Category: respectme

Gender based bullying and Sexual Violence

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An issue that we at respectme  have talked about many times in recent years arose again this year.  Various events and media, coverage saw the term ‘Sexual Bullying’  being used to describe a lot of very concerning behaviour.  I first responded to this particular ‘umbrella term’ several years ago (2009) following an article in The TESS – this is the letter

Your article “Sex pest boys are not only targeting girls, but teachers too” (March 27) opens by referring to the practice of “sexual bullying”.

This term is being used increasingly across the country and it is important to give the view of respectme, Scotland’s anti-bullying service on this. We believe people need to be careful when using this term. Sexually aggressive behaviour should be seen as just that. While there may be elements of this conduct that could be seen as bullying based on gender, what you described is sexually aggressive and inappropriate.

Using the term “sexual bullying” may well dilute sexually-aggressive behaviour or harassment to the status of “just another type of bullying” and, sadly, we know not everyone takes bullying seriously.

The converse side is that it elevates bullying to the same status as sexual harassment and sexual assault, which is not always the case.

We know the solutions to these behaviours can be very different. We must ensure that our children and young people understand that sexually aggressive behaviour and bullying are completely unacceptable, and that the consequences of taking part in either can be serious – without confusing the two.

This was discussed by the then Scottish Anti-Bullying Steering Group and it was agreed that this was the approach we would take in Scotland. Colleagues in LGBT Youth Scotland also felt to include Homophobia under the term ‘sexual bullying’ was reductive; being gay or lesbian is not about ‘sex’. Guidance from other parts of the UK includes homophobia on almost every occasion they define ‘sexual bullying’.

I have also read in another piece of guidance that a boy putting his hands up a girl’s skirt and touching her can also be sexual bullying, I am of the opinion this is in fact a sexual assault.

Some other organisations have given us even more concerning definitions that state, and I quote, ‘Sexual bullying in its most extreme form can be sexual assault or rape’.(Bullying.co.uk)

I strongly believe that this is an unhelpful and potentially dangerous road to go down. Bullying and rape is not the same thing. If we are looking for schools to discuss rape and sexual assault and sexual abuse under the umbrella of anti-bullying we run the risk of diluting this very serious behaviour.

Rapists are not bullying their victims, they rape them and they abuse them. Predatory males do not bully children they manipulate and abuse them – framing this abuse as bullying is, as I stated, reductive.

The Daily Telegraph also informed us this year that ‘15 children a day are excluded from school for sexual bullying’ – now while the behaviours described are concerning and rightly need to be addressed, 15 pupils a day were excluded for a range of behaviours including, lewd behaviour, sexual abuse, assault, bullying, daubing sexual graffiti, and sexual harassment. This also includes ‘sexting’, behaviour which is largely consensual but can and does spiral out of control. I suppose a headline informing parents that 15 children a day are excluded for a range of inappropriate sexualised behaviour isn’t quite as snappy.

Gender-based bullying and gender-based violence is a real problem for our children and young people. Children are bullied because they do not conform to gender norms, because they don’t dress the way others feel that’s how boys or girls should dress. Or that they are or are perceived to be gay or lesbian, this is still about gender, identity and norms. Or sadly, they believe that as males, they can treat the women in their life as objects and with a lack of respect.

Many of these behaviours can lead to violence and abuse – it can be a pattern that escalates, it can lead to manipulation and control, something many girls especially experience.

I have shared this thinking with colleagues from a range of services, from The Violence Reduction Unit, The Police, LGBT Youth Scotland, Zero Tolerance, NSPCC and Local Authorities and we plan to take this forward in the coming months and find a coherent and consistent way of talking about gender based-bullying and its links to violence and abuse.

None of us feel ‘sexual bullying’ is an accurate or helpful term but want to ensure we highlight the work being done and the work that needs to be done on gender roles, gender based violence, domestic violence and on sexually aggressive behaviour. If we lump all of this behaviour together we may find it harder to find solutions and things can become blurred as a result. This is not to minimise the link but the language we choose is very important. We need to be clear what behaviour we are talking about and not try to find catch all terms that may be convenient or media friendly.  

There is, I believe, a link between gender based bullying and sexual violence and that we should look to intervene effectively with gender based bullying as it may reduce the risk of violence. When I was delivering training in Austria last month, the delegates included several therapists and social work staff who work with the victims of sexual abuse. They found the term ‘sexual bullying’ very confusing – it would not occur to them to equate or talk about gender based bullying and sexual abuse or assault in the same way.

