Bullies: On and Off Sale ;-)

[Stormchild]

The thread about spitting on a salesperson reminded me of a collection of comics from the late '60s: "Spitting on the Sheriff: And Other Diversions" by Charles Rodrigues...

yes, it's a real book:

http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-sheriff-diversions-Charles-Rodrigues/dp/B0007FU8Z0/ref=sr_1_2/102-1263009-0156920?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178850433&sr=1-2.

But it also reminded me of the much more serious concept of female bullying.

There is absolutely no question that the saleswoman Sela describes was a bully.

Almost worse than her bullying, in terms of the damage that she can do, directly, to others, is the fact that she manages to provoke such an intense desire to bully back. Even people who were nowhere near the incident are provoked to contemplate all types of revenges against her, simply from reading an account of her behavior!

This is something to be careful about, because bullying can be quite a power trip; pushing other people around can become awfully satisfying - addictive, intoxicating, dangerous. Especially to those who feel otherwise disempowered. That is, other women. Me, you, us.

It's very unlikely that saleswoman started out as the overbearing and obnoxious person she is now; and it's also sadly likely that she is going to become 'more so' in future, especially if being a thugette continues to provide rewards.

I did a bit of Googling on the term 'female bullying', but I found that most discussions of this type of bullying, like discussions of bullying in general up until a few years ago, seem to assume that this is a childhood and adolescent phenomenon only. How pervasive denial is in our culture!

I did find this general precis on the James Cook University web site:

http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/eandsd/Bullying/bases.html

Research and surveys indicate the following reasons for bullying:

lack of communication skills
desire for power
attempts at increasing self concept
desire for self-aggrandisement
scapegoating
vindictiveness
over-valuing of compliance, control and hierarchy
distrust of other people

Recent research indicates that bullying has two main causes:

The bully has difficulty with social skills, is unable to make friends easily, and thus does not know better ways to relate to others

Bullying is used to enhance self-concept - self-concept is the way you feel about yourself. Well-balanced people enhance the way they feel about themselves through their achievements, activities and occupations. Bullies, however, have a distorted sense of how to increase their self-concept, and so engage in anti-social activities. Bullying makes them feel good about themselves and, mistakenly, they believe that engaging in it will make other people see them as powerful.

Surveys also show:

that about 80% of people express contempt for bullying,

but that people who have been identified as bullies believe that their bullying behaviour causes them to be perceived as admirable.

Elsewhere on the same site are some explanations as to why bullying is so often tolerated:

The effects of harassment and bullying are subjective and individual - people have different levels of tolerance.

Self-blame: For some people, loss of self-confidence and low self-esteem, coupled with repeated denigration and comments about inadequate work performance (without appropriate coaching and support to try to remedy the situation) may lead to a conviction that they are deserving of the treatment - that the bullying is "their own fault".

Fear: Feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, and of insecurity, threat or fear of losing their job and not easily finding another, perhaps combined with family/financial responsibilities, may lead to a sense of being trapped.

Habit: Upbringing and cultural influences may also play a part. Some people have been strongly influenced by an environment which requires young people to respect their elders, or people who hold positions of authority.

Gender perceptions: Many cultures perpetuate low expectations of women's place in society. In some cultures, it is unacceptable for women to seek help outside the cultural group, or even the family, yet the group or family offer no support. Some men operate in an destructive environment where the seeking of assistance is a sign of weakness and inadequacy.

Apathy: In terms of management, some bullies are extremely competent in the core functions of their jobs, and management, instead of assisting them to round themselves as competent also in dealing with their staff or co-workers, prefers to take the easy and apathetic route of ignoring the inappropriate behaviour. Bullies continue to be rewarded for managerial ruthlessness in the interests of market survival, consumer satisfaction, and administrative convenience and apathy.

Incompetence: Some managers are themselves incompetent in the personal interaction side of their supervisory role, and have no idea how to deal with bullies. This may be coupled with a mistaken idea that staff management is not part of one's "real job", and that it is "a waste of time". The courts have made it clear that such attitudes are no longer acceptable.

