Last week TV presenter Eamonn Holmes caused controversy when he talked about being bullied at school and encouraged children to ‘punch first’. He made the comments when WAG Bianca Austin, the wife of former Southampton striker Charlie Austin, divided the internet after praising her daughter for punching another student who had been tormenting her.
As a psychiatrist, I’d never advocate violence in any form. It’s not the answer. Dialogue and communication are far more important. By responding with violence, you debase yourself and bring yourself down to the level of the bully.
It also doesn’t really address the issue — it often just means the bully moves on to someone else. What’s more, bullies, especially children, while understandably vilified, are often dealing with very complex issues themselves.
On the contrary, it means dealing with them using language they understand. It’s how I stopped being bullied at school. They found out that doing so hurt. I learned judo, so was able to defend myself. When I hit them, I did so with the full intention of hurting them as much as possible. It wasn’t self debasement, it was self defence. As for them moving on and their complex issues, not my problem. I was a child and my only concern was stopping them doing it to me. It worked.
They frequently have problems at home and may be being abused or on the receiving end of violence themselves.
As I say, it wasn’t my problem. Stopping the bullying was and I did. Landing winded on the floor usually did the trick and they didn’t repeat the experience.
I notice that below the line, my view is the one that people tend to take here. Pemberton is living in a fantasy land.
How effective did you find judo as a means of self defence? Violence of course doesn’t work if you are not as strong as the other person.
Very effective. Because I am small and light, it uses the other person’s weight and movement against them. It didn’t work so well in competition events, but against a bully who wasn’t trained, I floored them very easily. They didn’t know how to break their fall, so landed flat and winded. Game over.
It’s a matter of confidence, not even the biggest bully in the world can train his eyeballs, or testicles. No special fighting skills are required to poke someone in the eye, or grab their jewels and squeeze, it’s overcoming the fear to do it in the first place, and the continual feminisation of boys and men makes it much harder to do.
I guess an added problem in today’s society is that flooring a bully at break-time might lead to getting stabbed at dinner time.
Interestingly, I had an incident a few weeks back. Where we train is a football ground. One of the coaches insisted on walking on our coned off pad and took exception to me instructing him to get off. He squared up to me and stepped forward as if to take a swing at me. I just stood and looked at him and he backed off. As you say, confidence. I’m not big, nor am I strong or prone to violence, but he didn’t know that.
Bullies seek out those people they consider weak and unable to respond. A punch, elbow, or trip normally persuades them to move elsewhere.
Anyone who says that violence is not the answer and that you should (for a school example) complain to a teacher has no experience of how ineffective and disinterested teachers are.
When I was in primary school, one of the kids used to headbutt me in the stomach. My father told me to just lift up my knee. By god did it make a crack. He cried. Never did it again, though. The teachers were unaware of any of it.
Pacificm could only ever be a plausible stance if everyone in the world was a pacifist too. Some pacifists will maybe get by letting other people do their fighting for them. Generally all that can be acheived by being passive is you becoming victim or a doormat.
In my school the bullies tended to have their clique with them when they picked on anyone. I learned that when faced with a group, the first thing is to identify which one is the ring leader and take him out first. That is a good message to send to his buddies. They will not interfere, because you always have the ‘one at a time’ option afterwards and they know that. As the Chinese say, empty vessels make the loudest noise, and this is true of a typical bully. They are bullies because of their own insecurities, get to where they are on the support of their followers using fear and always pick on who they think is the weakest. Sounds like a politician.