I hate how physical violence is (correctly) seen as a horrible thing while psychological/verbal violence is frowned upon but not as much as physical violence.
My brother used to bully me every day until I moved out into my grandparent’s house. There were two instances where I snapped and attacked him physically, and ONLY THEN did my family intervene.
Due to my neurodevelopmental disabilities I am unable to verbally defend myself, so I was being harassed and bullied every day and I couldn’t do anything about it.
And because psychological violence is not perceived to be as serious as physical violence, when I responded in the only way I was able to (physically) the situation changed from being perceived as “Al-Anda’s brother being annoying” to “this must be stopped immediately”.
He also threatened to call the police and shit, since physical violence is illegal while bullying and harassing someone every single fucking day isn’t.
I swear, this shit makes me so angry…
“Sticks and stones do break my bones but words do not” my ass. I’ve been affected heavily by verbal violence but of course I can’t speak up because they were “joking” and just “learn to take a joke my guy” like, I don’t think making fun of someone for the purpose of letting them down is really joking anymore. It sucks how people can manage to hide bullying and harassment under a blanket of “joking”.
It’s really stupid, everyone knows it’s not a joke. Them saying that is just a way of getting away with it, also this way they don’t have to take a good hard look at themselves and their behaviour. People can really be awful. :-/
It’s like being abusive while trying to make it look like it’s not abusive… 🙄