Anyone ever get back at their bullies?

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Sure, I know what it's like to feel utterly powerless and wanting to inflict suffering, but I think the best revenge is a life well lived (or living your life as best as you can). I also get using violence when necessary, but this concept that using violence will make your bully not f**k with you is BS. Trust me - I've tried to use violence on my bullies and I got floored most of the time. Plus if you use violence, you end up getting further victimized. Even if they do get off your back, they're not going to change just because you stood up to them. They'll just move onto some other person, and then what? You''l bully them?

The trick that nobody seems to be able to wrap their around is making bystanders accountable. The bully isn't going to stop because their actions are being made permissible by everyone else (including teachers who aren't paying attention or not giving a f**k). You'll be surprised how many people know that people are being bullied and permit it. This is a lot harder to achieve, so lazy people just expect victims to take it. No wonder so many people commit suicide or worse, commit a mass shooting.

Either way, you'll still be reviled by society if you react with violence in any form, no matter how much you have been victimized and how few options you have. As for myself, I like to think I'm better than the people who have harmed me, which is why I don't even have the capacity to hate them anymore. Their just losers and they learned too late that their thuggish behavior will get them nowhere.

Biggest truth ever spoken. Bullies (like dictators) are made or unmade by the bystanders. The bystanders, and in general the third party (the "witnesses", the "judges") are more responsible than the bully themselves - because the bystanders are not sick in the head and are not in the heat of anything. They know what's going on and endorse it. When I'm attacked, I focus not on the attacker but on the bystanders. Disarm THOSE, and the bully becomes a non issue.

A corolary: bullying and abuse thrive in secrecy. When you're bullied or abused, the one thing you have to make extremely sure of is that you're divulging the abuse as much as you possibly can. If for power reasons you must keep it a secret (eg a boss), try to divulge it in indirect ways that no one, not even the bully, can make you accountable for.

Again, as a disabled woman all alone, I carry a camera with me at all times. Have you ever pulled out a camera (not phone camera) when someone was trying to intimidate/abuse/bully you? If you try it, you'll see a wolf become a sheep in no time. And since holding a camera is perfectly ok, they can't even show anger at it. A camera is nothing else than focusing on the "third party" I mentioned above. It's a way of disarming those, as a way of neutralizing the bully. A camera causes the bystanders to flee, because they know they risk being held accountable for doing nothing. And the one thing the bystanders don't want is trouble in any way.

Skilpade, a poster above mentioned reducing bullies to tears by telling them the things they'd so painstakingly tried to hide from themselves (the pregnant 15-year old girl, etc.) That's what I do, only because I know a thing or two about the deep nature of humans now, I'm able to be deeply disarming. Think in terms of exposing something they're trying to hide from themselves and others, and you've disarmed them, that's all. It's the exact opposite of "helping others save face".

Having the right retort at the right time came to me naturally once I'd cured myself (decades of hard work) of the feelings of guilt, blame and shame ingrained in me by my parents for my autistic traits, and that cure was achieved by understanding that people never try to honestly improve me for my sake - if they criticize/admonish/call me names, etc. it's in their own interest.

Eg: I live in a place where people are always pushing and shoving, it's the local custom. Everyone complains about it, but everyone does it.

Woman in the line to the cash desk at the supermarket pushes and pushes me, I have nowhere to move, she's making my wait miserable, and she won't take the hint.

Me: "Stop pushing me, the line won't move faster if you push me!"
She: "Me? Push? I don't know what you're talking about."
Me: "Yes, you. And your excuse is? That you're Middle-Eastern and therefore know no better, were raised this way? And why improve your ways if everyone else here is Middle-Eastern too? You'll just behave differently when you go to Europe or North America, is that it?

That's how I disarmed the by-standers. And the bully had to stop it, because she was left with no bystander back-up, seeing as no bystander would defend such a dirty secret as they have here, that they ARE able to behave like humans but they just leave it for their trips abroad.

And you're right, NEVER use obscenities, curses, etc. and NEVER raise your voice. Disarming is not about being aggressive by aspie standards. It's about being aggressive by NT standards - i.e. for NTs, telling it like it is, even in a soft, respectful tone, is being aggressive. Because reality is what hurts them the most. In my example above, I never yelled, never attacked, just asked a question respectfully. Albeit, a very uncomfortable question that left all those who heard me (everyone in the cash desks area) speechless and likely also forced to introspection for the rest of the day. Being brutally thrown into introspection is one of the worst punishments for most people.

