In January this year, a disturbing video started making rounds on Pakistani social media. It showed a couple of teenage girls at an elite school in Lahore, pushing, shoving, and eventually, punching repeatedly another girl who appeared to be the same age. You can spot a few other girls watching the ordeal. This video sparked an outrage. The victim’s family approached the police saying their daughter was beaten up for refusing to do drugs, the perpetrators’ families got lawyers.
As the social media crowd got riled up, there were calls to have the minor girls arrested, at least to have them named and shamed on social media. What started as an act of bullying in school became a nationwide conversation (and bullying) of minor girls where nothing short of their heads would suffice.
It doesn’t matter which part of the world you are reading this from, I’m sure you can relate to a similar incident. So, why is bullying such a global phenomenon? This week in The Global Tiller, we examine the act of bullying and what it entails. How does childhood bullying follow us through life and what does adult bullying look like? And lastly, how are some places dealing with it?
According to the UN, bullying can be defined as intentional and aggressive behaviour occurring repeatedly against a victim where there is a real or perceived power imbalance, and where the victim feels vulnerable and powerless to defend himself or herself. The unwanted behaviour is hurtful: it can be physical, including hitting, kicking and the destruction of property; verbal, such as teasing, insulting and threatening; or relational, through the spreading of rumours and exclusion from a group.
Bullying is most commonly reported in schools and colleges, and studies show that up to 35% of people are estimated to have experienced it at some point and it can follow you through life. Approximately 20% of people who have been bullied experience some kind of mental health problems later in life, even at the age of 50.
According to a professor of child psychiatry at the University of Turku in Finland, children who are bullied in early childhood have an increased risk of depressive disorders and need psychiatric treatment later in life. And it’s not just those who are bullied who suffer the consequences. About 20% of those who were bullies as children had a mental health problem that needed medical treatment as a teen or young adult. This compares to the 23% of the kids who were bullied frequently and had sought help for a psychiatric problem before age 30. The Finnish study showed that the group that fared worst in terms of adult mental health were the children who were frequently bullies and were also bullied themselves. About 31% of these children had psychiatric problems that required treatment, as well as the highest rates of depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and substance abuse of all the groups in the study.
Unfortunately, the very act of bullying does not stop as we grow older. Adults continue to be bullied at the workplace, regardless of the kind of work they do. An estimated 48.6 million Americans, or about 30% of the workforce, are bullied at work. In India, that percentage is reported to be as high as 46% or even 55%. In Germany, it’s a lower but non-negligible 17%. And let me stop you before you start thinking Germany is doing something right, you should know of my former colleague who worked in a newsroom in Berlin and had her headscarf pulled on multiple occasions by her boss who would derisively inquire why she wore it, forcing her to quit her job and move back to Pakistan. So there’s that.
At the workplace, bullying can range anywhere from angry outbursts and throwing away files to spreading lies and rumours against someone to undermine their talent. It won’t come as a surprise that bullying is unproductive — for children who cannot focus on their studies and for adults who cannot do their jobs.
However, the solution lies not in addressing individual cases — as has traditionally been the case. The Twitter outrage against the Lahore girls wanted punishment for the girls but it failed to spark an introspection into the culture and privilege that’s breeding bullies. No, the solution lies in a systemic approach to creating safe spaces, be it the school or the workplace. Organisations who are serious about dealing with bullying should ask themselves: does their culture favour egotistic behaviour, those who boast as opposed to those who keep to themselves, those who are louder and not those who are more diligent?
When we ask ourselves these questions, it doesn’t take long to realise that the world order is also designed for bullies. Be it Russia, China, or the United States, doesn’t the global stage reward those who strong-arm others and penalise those who it deems too weak? Isn’t Twitter — arguably the modern, global town square — run by a bully billionaire who thrives in this "off with their heads" culture?
Maybe this is the absolute low that our societies will have to hit before they bounce back, or maybe it will get even worse. So what will it take for us to reverse this culture, and maybe try rewarding kindness instead?
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Dig Deeper
When I picked up this book, I didn’t realise it was about bullying. But, after having read it, I’m glad I did. If you’d like to hear a fictional account of a young girl bullied in Japan, you may enjoy ‘A Tale For The Time Being’ by Ruth Ozeki.
…and now what?
I did my high school in a military boarding school. Nearly 95% of students were male, educated under the military philosophy of strength, discipline and sacrifice. Suffice it to say that bullying was a common practice in a place where we spent 24 hours a day with our classmates, where competition was encouraged and where the most common advice was to “man up”.
I’ve seen people break down under bullying. So why do we do it? Why is it so engrained in some cultures, whether at the national, societal or organisational level?
There could be many reasons for this but I mostly see two: belonging and masculinity.
If I recall my own experience, the act of bullying often comes as a group decision, some kind of a “dare” in which a dominant character in a group of friends challenges the quietest ones (as I was) to go do something that comes with a forbidden taste and use it as a rite of passage. Follow the herd and you’ll be welcomed by the “cool people”. Don’t, and you may find yourself on the other side of the fence (which I also did). As a teenager, belonging is key to building your identity so, sometimes, you follow and you go beyond what your instinct tells you not to do.
It goes the same when you look at governments. How often do invasions and the political bullying on the global stage comes as a proof of patriotism from governments and leaders? Being '“tough on” is a trademark of the leader (too often a man) who cares about his country, who doesn’t let others “step on the country”. If you want to prove your leadership, if you want to prove your patriotism, if you want to create a sense of belonging, find a common enemy and bully them. That will build solidarity through the shared experience of violence.
And this, unfortunately, is what happens way too often. Which leads to the second reason why bullying happens: masculinity. Our world has been built on the idea that strength and violence are key qualities for leaders, for men, for whoever wants to succeed. Even the concept of “girl boss” has been inspired by this: toughen up and show them that you got balls girl, right?
Violence is presented as the epitome of power, of some kind of wild and natural quality because we still understand Darwin’s principle of “survival of the fittest” through a really simplistic lens. But who said that for a human being to be the fittest, it had to be the most violent? That’s not even the case in the animal kingdom as the scientist Fans de Waal has brilliantly highlighted since years now.
And it’s no coincidence that we point out bullying today, the International Women’s Rights Day. As Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas put it plainly last year: “If women were in charge, there’d be less violence.” It may be simplistic, but clearly the masculine approach to power has proven to be based on bullying and putting us on the brink of midnight at the Doom’s Day Clock!
So isn’t it time to turn away from old times where violence was seen as a quality and start to see that it takes us, slowly but surely, towards our own self-bullying?
Should we then get rid of the alpha male and only have alpha females instead? We definitely need more balance but we have to go deeper than that. We need to teach our kids another kind of “being Alpha”. One that is closer to our true nature, closer to what nature does do where the alpha being is, in Frans de Waal’s words:
“You should not call a bully an alpha male. Someone who is big and strong and intimidates and insults everyone is not necessarily an alpha male. An alpha male has all sorts of qualities, and I have seen bully alpha males in chimpanzees, they do occur, but most of the ones that we have have leadership capacities and are integrated in their community, and, like Amos at the end, they are loved and respected, and so it's a very different situation than you may think.”
What kind of Alpha will you be?
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury