Should bullying be made illegal?

There have been too many instances in recent years when teenagers have committed suicide in response to bullying at school. Is it time to make bullying illegal?

http://www.bullypolice.org/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125322627

I find these stories incredibly tragic. Kids can be very cruel. And I think most kids, the victims as well as bystanders are ill equiped to deal with the issue.

Is the solution to this kind of emotional assault more education, criminal law or a combination of both? I think it is probably a combination of both. But it seems to happen with ever increasing frequency that I hear of another teen commiting suicide because of bullying as school..

 

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Physically assaulting someone is and should be illegal.

Name-calling? Not so much.

 

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Just to make it interesting, I will argue for the bullying side. Bullying has been around since the dawn of humankind and it serves an evolutionary purpose, it establishes hierarchy. The members of the pack needs to know the picking order. Also it gets ride of the weaklings.
You either stand up to the bully and fight for your place or you go down in the pyramid to a lower level.

How is that for an argument?

The reason we are raising this whiny-pussy generation is because we are telling them that everyone is equal, everybody deserves everything and the same recognition (hey, everyone is a winner!!), than later in real life they get quarter life crisis and THEN kill themselves...

Teachers can't use red for F grades, because it is degrading to the little sensible bastards, they get prizes just for showing up too....Freedom isn't free, if they want to be left alone, they might as well stand up to the bully....

 

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Syzygys and so has rape, that doesnt mean we shouldnt make it illegal. Yes it should be made a specific criminal offense, it already is specifically mentioned in the OH&S legislation for workplaces and it needs to be for schools as well. If it leads to death then the penelty needs to be life as well equivilant to at the very least, manslaughter

 

Even for juveniles?

 

YES, the penelties should be no different from what they would get for manslaughter (at the least) at that age. If thats life then life it is, if its not then what they would get is what they should get

 

It is a very bad argument. If you truly want to experience natural selection, then let's meet on an open field butt naked, and see who is left alive after we fight for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, we don't live in the wild state anymore -- we live in organized modern societies, and we have already decided that the true value of the society is based upon the quality of its mercy. It isn't "natural selection" when ten different people gang up on one person. That girl might have been strong enough to rip those kids' heads off with her bare hands, if they weren't operating as a group. But the law prevents her from responding in that way. So how is that "evolutionary" exactly..? An unnatural society has caused this girl grief through an outside force -- so that same unnatural society now has the responsibility to punish those who are responsible.

We don't have natural selection in America anymore. We are in fact one of the most intradependent service-based countries in the entire world. Nor do we have survival of the fittest. We do however have survival of the FATTEST. If we were in the wild state, where natural selection actually operates, most of those bullies would be dead within a week. Without the protection of the law, the majority of people would no longer feel compelled to tolerate that crappola from those self-styled bullies, so they would put their heads on pikes. That'll be your natural selection in action, just as it has ALWAYS ended up being the case throughout history.

 

Not really. Man on woman rape isn't used for establishing picking order. Now if we are looking at conquering soldiers raping the conquered that is an
evolutionary step, since obviously the stronger conquers the weaker and it is also good for tribe mixing, thus less inbreeding occurs. So evolutionary speaking it is almost desired...
Even in dogs, mixed breeds are smarter than pure breeds...

 

You are not getting it. Own tribes fight among themselves but they don't exterminate the weak, they just establish who the boss is and so forth...

Just look up any pack animal, there is a pecking order.

You think so? Well, let's look at the country level and see how it works. The US (biggest dog in the yard) is waging 2 imperialistic wars but only against 2 small countries that it can bully just fine. Any country that has the ability to stand up to it and cause at least serious damage is free from its bullying.

Now if this works unchecked among countries, why shouldn't it work on the smaller levels of society?

...and those well organized societies happily cluster bomb each others on occasions.

Even in business life, the natural selection is allowed in capitalist countries. Good businesses survives, bad ones fail (until we bail them out)...

By the way, I am arguing non-country specific for bullying. If those kids commiting suicide would kill the bullies, there would be less bullies too.

Also there was bullying 30-50 years ago, but I bet there were way less related suicide. So either bullying became stronger (I don't think so) or the weak can cope with it less and less....

 

The problem isn't bullies - that shit is character building. The real problem is parents. Everyone's a professional parent these days and its fucking up the kids.

 

so how do you legislate parenting?

 

That seems a bit harsh, d0n't you think, considering a child of 10 could spend his life in prison...

 

You don't.

 

It seems like pretty much everything involved in "bullying" - theft, assault, battery, harassment - is already illegal. Maybe people should just enforce the laws that already exist?

 

... If the kid survives and doesn't commit suicide or go postal on his coworkers in the future.

 

That is actually a good point, I think the laws already exists.

Going back to playing the devils advocate: if bullying exists in real life at every level of society, why shouldn't it exists for kids too? Why are we trying to overprotect them? The best protection is standing up against them, once bully #1 gets shot in the face by a weakling, bully #2 will think twice if that other weakling might have a gun at home, and also willing to use it.

Nations bully each other, corporations too (Microsoft in the 90s would be the best example) and political parties hell yeah! So shouldn't kids learn about real life at a rather young age?

Also, if two 20something with the same economic background gets fired from a very well paying job with no prospect of getting anything similar, which one is going to take it harder, the one who was bullied or the one who grew up in a cacoon?

 

To be harsh, people need to get the hell over it and stop caring what other people have to say

 

Bullshit. Having an occasional confrontation with peers in which you learn to stand up for yourself can be character-building. Being systematically harassed, assaulted, and degraded for extended periods isn't going to build character; if anything, it's probably going to cause lasting psychological damage by making the victim feel weak and powerless.

 

I would suggest that schools allow groups to form to help those in need . There are always nice people willing to help out if needed at any school. By forming a small group of other classmates along with a caring teacher to help guide them, it could be very helpful to help themselves in times of needs. Just a thought to help prevent this sort of problem. At least the students would have a place to turn to for it seems they do not now.

Yes there should be punishment for any bully but trying to prevent it from happening would be the ultimate goal IMHO.

 

You are assuming a priori that protecting kids from bullying is "overprotecting" them. When the sorts of behavior involved in bullying occur in the adult world, people typically go to jail. Are you suggesting that we should have a legal system and police to protect adults from assault and harassment, but no protection for children?

Um...no. Microsoft employing ruthless business tactics against their competitors is not at all the same as assault or criminal harassment. If Microsoft were to hire thugs to trash the offices of their competitors and harass their employees, that would be equivalent to bullying. And people would likely go to jail.

Also, Microsoft is a particularly bad example for you to pick, because they were indeed fined huge amount of money for anti-competitive practices.

Most likely the one who was never bullied will have a generally-positive outlook on life and will naturally assume that he will be able to bounce back and get by somehow. The person who was emotionally damaged by bullying, and taught to feel worthless and helpless, will probably handle it much worse and be at a much higher risk of suicide etc.