The definition of bullying.

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Well to me that sounds like a mis-understanding, I mean like sometimes my sister says things that upset me but she doesn't mean for it to so its just usually a misunderstanding on my part a lot of times.

Well I guess I don't see how it could be unintentional.......I mean I feel like if someones trying to upset someone its pretty obvious that's what they are doing if that is not their intent at all I would think its more of a misunderstanding. but even so, I still do not think there was anything I did that even resembled bullying.

I mean if I had actually said all those things that poster put in my mouth then I could see it.

I didn't think you were being a bully in any way.

I was answering this last night when my cable went out, internet and all.

First, I believe you actually mean "conscious vs. SUBconscious." Unconscious means either asleep, in a coma, or dead.

That said, I think I agree with you a bit, but disagree a bit too. See if this helps (this is how I view it):

1 - Conscious action can be either intentional or unintentional.
2 - Subconscious action is never intentional.

Example 1:

Your heartbeat and breathing are subconscious actions most of the time. Breathing can be a conscious action if you choose to think about it. You can choose to stop breathing, but sooner or later, survival reflex will force you to breath again. If you learn certain meditation techniques, you can learn to control your heartbeat consciously too. In both cases though, subconscious survival reflexes will kick in and take over.

It is possible to stop breathing or stop your heart from beating, intentionally, but you have to be conscious of both first, then make a conscious, intentional decision to stop it. But, when the SUBconscious kicks in, and forces breathing and beating again, you may be consciously aware that it is happening, but what is happening, is not intentional.

Example 2 (Stimming):

Stimming can be either subconscious or conscious just like breathing. Usually when we begin stimming, we don't even realize we're doing it. We aren't conscious of it until it starts annoying other people, and they demand we stop it. So they tell us, and we become conscious of it, but we still can't stop. Why?j Because the stim is an auto-reflex, subconsciously driven action. Ever hear that "Autistics stim as a way to survive?"

Again, unintentional whether you are consciously aware of the stimming or not. Stimming, like breathing or your hearbeat, with the proper training, CAN be intentionally stopped, but not all Autistics know how.

Example 3 (Bullying)

You may be fooling around and make a snide comment toward someone. You don't mean anything by it, but the person tells you they are offended.

At first, you are not consciously aware what you are doing is offensive, and it's not intentionsl. When people TELL you you are being offensive, you become consciously aware of it, and any further repeating of what ou were doing is intentional, and therefore, bullying. But we're talking about speech here.

Bulling is when you do things TO another person, whether it be with speech, the written word, or physically.

Tapping your pencil on your desk (a common stim) isn't doing anything TO anybody, but it can be annoying and distracting. It's not bullying, because it isn't intentional even after you become conscious of it. But it can still interfere with other people's normal functioning, and when that does happen, something does have to be done. Either the person stimming needs to learn how to consciously and intentionally control it, or the person stimming and the people annoyed by it should be separated.

Bullying often has to be dealt with the same way. When the person who unconsciously and unintentionally offends others, becomes consciously aware of the offense, and consciously and intentionally chooses to continue doing it anyway, it becomes bullying. Either the bully must learn to stop what they're doing, or they and the people they are bullying must be separated.



The rest of this post uses WP as a microcosm example that can be applied to any situation or environment.

Bullying happens on WP, and this is exactly how it's dealt with here. Once a user is told by other users they are being offensive, and they don't stop, moderator step in and try to help the person committing the offense to stop. If that fails. separation is in order. At times, the users are requested to avoid speaking to each other. If users continue choosing to ignore that advice, separation is accomplished with banning.

Can simply complaining that others are being offensive become a form of bullying in itself? Of course it can. If you keep reporting other users as being offensive, a pattern emerges. To some extent we all have to learn to overlook some incidents. It is just a forum after all. Most incidents burn out all by themselves, usually by the users agreeing to disagree and move on. Once in a while, that doesn't happen, and a user may repeatedly voice being offended by one post after another. That kind of behavior, if the mods were to act on it every time and consistently tell the "offending users" to tone it down or stop speaking as they do, can amount to infringement of freedom of speech.

Of course there's a lot of gray areas. Because they are gray splitting hairs isn't really the best way to handle things. One moderator might draw the line in one place, and another might draw it in a completely different place. The best way to handle gray areas is for the moderators to leave anything in those areas alone. The best way for users to handle gray areas is to not get into them at all, or at least not stay there for long once they realize they're in a gray area. If you stay in a gray area too long, you may find the area seems gray to you, but isn't gray at all to most other users or the mods.

I hope I didn't misstate anything here. I'm too tired to pick it apart right now. I hope you get the idea anyway.

No, I meant to say UNconscious. I don't like the word subconscious and I don't use it.

Is bullying good or bad?

That about sums it up........though I am not sure about the part of putting both WP users the offender and the offended in the same catagory. I mean it makes sense if they are told to quit communicating and both keep trying to provoke the other banning is in order for both.

However what happens if the offended poster makes an effort not to communicate with the offending poster, but the offender keeps provoking them until finally they do respond? I think in that case the offending user should be banned and not the offended poster.

bad, I think we've had this discussion before...

Yeah but the person who bullies may feel extreme fun!

and?

maybe they should find another way to have fun that does not involve hurting others.

"Tapping your pencil on your desk (a common stim) isn't doing anything TO anybody, but it can be annoying and distracting. It's not bullying, because it isn't intentional even after you become conscious of it. But it can still interfere with other people's normal functioning, and when that does happen, something does have to be done. Either the person stimming needs to learn how to consciously and intentionally control it, or the person stimming and the people annoyed by it should be separated."

Or the person/persons annoyed by it could learn to be a little more tolerant. I am pretty sure they have annoying habits too!

But it is about context. If the behaviour is inappropriate in a certain context, then, yes, the person needs to either be removed from the context or stop the behaviour.

If on the other hand it just irritates someone...Well...that is more tricky:

1 No, it may not be fair on the person who finds the behaviour annoying but its also not fair on the other person when they are expected to make all the changes just because someone else is irritated by them. Can the person who is annoyed not compromise? Or develop more tolerance or understanding? Or do they have to have everything the way they want it just because they might get a bit annoyed if someone isn't doing everything the way they think that person should do it?

Now if the behaviour is causing them severe emotional distress that is different.

2 Everyone, I mean EVERYONE has at least one habit that someone somewhere will find annoying! Who should change? And if they do change the annoying behaviour will someone else somewhere else end up finding the new behaviour annoying as well. So they then have to change that. But then the new behaviour becomes annoying to someone else, and round and round we go for all eternity.

Maybe the person who is annoyed is annoying the person with the irritating habit with their intolerance. In which case the annoyance is mutual all round.

Perhaps here we have a conflict of personalities and BOTH parties should compromise if they need to continue working or living together (not just one person but BOTH of them).

3 People get annoyed over the strangest of things. Things that, in the grand scheme of things, really are not worth getting annoyed about. But each to their own I guess. It is all a matter of perspective.

Ie people get annoyed when you launch off into a monologue because you get excited by what you are talking about, mostly because they want to speak and can't get their opinion across when they want to, or because they are bored by the subject. But personally, when someone does that I find it cute. Their face lights up and they seem so passionate about, and energised by, what they are talking about that I am happy to let them run with it, even if I am not interested in the subject as such. I can also wait to give them my opinion and sometimes I don't need to give them an opinion at all, I just let them talk. It's just nice to see someone who is that alive. Not many people show true passion these days and when it does surface I think it is a beautiful thing to see!

Most people get annoyed though! So I am just weird lol.

Okay, I split a hair. I never looked them up to be honest (who's ever read the entire dictionary? ) Close enough I guess.

Lack of empathy.

By that logic, Max Beaverman is one.

I don't think that is bullying........how is lack of empathy the same thing as verbally or physically harrasing someone?

Bumble, context, of course, is important. Some judgment and discernment has to be used. Among adults, we can usually work things out between each other.

Remember that I brought up "learn to overcome" as one of the options? Would you agree that most Aspies can and do learn over time to adapt and cope, in part by changing certain behaviors? Would you agree that we can learn to stop stimming and monologuing?

If we can, then it would seem to me that simply telling oneself that the whole world should not expect you to change is pretty unrealistic. We have habits and traits that annoy people. At first, we may not be able to control them. But we can learn.

Why bother? Because that's what civilized people do. They try not to annoy each other.

You mentioned compromise. I agree, Compromise is a fantastic way for people to deal with offenses and annoyances. Compromise takes two.

If one is not meeting the other halfway, that isn't compromise.

Of course I am generalizing a little about how much we can change. We're not all the same.

Even if I can't help it though, if I start monologuing or whatever, and it annoys the hell out of others:

A - If I'm in your house, I'll leave.
B - If your in my house, you should leave, or just put up with it.
C - If we're in class, I should, because it's not just annoying one person, it's annoying and distracting everyone else. Expecting every classroom of people and all teachers to accomodate something that disruptive, is unreasonable and unrealistic.
D - If I'm in a restaurant - I would leave
E - If I'm in a library - I would leave
F - If....

Well, geez, I can't list every single context there is obviously. I have learned though, to accept the fact that I'm the one with the annoying behaviors. No, it's NOT my fault I have them, but it's not anyone else's fault either. Learning to overcome traits isn't as bad as a lot of us seem to believe it is. Easy? Absolutely not! And it takes quite a while.

Don't most of us claim to have empathy though? Maybe it would be a good idea to prove it and try our best to make others lives as annoyance free as possible.

Keep in mind too, that we dont' just annoy NT's with our traits. We annoy the hell out of each other too!