Verbal bullying, punch lines, and bruises

From curse words that were culturally proscribed yesterday to the same curse words that are commonly accepted today …

(Image credit: http://www.citytowninfo.com)

… culture has come a long way indeed.

 

REPORTING RESEARCH RESULTS RELEVANT to verbal bullying at a meeting of the American Psychological Association, Lilia Cortina and Vicky Magley found that rudeness is unbridled in the workplace. Their study indicated that 71 percent of 1,100 surveyed workers said that they had experienced pompous and outright rude behavior. Later on, with the increasing encounters of uncivil behavior came symptoms of anxiety and depression among victims of maltreatment. Those passive victims suffered the worst mental health. Similarly, according to bullyingstatistics.org, “Many victims of verbal bullying are affected in very real ways. Verbal bullying can affect one’s self image, and affect someone in emotional and psychological ways. This type of bullying can lead to low self-esteem, as well as depression and other problems. It can aggravate problems that a victim may already be experiencing at home or in other places.”

For 40 or 50 years, there has been an increased exposure to lack of civility. A survey conducted by a nonprofit research group, Public Agenda, reported 79 percent of interviewed adults said that lack of respect and courtesy in the (American) society is a serious problem and more than one-third confessed that they use foul language in public—clearly, this is verbal bullying in public.To define verbal bullying, we are obliged to broaden our long-held ideas. This could involve name-calling, put-downs, threatening, swearing, cursing, making up stories, yelling, gossiping and spreading rumors, talking about somebody else’s mother or another family members, laughing at someone’s physical appearance, making up a derogatory song, daring someone, imitating, and so on. In short, “trash talk” is the term.

It’s just for fun, they say. What am I supposed to do but to think of anything from which I could have fun? This, I suppose, is a lame excuse, which results in the current generation imitating these behaviors. “Sticks and stones can break your bones,” reported in Bullies & Victims, “but words can break your heart.” Unlike a broken bone that heals in a matter of weeks or months or even a year, a broken heart never heals, students reported. (In my case, though I’m not the type of person who easily gets bullied, I know those students make a point—back in high school, I used to be bullied. In contrast, I think my wound has healed, but it took a very long time, perhaps multiple years.)

Complaining about bullies, however, can sometimes be futile. Bullies have not developed the maturity to sort out pleasing from unpleasing, parading in an adult world without the courage to make choices. And bullying has brought to the playground a strain of social welfare that would have been absurd 40 or 50 years ago.

It’s absolutely okay because as well as being traditional and incontrovertible verbal bullying can sometimes be a joke, a tongue in cheek that shouldn’t be taken seriously—although I have never comprehended the difference between bullying and just mere cracking jokes. They say if we get insulted, then it’s our fault, and that we should learn to shut up and smile and learn to accept humor. We shrivel into ourselves until jokes stop coming.

Verbal bullying, however, is the type of joke that doesn’t stay funny each day just as humor is uttered unequally from one person to another. These strains of jokes are like punch lines acting as punches straight to the face; they are the type of punches that leave bruises, the healing period of which is something out of our control.

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Sources: http://books.google.com.ph; www.bullyingstatistics.org