I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the new definition of bullying - when I was a kid, being a bully meant intitiating physical violence - verbal stuff was irrelevant and unimportant. ("Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.")
The best response to physical force is more physical force.
That so much is being made about words suggests that, as a country, we're making sure we raise a generation of wimps. Evidence is that schools will punish the target of physical bullying who fights back as much - if not more - than the bully himself.
You can use it as another example of the feminizing of society.
Fistfights may have been commen with the boys, but never the girls.
Verbally bullying is a specality amoung tween girls, and they are very, very very good at it.
Both boys and girls, when I was growing up the thing to do was to verbally push the bullied till the cryed or physically snapped.
That way they could attempt to flip the punishment for the altercation on the bullied (a no go in the new days of no tolerance rules)
This is why I only got in school suspension and the father of the boy I beat actually apologiesed to my parents. :|
Trust me, the verbal crap is bad enough to warrent real action on the part of the adults. Of course, the likelyhood of those adults taking the right action is slim to nil these days.