But this is applicable to bullying in general... for more on female bullying, I tried the following link, and found a real gem:

http://www.aphroditewomenshealth.com/news/mean_girls.shtml

Mean Girls Are Everywhere
by Serena Mackesy

I went to a girls' school, and while violence wasn't much of a problem, there was an awful lot of bullying. Bitchiness, ostracizing, labeling, public humiliation, hazing, the habitual theft of people's belongings; and that's just what I experienced personally on my first day. I know, I know, standard girl-bullying tactics. But the difference, in my school, was that the vast majority of this behavior was carried out not by the girls, but by the staff.

Sixty percent of boys who were named as bullies in grades 6 - 9 have at least one court conviction by age 24, and bullies continue to show higher levels of serious criminal and abusive behavior than their peers throughout adulthood. What I learnt in my first few months of school was that female bullies are no different from their male counterparts. Bullying is something that some people never grow out of. In the case of my teachers, there was a pool of them, presumably all interviewed and employed by a central individual with the same stunted maturity problems, but the fact is this: Mean Girls Are Everywhere.

Female bullying is something that has only recently become widely recognized, though countless victims and former victims such as Helen Green (recently awarded $1.5 million in the UK courts after being subjected to a concerted campaign of "mobbing" and "stonewalling" by her (female) colleagues in the legal department at Deutsche Bank) could have furnished ample anecdotal evidence that it did. The denial of female bullying is a strange hangover of the "ladies only glow" attitude that was rife in our historical past. Like Queen Victoria refusing to believe that lesbianism could exist.

It's really only in the last 20 years that the definition of bullying has expanded to include stuff other than the sort of overt and thuggish acting-out typified by the male of the species. But even this expanded definition is limited by identifying domineering bitchery as being the exclusive preserve of privileged, white, middle-class girls, and therefore a sociological rather than gender phenomenon. This is most assuredly not the case.

A recent study at the University of Iowa, conducted exclusively among subjects from low-income African-American, Latina, white and mixed-race families in Sacramento, California, shows explicitly that the same vicious tactics - gossip, social expulsion, making fun, and nonverbal tactics such as pointing and eye-rolling - are endemic among girls right across the board. This is all just a wee bit Department of the Bleeding Obvious, but what is interesting, though, is that these tactics have finally been identified as the building-blocks of bullying rather than just girls-will-be-girls bitchiness. Because the fact is - while teenage girls en masse are vile and vicious creatures as they learn the skills to negotiate the labyrinth that is social and hierarchical interaction - bullying of this sort can have a lifelong effect on the victim. For my own part, I had my own personal psychotic stalker-bully-teacher who made it her personal business to make my life unbearable for three long years. I can date my first depressive episode back to the onset of her attentions and am certain that my lifelong struggles with the condition are related at least in part to the experience.

But the thing about bullying is that it's not just an experience of the moment. It can, and does, leave a permanent mark, both on bully and victim. Many bullying victims fail to thrive in adulthood: they distrust relationships, are fearful, experience isolation and have difficulties standing up for themselves. A disproportionate number of bullying victims drop out of school before their abilities alone would have dictated. Some manage to create ways to salvage their sense of self-respect, often through academic achievement. There's a large chicken-and-egg question hovering over why so many academic kids also experience, or have experienced, bullying - but childhood bullying, largely, predicates some level of blight on the futures of those involved.

Interestingly - comfortingly, some might say - there's a lot of evidence that suggests that, long-term, bullying has extremely negative effects on the lives of the bullies themselves. As I mentioned earlier, male bullies are far more likely to have criminal convictions than their peers. They also commit more driving offences. Have more court convictions generally. Be more prone to alcoholism. Exhibit higher levels of antisocial personality disorder. Make more use of mental health services. And evidence also suggests that they become, over time, increasingly isolated by their peers. Because, though in adolescence a bully can dominate and manipulate the schoolyard, and even command a scared sort of popularity, if they get stuck - as a high proportion do - in the adolescent state, they will be left behind. And one of the great things about adulthood is that you have choices over where you go and who you mix with that were never afforded by the closed, limiting world of school. And one of the major choices that a well-adjusted adult will make is not to spend time in the company of people they have realized, they don't actually like.