Sorry for so many posts in a row, but I just remembered a scene in a movie: a beautiful, very rich student who constantly bullied an ugly, poor fellow student in her class. The victim did only one thing: she threw the bully into the school pool during a pool-side party. That was enough to neutralize her, when all the bystanders discovered that all the beauty of the bully was artificial (she crawled out of the pool without her mega-bucks hairdo, make-up and in a dress turned to rags).

Yeah. I once responded to another kid at my school who insisted on kicking my shins every time he saw me, by hitting him in the face with my brown paper sack lunch... which had a full can of soda in the bottom.

Never heard from him again.

I agree with much of what Moondust has said.
I once waited for a stupid woman to finish with a customer and help me at the bank. Two other people lined up after me, and she took forever, but seemed to notice I was getting impatient. After the first customer left, she looked at the woman in line after me, and asked 'can I help you?', like I was not even there. The bank was empty, and there was NOTHING to obstruct her view of anything at any time. Until those 2 women showed up, there was no other customer in the whole bank, nor any other staff member in the room, except for a brief walk in by another staff member. The woman behind me looked embarrassed and confused. I calmly picked up my phone and took a photograph of her, then asked my question. She seemed very nervous after that. Of course, I deleted it as soon as I got to my car, but I hope she had a good think about what I did with that photo.

I also agree that unnecessary aggression and rudeness is not always the best tactic. I personally don't want to be like that, so try to remain above that sort of behaviour. Sometimes I do sink to that level, but always wind up embarassed with myself and regretting it. The idiot who hurt me should not be worth my pride in myself.

Thanks for your reply, Moondust!

Your examples really surprised me in their obviousness. I read that account of the 15 year old girl too and I failed to understand how she was hurt by the response, since the poster had said nothing new to her. I really underestimate people’s ability to ignore reality.
And to see being truthful as a way of showing aggression like NTs do is so alien to me! Maybe they think I show aggression when I’m only being honest and direct? I also fail to remember that introspection is considered terrible for the majority of the population.

When you first mentioned shining a light on the truth, I thought you meant the kind of things that you had to know them very well to know, which would work poorly against an unfamiliar person. I had no idea something that general and obvious could turn them off.
Thanks Moondust, that gives me some idea...

I find that bullying is especially frequent towards women in public places because women (in my neck of the woods, at least) are believed to willingly swallow any treatment in order to avoid negative attention from bystanders.

So the first thing I do when someone tries to bully me in a public place is make a scandal. That's a clear message (in non-verbal language, the way NTs understand) that I don't plan to cooperate with abuse in order to avoid a scene.

I once went with a group of non-Christian tourists to visit an abandoned Orthodox Christian church. During his lecture, the tour guide mentioned that it's forbidden to cross one's legs in an Orthodox church. I accidentally forgot at some point and unconsciously crossed my legs as I usually do, which someone found a golden opportunity to humiliate me in front of the whole group - again, a woman alone must be a walk in the park to pour one's frustrations onto. So I said "I see you have great respect for a god you don't believe in and a group that is not here and never will be, wish you started your own lessons at home first, by respecting your own group instead of pushing and shoving them all day during the tour to be always first in line." The bystanders, who had happily joined this person in the attack, all went completely silent. So the bully had to shut up.

The fact is: NTs do not know how to deal with hidden, ugly truths. It's not in their programming. Even as enemies they don't attack each other with the hidden, ugly truth. That's too low a blow for any NT to take, so they protect each other from ugly truths because they desperately need the others to protect them from ugly truths too. It's a tacit pact in society which we aspies break all the time unknowingly. One day I told myself: if I'm considered evil for doing this unknowingly, then I can use this as a weapon when I DO want to hurt someone! Yay, I've found a way to defend myself and make bullies stop torturing me!

This is not gender specific. Bullies are often female managers in the workforce.

Well, technically, female bullies are called b*****s.

Technically female dogs are called b*****s. What's your insult towards male bullies then?

I just chose to beat the crap out of the ones bullying me... Then they stopped.

how could you know that none of them would come back with guns and the will to use them?

If bullies are so bad then stop stooping to their level. I never tried to get back at my bullies- I discovered soon enough that they destroy themselves without me having to lift a finger or make myself as bad as they are. People like that generally learn the hard lessons, somehow. That or they just kind of... fail.

I do sometimes try to help bullies though- they are people, too- ones who have probably been through a lot and if they can learn and be happier then no one will have to put up with their bullying! In that way the bully's essentially dead, because they're not a bully anymore! It always feels really good. c:

The best revenge is living well. I never really got back at my school bullies. I simply performed better, got a great education in my chosen field and turned it into a great career. The one bully boss I had fired me, so I got a better job, and that company went bankrupt a couple of years later. That was perversely satisfying to see happen.