The day we start to think about rape or sexual assault as a type of bullying is a day when we will have really lost our focus. These are violent crimes and should be viewed as such – bullying is about relationships, relationships that are not respectful and anti-bullying work can help reduce the impact of this and help repair relationships and build respect. Can anti-bullying work underpin approaches and support work on sexual violence? I believe it can. Is sexual assault and sexual violence bullying? Absolutely not, it is much more serious than that.

 Brian

Brian Donnelly

Making a difference internationally

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This month I had the real pleasure of delivering two days of anti-bullying training to colleagues in Vienna. Samera is a project based in Austria dealing with violence against children. Their team is made up of psychologists, social workers, and educators that focus on kindergarten and social pedagogy. They have over 20 years of practical experience in the prevention of violence against children and adolescents. Their approach is ‘trans-cultural’, they recognize the changing face of European countries and they use this term to explain the focus on respect, appreciation, collective action, openness, and engagement with other cultures.

Representatives visited Scotland last year and as part of their visit I met with them to discuss respectme’s approach to bullying and how our approach reflects the culture and how we are governed in Scotland. They were I am pleased to say, very impressed with our approach. Despite their years of work around violence and relationships they had never focused on bullying or ‘mobbing’ as the behavior is known as across Central Europe. They were becoming increasingly aware of this behavior and were looking for a framework or approach that they felt could help compliment their work and they chose ours.

I was invited to deliver two days training to around 30 members of their network in Vienna. My challenge was to put together a program that covered all of the core messages that underpin our approach, the national context and a critique/reflection of some other anti-bullying approaches they knew a little about and this also had to be translated into German for the benefit of the audience.

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced was my tendency to speak very quickly and when I get going on a subject, to speak even quicker. Many of the delegates spoke English very well but did not take the Glasgow dialect classes! I have discovered just how different the word ‘parents’ can sound. An Austrian will learn to say ‘Paa-rents’ where as I would say ‘Pay-rints’- which to them is another word altogether.

The delegates were an eclectic group of social workers, teachers, psychologists and youth workers. They responded very positively to the approach we use. They found our definition of bullying as it impacts on a person’s agency, to be one that made a lot of sense. Many of them felt the notion that bullying took something away from a person and their role was to help get it back, was one they found very useful. Many of them deliver training to teachers and commented on this being something they would use. They, like most people do I have to say, get the notion that intent and persistence are not they key defining factors in recognizing and importantly responding to bullying. Responding to behavior and the impact it has is what matters.

The issue of labeling was an interesting discussion. The word ‘bully’ has made its way into their language. They liked our take on not using terms like ‘bully’ or ‘perpetrator’ when talking about bullying but feel many in their country do use this word. What was interesting though is that when bulling was translated, the word they use is ‘mobbing’. When I asked what word they use to describe someone who is mobbing someone else, they have no word. The concept of calling someone a ‘mobber’ was strange to them; they would talk about mobbing or people who mob. We agreed this was the right approach and that they should challenge the growing use of the word’ bully’ especially as it contra to what they would normally do.

The other area where we learned a lot from each other was when talking about gender based bullying and sexual violence. Sexual violence was the main area of work for over 50% of the delegates. I wanted to share my concerns over the increased use of the umbrella term ‘sexual bullying’. As respectme has stated many times, we feel this is an unhelpful term to use and the guidance on this in other parts of the UK is not something we would support. We agree there is a link between gender based bullying and sexual violence but to label behavior such as a boy putting his hand up a girls skirt or forcing her to do something sexually she does not want to as a form of bullying is concerning. This is abusive behaviour. Sexual violence and sexually aggressive behaviour is not bullying, it is far more serious and needs to be treated as such. This is an area that in the UK opinion is still divided, there are many who are happy to use this term as an umbrella term that includes behaviours that are way beyond gender based bullying.

I am not suggesting that gender-based bullying does not lead to sexual violence or sexually aggressive behaviour, far from it. Rumours and names calling used in person and on-line toward girls in particular should and do concern us. We need to intervene in this behaviour to stop it escalating and become more abusive.

What was interesting was that none of the delegates would even consider using the term ‘sexual bullying’ they were able to make a clear distinction between sexual violence and abuse and bullying behaviour. To put these behaviours together seemed absurd to them. That was no doubt down to the fact most of them work with children who experience sexual violence and they have considerable experience and expertise as practitioners, councillors and teachers in this area. They too see a link between gender-based bullying and how, for some, this can lead to sexual violence but they are distinct behaviours. I welcomed their take on this issue and will use this learning as we take our work in this area forward.

What really helped the two days to flow for the group and for me was having the services of an extremely competent translator. I am always embarrassed when visiting other countries that most locals will speak very good English but our interpreter put that to shame with her four languages. I was able to plan and deliver a greeting, some limited personal information and finished off with ‘dies ist der einzige Deutsche satz den ich weiß‘– ‚‘this is the only German sentence I know‘– it did get a few laughs.

Vienna is a beautiful city (I even took in the ballet one afternoon – only 8 Euro for some culture) and I was made to feel very welcome by my hosts. The feedback was very warm and complimentary. I left a number of resources that will be used as part of a new practice manual for Austrian teacher in the year ahead. I am always very proud to see our resources and our approach being used and spoken about internationally.

I learned a great deal about the cultural differences between Scotland and Austria, how their Government structures differ and the similarities they face in ensuring they get funding every year and stretching this as far as they can. Similarly though, when visiting Slovenia and Ireland recently, I can see that we benefit from having a National Approach to anti-bullying in Scotland, a framework like this is a model for developing consistency and while we are getting there, many colleagues across Europe are looking at this as a model that does makes a difference. A national approach that is underpinned by values, promotes children’s rights and one that challenges inequalities makes sense but there are not many of them around. Hopefully we can keep contributing to changing that.

 

Brian

Interview in the TESS

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Here is the copy from an interview published on 16 November 2012 – http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6301807
 
The director of respectme, Scotland’s anti-bullying service, discusses why people are often reluctant to admit there is a problem, how strong leadership is key to combating bullying and the trouble with shows such as The X Factor. Interview by Henry Hepburn Photography David Gordon
 

SallyAnn Kelly of Barnardo’s Scotland told us (15 June) that some schools were reluctant to admit they had a bullying problem. What do you think?

Sadly, some are. I’ve met many heads who openly say: “There’s no bullying in this school.” It’s not as prevalent as it was, that attitude, but it still exists.

Why are people to reluctant to admit a problem?

I think there’s a real fear that they’ll find themselves under scrutiny, that peers will judge them unfairly and that there will be much more work in terms of accountability. They may feel that bullying at the school represents failure, which it really doesn’t. I’ve been in an area where one school recorded 30 bullying incidents in a year, and another recorded 100. The school with 100 was far better at dealing with bullying.

What is the most important thing for a school to do in tackling bullying?

In our experience, strong leadership. A head committed to anti-bullying, who supports staff through training and development, who involves young people and their families – these all make a big difference.

What is the biggest misconception about bullying?

That it’s a normal part of growing up, that it’s character-building. Good relationships, trust – these are the things that build character.

There’s a common view of the bully as someone insecure, but some experts argue that many teenagers who bully are self-assured and do it to assert social superiority. What is your view?

We’ve never labelled children bullies or victims. It’s fundamentally about changing the way people behave. If you don’t fit the stereotype, you find it very hard to recognise that what you’ve done might have been bullying – but anyone can make people feel hurt, frightened or left out. Many young people who bully are articulate, intelligent and have an abundance of self-belief.

Is cyberbullying as sinister as sometimes portrayed, or just the latest moral panic?

I’m leaning towards it being the latest moral panic. There’s a significant fear from adults about this behaviour, and some organisations have been very opportunistic in the mileage they’ve got out of cyberbullying. What I see is behaviour that’s always existed – it’s just migrated.

Isn’t there a difference in that things can go viral?

Yes. If you tweet something or post it on Facebook, it’s outwith your control and young people can find themselves in a deep hole very quickly. But children can also feel empowered by the ability to block and report messages online.

Your last annual conference was organised with LGBT Youth Scotland. Is homophobic bullying a particular concern?

Yes. All children are affected by bullying, but LGBT and disabled young people can experience more severe bullying, more often. School for people who are perceived to be gay is still a challenging, and at times dangerous, environment.

One of your conference workshops asks whether labelling of children by adults is ever helpful. What do you think?

It’s never helpful. I want people to understand that it’s not about softening language, it’s not because I have a social care background. When you label children, they can be burdened by those labels and live up to them. It’s been one of the fundamental flaws of anti-bullying in the past 30 years, that it’s focused on what type of people do things to what type of people, rather than “This is behaviour – how does it make people feel and what can we do to change it?”