Just to round things off, here's a link to another article on the same subject.

http://www.lifescript.com/channels/healthy_living/Womens_Health/mean_girls.asp?trans=1&gclid=COLFkv6OhYwCFQsIFQodyhM-yw&ef_id=1350:3:8c50ab314700301aaf079683b87410f2_561330845:78@6wUNIYXsAABDbUj8AAAAH:20070511025807
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I've experienced some ferocious female bullying, myself, about half of it from female peers between the ages of 13 and 17, and the rest of it from female peers after age 40. Interesting, that gap. As though all the bullies had something better to do from about 18 to 39...

bullying the husband and kids, possibly.
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[mountainspring]

Stormy….  here’s a survey I found online about female bullies.  It shows that females are not only more likely to be the targets of bullies, but that there are also more female bullies in the workplace than male bullies.

http://www.busreslab.com/quickpolls/poll8.htm

And another article about a workplace where a group of women were bullying a male coworker.  One of the workers stood up for the coworker and became the next target.

http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/02/25/1077676832616.html

This one was talking about female bullies but I think it applies to all bullies.

The bully lives, eats, and sleeps to control others.  She never really experiences life in any other way.
Living, for her is to control others with power.  The power, real or imagined, she is both in title and her ability to generate fear and chaos in the work group.

http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/bullies.shtml

And here are some that talk about bullying in general.

Bullying is a cause of underperformance, not the solution
There are recognized ways of dealing with underperformance, bullying is not one of them
Bullying makes underperformance worse, not better
Bullying prevents employees from fulfilling their duties
Underperforming employees seem to follow the bully wherever h/she goes
It is always the bully who is weak, inadequate, and underperforming.
Bullies are weak managers, bullying is designed to hide that weakness while diverting the attention away from the bully.

http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/bullies.shtml#Female_Bullies

In this section they describe bullying.  It sounds like emotional abuse to me.

constant nit picking, fault finding and criticism of a trivial nature
a refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions
constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what’s going on, overruled, ignored, and sidelined
being belittled, demeaned, and  patronized, especially in front of others
being humiliated, shouted at, and threatened in front of others
being overloaded with work, or having your work taken away and replaced.
having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
finding that your work and the credit for it is stolen and plagerized.

This isn’t the complete list.  There's much more.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/amibeing.htm

And there is a lot more information on main page at bully online. 

http://www.bullyonline.org

Very interesting subject. 

[Stormchild]

Wow, mountainspring! Thanks!



here's a great quote from that workplace article you linked to:

"When I started at the job the girls in the office were bullying this (male co-worker)," Timms says. "There were  about six or seven girls. The office was run by a lady who led the bullying against him. I wouldn't be involved in it. They would shout at him, intimidate him and belittle him. I couldn't believe the shouting, it was just awful. I saw him almost crying a few times.

"I said to one girl of about 19, 'Why are you doing this to him, it's upsetting him so much?' and she said 'I enjoy it'."  Eventually the bullying was directed toward Timms after she was made a supervisor above the other women.

"They ignored me, wouldn't speak to me. The worst thing was how they isolated me and how they would ignore me if I asked them to do something. I couldn't do my job because of that.

"I went to management, I even emailed the CEO, but nothing was done, and in the end I was the one who had to leave, I just broke down."

Timms said one female boss would question her about taking toilet breaks and made sarcastic remarks to the rest of the office whenever she did take a break.

"The impact (of the bullying) has been just devastating. They take away all your happiness. I just want to be doing my job, bringing home some money and enjoying life, but instead my health is wrecked, I have a WorkCover claim on my record and I've lost my job."

