by Georgia Luckhurst

When it comes to bullying, you’d be hard pressed to find a girl who isn’t familiar with it. Girls get picked on for their blooming bodies and teased because of their choice in friends and clothes. However, when it comes to bullying, girls have one advantage: society acknowledges this kind of conduct is wrong. Girls don’t need to feel scared to speak out about it, to tell parents and teachers who can deal with the problem.

When it comes to boys, that choice isn’t always available.

Here at SPARK, our mission is to make the world a better place for girls and for boys. Growing up in a patriarchal society places unnecessary pressure on our young men, who grow up to inflict that very same pressure on the next generation. When it comes to bullying, this kind of behavior can cause untold damage.

When boys face bullying, be it mental or physical, they are met with little sympathy – often from their fathers, the very people who should be protecting them from it. They are told to “take it like a man,” to “fight back,” to remember that “sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us.” They are told lies.

In some extreme cases, boys who bully are revered or admired by their elders. They are believed to be the strongest, bravest and most likely to succeed in an increasingly competitive world. In this way, society’s mind set not only fails male victims by denying them help, but also denies the bullies therapy and psychological aid.

Often, boys receive no sympathy from their friends when they admit to being bullied. Statistics show that boys face opposition for acting “like a girl”, or looking like one. By admitting how they feel about bullying or teasing to their friends, they are doing the one thing that may result in their bullying: acknowledging that they have feelings. This sensitivity can lead to homophobic bullying especially.

When I walk down my school hall, surrounded by milling students, both male and female, I’m often appalled by what I hear on this matter. The boys will be punching their friend playfully on the arm, someone who is obviously a victim of some form of bullying, and they won’t be saying, as my group of friends would, “Tell someone, quick. Before it gets too late.” They’ll be saying, often jovially, that, “You’ve just got to take it. You’ll get over it eventually.”

Is this the kind of “solution” we want to be promoting? Research shows that those who are abused or bullied as a child are often more likely to do the same as an adult. Is our obsession with what we call “masculinity” actually increasing statistics of familial abuse?

Outside the classroom and the family environment, we hear tales of harassment and verbal abuse in the workplace. Often this stress has been building for years – their pent up rage resulting in taking out frustration on co-workers.

Bullying causes depression, anxiety and in extreme cases can lead to suicide. According to bullyingstatistics.org, 160,000 children admit to skipping school or feigning illness so as to avoid conflict. One in ten changes school or leaves school permanently. In other words, research has proved that bullying isn’t the kind of thing you can “get over” easily.

It’s never good to bottle up an issue, particularly one as severe as bullying. You only hurt yourself more, and it’s always better to speak to a teacher or adult. Boys are bulled for much the same reasons as girls – for their weight, their sexual orientation, for having glasses or a strange haircut. Yet when it comes to admitting this bullying and how it makes them feel, a boy’s reaction is inevitably completely different to that of a girl’s.

In the meantime, we have to ask ourselves: why is our society failing our young men in this way? And what can we do to stop it?