How would you counter the suggestion that an over-emphasis on bullying can exacerbate a problem, or create issues where they don’t exist?

We’ve always guarded against winding up the tension. It’s good to raise issues, but don’t do it in a way that makes people tense, because then they start to filter everything through that.

When does normal behaviour cross the line and become bullying?

Bullying takes something away from children – that capacity to feel that you can be yourself. But if I’m confident, people can be hostile and it will wash over me. I would say I’ve not been bullied.

So it depends on the perception of the person on the receiving end?

It’s a mixture of certain types of behaviour, and the impact they have. What you do about bullying is far more important than how you define it. Your response should focus on how to get back what has been taken away from the person who’s been bullied.

Programmes like The X Factor have been criticised for tacitly endorsing bullying. Is that a genuine concern?

There are lots of programmes where people are upset by what’s dressed up as honesty – but you can be honest without being brutal. I don’t have moral outrage about people like Simon Cowell. At times the debate is too superficial – that’s the issue I have.

How would you sum up the root causes of bullying?

Bullying is about relationships – when they aren’t working, or they’re not built on respect, bullying flourishes.

Brian

This year’s anti-bullying week competition – what have we learned?

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It has been such an interesting experience to go through each of the entries into this year’s competition – as it is every year. This year we have around 2,000 entries. That’s 2,000 individual pieces of feedback on ‘What bullying means to me’.
The question posed is very deliberate – it’s not about finding out what children and young people think about bullying or what is a good message or poster for your peers is but what does it mean to you. Having been involved in every competition we have ran in the last 5 years, I have always paid attention to the emerging themes and issues from the thousands of submissions. A couple of years ago the theme of loss and helplessness emerged very clearly and helped us understand the impact bullying had on a person’s agency, their capacity for self-management.
It was very clear that bullying took something away from children and young people; we took this notion and discussed it further and how effective responses gave something back, so emerged our thinking on agency. (See initial blog)
When explaining agency to young people I have often used the analogy of a ‘typical day’. A day where you get up, have your breakfast, you know you are off to the bus-stop to meet friends, what classes you’ll enjoy, pay attention in or even avoid and have a good idea of what you’ll be doing after school. Children and young people recognise this scenario and that they will have experienced this.
When a person is being bullied, they say that is not their day. They are not in charge of how they get to feel, someone else is. It affects how they felt when they wake up, if they eat anything, the nerves heading for the bus perhaps or what someone will say to them if they walk in this door at school. Will they be asked to go out tonight or ignored again? Again, some of them recognise this day too.
There are so many of the entries this year, especially in the creative writing category that have reflected this very clearly. There are many stories where children and young people reflect a feeling of nervousness, fear and a lack of control over situations that sometimes starts the moment they get up. They describe in vivid detail days and experiences they have where others make them feel worried and scared, where people affect their ability to learn.They descibe physical responses too, legs shaking, hands trembling and feeling very cold.
This writing reaffirms what we believe about bullying and agency, they describe individuals who are not agents in their own lives; they are not in charge of how they feel and our responses must focus on restoring this loss.
When children and young people are asked to reflect on what bullying means to them, they describe feelings of hurt, fear, loneliness, worry and anger. They describe scenarios where friendships turn sour, where people are left out and where being new to a school or a group can intially be a very difficult experience. They also express a real desire for people to return to being friends. It is the most common solution put forward, one where relationships are repaired and people ‘get on’. They offer very little by way of wanting to see people ‘punished’.
 The art work submitted, ranging from posters to drawings and sculpture reflects many of the same issues. Images of feeling trapped, having your mouth zipped up, feeling caged, dark colours and feeling very small in large rooms or spaces. These all reflect a sense that they are prevented from being themselves and how they look, act and feel. What they are asking for is the chance to get back to that feeling.
It is a huge pleasure to get to do this and every year we receive incredible entries, I have never doubted and have always championed the creativity and the contribution children and young people make. These entries are a significant contribution to what we do because of the question we ask and the incredible way they respond.
We will be announcing the winners very soon as well!
Brian
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Reflections on bullying – some core underpinnings and a definition
Brian Donnelly Director of respectme, Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Service.
A great deal of learning has taken place over the five years respectme has been delivering anti-bullying training, policy support and campaigning.  There are some core messages that underpin the approach we take which challenge existing thinking on bullying; I shall explore some of these in this refection. This reflection is also based on work done in partnership with Professor Howard Sercombe University of Strathclyde to develop an academic synthesis reflecting some of the theoretical underpinnings of the approach taken by respectme.
We challenge the traditional belief that persistence and intent are the defining elements of bullying situations. Instead we have focussed on the impact the behaviour has on individuals. Our reasoning for this is that it’s our role to provide pragmatic and practical responses, resources and skills that can be implemented by parents and professionals. What you do about bullying is much more important than how you define or what criteria you apply to determine if an incident merits the label. In our experience, many children and young people reflect a clear understanding that something needs to only happen once and it can be bullying, yet most definitions, and often anti-bullying policies, refute this, stating that the behaviour has to be repeated over a period of time.   The actual intervention may not be repeated, but the threat will be sustained over time. Typically, the threat will be sustained by actions, looks, messages, confrontations and physical interventions or the fear and anticipation of these.
Similarly intent is not only difficult to prove but easily denied and this should not be used as criteria for this very reason. Many of the behaviours experienced are subtle, indirect and designed to unsettle and make people feel left out; again it is the impact that needs to be the focus for intervention.
respectme focuses on the need to develop interventions and approaches that recognise the impact bullying has and works to ensure adults are able to deal with it effectively and confidently. This involves supporting partners to come to a shared understanding of what bullying behaviour can be. When faced with an actual situation, how you define it is less important than what you do about it. This deflects the intervention from a dispute about whether or not a presenting situation should be classed as a bullying situation, and turns attention to where it ought to be focused: to the person directly affected. Then, the intervention becomes much more straightforward; really a matter of three questions:
1. What is happening?
2. What does the person in distress want to happen?
3. How are we going to make that work?
Bullying behaviours can include: 
·                Being called names, being teased, put down or threatened
·                Being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked
·                Having belongings stolen or damaged
·                Being ignored, left out, or rumours spread about you
·                Receiving abusive text messages or emails
·                Behaviour which makes people feel like they are being bullied
·                Being targeted because of who you are or who you are perceived to be
This is not an exhaustive list; there may be other behaviours that can be classed as bullying, these are what we would call ‘practices of domination’.