Tim Field believes the stereotypical view of men as aggressive and women as nurturing often prevents the female serial bully from being seen for what she is: "A sociopath in a skirt."

"I enjoy it." That really says it all.

[mountainspring]

Hi Besee....  I don't remember any discussion on the board about internalized oppression.  I hadn’t heard of internalized oppression and your post got me curious so I googled it.  The first site I found had several definitions including these:

Internalized oppression means the oppressor doesn’t have to exert any more pressure, because now we do it to ourselves and each other.

External oppression becomes internalized oppression when we come to believe and act as if the oppressors belief system, values, and way of life is reality.

Here's the source.  http://www.letswrap.com/nadvinfo/internal.htm

This same web site gives several examples of internalized oppression, here are a couple of them.

"If she’d just stay home and clean the house, he wouldn’t hit her". "She was yelling at him what does she expect".

Wikipedia defines it as the manner in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor.

Do you think there are more female bullies because females have been oppressed in the past?  I’m not sure.  I remember my mother telling me as a child that her 3 brothers were highly valued in her family and the 2 girls weren’t.  I don’t know how much that contributed to the way she is today.  And despite this she always valued my brother more than my sister and I.  (much more)  And I remember being bullied in my preteen years, and part of the reason I Homeschool my daughter is because she had trouble with being bullied when she entered middle school.  I wonder why bullies bully.  I think they get some kind of ‘power high’ from it.   

I didn’t see the Oprah show on bullies but I agree that they don’t have empathy for others and I don’t think they care that they hurt others.  I do think they hurt on the inside though, and I think they may bully because in some twisted way it makes them feel better about themselves.

[Stormchild]

Hi Besee....  I don't remember any discussion on the board about internalized oppression.  I hadn’t heard of internalized oppression and your post got me curious so I googled it.  The first site I found had several definitions including these:

Internalized oppression means the oppressor doesn’t have to exert any more pressure, because now we do it to ourselves and each other.

External oppression becomes internalized oppression when we come to believe and act as if the oppressors belief system, values, and way of life is reality.

Here's the source.  http://www.letswrap.com/nadvinfo/internal.htm

This same web site gives several examples of internalized oppression, here are a couple of them.

"If she’d just stay home and clean the house, he wouldn’t hit her". "She was yelling at him what does she expect".

Wikipedia defines it as the manner in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor.

Yes, yes, yes! This is what I mean when I use the terms 'N grooming' and 'N brainwashing' or say that Ns train us to be available for them to feed on.... it's precisely this internalized self-abandonment, this alliance with our own abusers, against our own best interests.

Thanks MS, thanks besee, this is exactly what I mean.

Do you think there are more female bullies because females have been oppressed in the past?  I’m not sure.  I remember my mother telling me as a child that her 3 brothers were highly valued in her family and the 2 girls weren’t.  I don’t know how much that contributed to the way she is today.  And despite this she always valued my brother more than my sister and I.  (much more)  And I remember being bullied in my preteen years, and part of the reason I Homeschool my daughter is because she had trouble with being bullied when she entered middle school.  I wonder why bullies bully.  I think they get some kind of ‘power high’ from it.

There are more women than men, so if bullying is present in both sexes at the same rate, there'd be a slight excess of women bullies just because of that. Say 150 women and 100 men in a group and half are bullies [ugh] - that would make 75 women and 50 men bullies. Looks like more women are, but that's because there are more women in the pool to start with...

I do think, though, that any oppressed group - women, blacks, minority religions in other areas - finds a way to redirect the abuse it experiences - we get mean girl cliques, spousal abuse, and so on...  

I didn’t see the Oprah show on bullies but I agree that they don’t have empathy for others and I don’t think they care that they hurt others.  I do think they hurt on the inside though, and I think they may bully because in some twisted way it makes them feel better about themselves.

