I’ve been mulling over my experiences of being bullied in middle school for about a year now, and one aspect of those experiences remains especially haunting: the bystanders.
Often, when I was bullied, there were other kids around: at the bus stop, on the bus, in the gymnasium or the locker room, sitting nearby at lunch, or standing outside a classroom—or, in one case, surrounding me and my bully, as we faced each other at the edge of a fight.
But the bystanders did not take concrete steps to intervene or push back on the bullying, and I don’t recall people checking on my spirit during less-tense moments. As a result, I’m left with a question I cannot answer.
What spirit drove the silence and inaction of the bystanders?
Did they agree with what was happening? Did they want to see me hurt?
Or did they disagree but stay silent out of fear?
In their silence, the bystanders offered no answer—and as the kid who was being bullied in those moments, I experienced their silence as allowance, as tacit support of the bullying. Their inaction sustained a veneer of apparent consensus that the bullying was OK, that the bystanders were prepared to accept my pain.
As an adult, more than 30 years later, I’m wise enough to understand that sometimes people disagree with harmful behavior but stay silent out of fear. Looking back, it’s possible that most of the bystanders to my bullying struggled internally with what was happening but held back, fearful of what abuse might be directed toward them—fearful, perhaps, of the other silent bystanders.
But I could not perceive any such nuance as a bullied middle schooler. The internal resistance of the bystanders, if it existed, was not made public, and this withholding taught its own lesson: this is no safe harbor here.
Allen G. Johnson writes, “It takes only one person to tear the fabric of collusion and apparent consensus.”1
This is what I want to tell every kid and every adult who witnesses bullying or hazing or abuse, whether at school, in your neighborhood, in a group, or on a team: you, as a bystander, hold incredible power.
Your action or inaction will define the situation for the abused, both in the moment and in memory.
Your action or inaction will define whether the bullied person perceives any safe harbor, any unconditional ground for trusting the people around them.
Your action or inaction can be the difference between hope and no hope.
Let your action teach that some arms are always open and welcoming—that safe harbor exists.
Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, 3rd edition, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2014, pg. 232.