Children and young people can experience bullying for a variety of reasons; including where they live, their sexuality, gender, disability, the colour of their skin, what clothes they wear or what team they support. 
The one thing that these have in common is difference or perceived difference. Bullying is a relationship. It’s a two way thing. The attempt to dominate needs to be answered by subordination in order for the bullying relationship to be established. Bullying is therefore not primarily a description of a person or behaviour but a kind of relationship. Those who bully and those bullied are in a relationship with each other. What differentiates bullying, we believe, is the impact it has on a person’s agency. This ‘agency’ is their capacity for effective action and feeling in control of their lives. Bullying strips individuals of the capacity to do this.

As a result of the work and discussions with Professor Howard Sercombe, we defined bullying as:
“A relationship of violence involving practices of domination that strip another person of the capacity for agency, using interventions carrying the sustained threat of harm” (Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)
The aim of interventions must be to restore agency, to replace that which was taken away. We must base our responses on this question: ‘how can I respond in a way that gives this person back their agency, to help them regain that sense of control over who they are and what they do?’ Not just ‘how do I fix this?’
Adults who adopt this perspective can make a much more effective intervention. These core principles are underpinned by our values of fairness, inclusion and equality and are supported by our commitment to provide practical resources for adults to use that promote and protect Children’s Rights. These values and principles apply when dealing with children and young people who are bullying others. They need to understand what the behaviour is that is unacceptable, why it is unacceptable, what the consequences may be and what is expected of them in future. They may also need help to repair relationships.
Another core message that underpins the work of the service is our approach to labelling, respectme does not label children and young people as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’. Care needs to be taken because labelling is not without its risks, labelling a child or young person on the basis of bullying behaviour can result in a confirmed identity as a ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ resulting in ongoing behaviour patterns based on this identity. respectme has developed approaches to working with bullying which hopefully avoid the labelling dilemma. A core theme in training, policy development and campaigning has been the exploration of the value judgements that lie behind labels.
This is not to dilute behaviour but is to keep the focus of the adult’s responses on the behaviour that is problematic, rather than the assigning characteristics to those involved. This is a solution focussed approach that is designed to help people change the way they behave, rather than attempt to change who they are. We help people change by telling them and naming the behaviour that is unacceptable, being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.
I look forward to sharing more of the learning in the coming months on topics ranging from cyberbullying to what our 24 month evaluation highlighted as critical factors for success.
Brian Donnelly
January 2012