I think there are different types of bullies. Power is definitely addictive, and some people will take tainted power rather than remain powerless... bullies of this type can possibly be reached, but I suspect not forever, I think eventually they become too 'hooked' on their power trip... like Jimmy Jones, or David Koresh, or the fictional character Tony Soprano. Yes, I know these are all cult or gang leaders. Most really successful bullies  lead cults or gang, small or large.  That cluster of female nasties that Timms describes in the last article I quoted was most definitely a gang.

The other type of bully, the ones that start out as sociopaths, well, they are what they are, I think. There's a lot of room for debate, I realize, regarding whether sociopaths are made or born; I think some of each; and I think the ones that are born sociopathic, or become sociopathic as a result of horrendous trauma inflicted at a very young age, may be permanently damaged. This kind of bully I don't believe can be reached; I think the most productive option is to recognize them for what they are, and concentrate on containment and damage control. [Edit in: this type of bully is just as likely as the other kind - if not more likely - to end up leading a cult, or a gang, or a church, or a political movement, or a corporation.]

I think if everyone in this country understood about narcissism and sociopathy, and was wise to N tricks, there would be a lot less N damage done, a lot less enabling, a lot less unaddressed abuse of all kinds, and a lot more civility in our civilization...

[Stormchild]

Besee, you and me and just about everyone else, I think.

Richard Grossman once posted here to the effect that we who are here at VESMB are all, in a way, fighting for our lives.

I believe this is what he meant. We are all fighting to free ourselves from the effects of N-grooming and N-conditioning, and as you put it, buying into the bully's sick, disempowering perceptions of us, so that we bully and destroy ourselves... we are actually trained and taught to collude in our own abuse, encouraged to collaborate in our own destruction. [And, as collateral damage, we may even have been taught to collude or collaborate in the destruction of others, by Ns, at times.]

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that our lives can depend on freeing ourselves from that. Whether in terms of quality or quantity.

Mine too.

((((((((((besee)))))))))) ((((((((((mountainspring))))))))))

[mudpuppy]

Elsewhere on the same site are some explanations as to why bullying is so often tolerated:

I think there is one overriding reason bullies are tolerated.
It's the same reason there are so few Sergeant Yorks; when you stand up, the machine gun nest that was shooting at someone else is trained on you.
Bullies are tolerated because people don't want what the scapegoat is getting, pure and simple. It's what allows bullies to exist.

mud

[mountainspring]

This is what I mean when I use the terms 'N grooming' and 'N brainwashing' or say that Ns train us to be available for them to feed on.... it's precisely this internalized self-abandonment, this alliance with our own abusers, against our own best interests.

This is something to look into.  Sometimes I'm thinking to myself and I think these aren't my thoughts, where did that come from.  And I instantly know.  Maybe some research on brainwashing and it's effects would help.  Another thing I was thinking today was about intense anger and shame.  And I remembered feeling shame as a small child.  And I thought wait.... if I rob a bank... then I feel shame.. that's my shame...  But if I am feeling anger and shame as a small child and then on up into adult hood, that can't be my shame can it?  Triggers too.  Are those my triggers, is this my anger, is this my shame, because I feel it in my being instead of as a result of something I did wrong.  Have I been carrying my mothers shame all these years?  All those messages she gave me when I was growing up still play inside my head. And I do to myself what she did do me??  I can undo this somehow.

Mountainspring,  that's what I've done,  there is a part deep in me that bought into the bully's sick disempowering perceptions of me and now I'm destroying and bullying myself, I can stand back and see how ridiculous it is, I've got to quit giving away my power to sick dysfunctional people

Me too.  Besee.  We need to take it back...... talk back to those perceptions until we don't believe them anymore.  Over and over again, we can zap em each time they enter our heads.  But it's not that easy because they enter my mind in a nanosecond. 

Maybe I'm getting off topic here?     But bullies are abusers.... not with the same intensity as N's....  but their goals are the same... they find a target and proceed.  I think I need to think on this a little more.

