it. Mostly, it's the violating gender norms thing that gets me the most flak.