Passive-aggressive Bullying
Can you bully someone by not doing something? Definitely. Avoidance is the magic trick of passive-aggressive bullies.
Here is a perfect example from work. You have an important deadline within a group project and depend on the cooperation of everyone in the group. But there is one colleague who continuously forgets to send that email, and therefore, you miss the deadline and harm the project. Now, we assume that your colleague does this on purpose. You go to your colleague and try to clarify the matter. When you ask what’s the problem, your colleague discounts your questions, even worse, turns the back on you and totally ignores you. These actions are perfect examples of non-doing which come under the umbrella …show more content…
My intention is not to put a final label on male and female bullies, but to shed some light on socialization. Boys and girls who turn into men and women as they grow up, do adopt typical social roles, and while boys tend to bully be being physically violent, girls tend to hide their aggression and become passive-aggressive bullies.
Despite the typical social roles, anyone can be prone to one or the other type of bullying. The less people talk about the “female” type of bullying because it is hidden and because there are no obvious physical wounds, the more we tend to think that its consequences are not damaging.
However, the hurt caused by passive-aggressive actions such as gossiping, social exclusion, passing notes, condescending criticism and belittling are very well-known to any woman who has a memory good enough to recollect her middle school and high school days. In her book "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls", Rachel Simmons beautifully explains how girls are raised in a conflict avoidance mode. This parenting style produces a ripple effect down the line, making girls cramming their aggression and expressing it in unhealthy ways by becoming passive-aggressive bullies. For a popular Hollywood example, consider “Mean Girls”. It is already a classic, yet, it is rated as a comedy. No one said that the entertainment industry plays it nice, but as long as we think of bullying as of something we should laugh about, we will still meet the same
Can you bully someone by not doing something? Definitely. Avoidance is the magic trick of passive-aggressive bullies.
Here is a perfect example from work. You have an important deadline within a group project and depend on the cooperation of everyone in the group. But there is one colleague who continuously forgets to send that email, and therefore, you miss the deadline and harm the project. Now, we assume that your colleague does this on purpose. You go to your colleague and try to clarify the matter. When you ask what’s the problem, your colleague discounts your questions, even worse, turns the back on you and totally ignores you. These actions are perfect examples of non-doing which come under the umbrella …show more content…
My intention is not to put a final label on male and female bullies, but to shed some light on socialization. Boys and girls who turn into men and women as they grow up, do adopt typical social roles, and while boys tend to bully be being physically violent, girls tend to hide their aggression and become passive-aggressive bullies.
Despite the typical social roles, anyone can be prone to one or the other type of bullying. The less people talk about the “female” type of bullying because it is hidden and because there are no obvious physical wounds, the more we tend to think that its consequences are not damaging.
However, the hurt caused by passive-aggressive actions such as gossiping, social exclusion, passing notes, condescending criticism and belittling are very well-known to any woman who has a memory good enough to recollect her middle school and high school days. In her book "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls", Rachel Simmons beautifully explains how girls are raised in a conflict avoidance mode. This parenting style produces a ripple effect down the line, making girls cramming their aggression and expressing it in unhealthy ways by becoming passive-aggressive bullies. For a popular Hollywood example, consider “Mean Girls”. It is already a classic, yet, it is rated as a comedy. No one said that the entertainment industry plays it nice, but as long as we think of bullying as of something we should laugh about, we will still meet the same