[Stormchild]

Elsewhere on the same site are some explanations as to why bullying is so often tolerated:

I think there is one overriding reason bullies are tolerated.
It's the same reason there are so few Sergeant Yorks; when you stand up, the machine gun nest that was shooting at someone else is trained on you.
Bullies are tolerated because people don't want what the scapegoat is getting, pure and simple. It's what allows bullies to exist.

mud

Yep. And yet... my, how they scream and whine, how they burn and rave, those very same people who empower the bullies because they don't want what the scapegoat is getting, when they become the scapegoat, and nobody helps them.

You'd think... people would... figure that out... wouldn't you...

[Stormchild]

Hi MS... I tend to think that pretty much all bullies are abusers, and pretty much all abusers are Ns to some degree. Likewise, I don't think anyone here has described any N who wasn't both abusive and something of a bully.

So I don't worry about separating them out; most of the same concepts seem to apply in all three cases - to bullies, abusers, and Ns.

[mountainspring]

I found this web site today.  It's called Abusive/Controlling Relationships and has a lot of good information in it.  It talks a good deal about the abuser and it also talks about cults and how a one on one relationship can be cultic in nature if the same tactics are used.  Here's some of what I found.  It was very interesting.

When psychological coercion and manipulative exploitation have been used in a one on one cultic relationship, the person leaving such relationship faces issues similar to those encountered by someone leaving a cultic group.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing15.html

Manipulators bag of tricks - Anyone who uses any of these tactics is attempting to move you from logic to emotion to a playing field that’s not so level.  He or she knows that he can’t win on the facts so they will try to manipulate your emotions with any one or a combination of the tactics below.

guilt
intimidation
appeal to ego
fear
curiosity
our desire to be liked and loved.

Almost everyone is familiar with the term defense mechanism.  Defense mechanisms are the automatic mental behaviors all of us employ to protect or defend ourselves from the threat of some emotional pain.  More specifically, ego defense mechanisms are mental behaviors we use to dfend our self images from invitations to feel ahsmed or guilty about something.  There are many different kinds of ego defenses and the more traditional theories of personality have always tended to distinguish the various personality types, at least in part, by the types of ego defenses they prefer to use. One of the problems with psychodynamic approaches to understanding human behavior is that they tend to depict people as most always afraid of something and defending or protecting themselves in some way; even when they’re in the act of aggressing.  Covert aggressive personalities use a variety of mental behaviors and interpersonal maneuvers to help ensure they get what they want.   Some of these behaviors have been traditionally thought of as defense mechanisms.

Denial
Selective attention
Rationalization
Diversion
Lying
Covert Intimidation
Guilt tripping
Shaming
Playing the Victim role
Vilifying the Victim
Playing the servant role
Seduction
Projecting the Blame
Minimization

http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing11.html

As I was reading through the list it occurred to me that these are the types of things N's do when conflicts arise.  They will do and say anything to get off topic so they don't have to look at themselves and to shift the blame elsewhere.   

[Stormchild]

Mountainspring, this is solid gold. Thank you for finding and sharing this website.

Would you consider posting this on the What Helps? page too? It will make it a bit easier to find if it's in both places.

This is really really really good stuff. Thank you...

[gratitude28]

This is a fabulous topic on many levels. I know a woman who fits this to a "T" and I run whenever I encounter her by chance.
I also think my mother is a bully when she can be. So I can see where others will relate that their Ns are big bullies.
Power and fear. Ugh. Yuck.
I want to read all of this.
Thank you.
Love, Beth

[mountainspring]

Hi Storm and Beth,

I've moved it over to the what helps page.  It has so much good information in it and gives lots of examples through personal stories.  I only referenced the pages I quoted from.  Here is the link to the main page.

http://www.rickross.com/groups/abusive.html

Thanks,
MS

[gratitude28]

In rereading some of the answers, I concur with mud, too, that bullies do what they fear others will do to them. A preemptive strike... in their sick minds. As usual, you put it concisely, mud.