Sorry, but I totally disagree, and I speak from experience. It's true that some bullies may want retribution for a victim who tries to fight back, but the rule of human behavior is that an attacker is always more likely to back down if their victim tries to fight back or defend themselves. It's the truth and there is no getting around that. Many a child has been bullied into depression, self-harm, and even suicide, by just "walking away" and suffering inexplicable pain inside over months or even years.
No one here is "preaching violence". We're preaching protection and defense of the innocent, and only after all other options have been exhausted (at least, that's how I see it).
I completely agree with you. I was bullied throughout my school time. As we later learned, the pastor of our village had spread rumours that we were in a cult. By the time we learned where the rumours came from, I was close to moving away from home. We woould walk to the bus stop in the morning and the other kids said "Ewww, the *** family is coming!" Every day we had to spend 45 minutes on the bus with them, twice - on the way to school and on the way back from school. I began to self-injure and did that for over ten years. Today my arms are covered in layers of scars, my lower arms have no healthy skin left. I was anorexic for over ten years, I spent quite a bit of time in psychiatric hospitals, I was suicidal and today I have anxiety, chronic migraine and social phobia. Christians told me to turn the other cheek and never to fight bac and I did. I became a victim and the other kids loved it because it seemed to confirm the rumours. We were weird. We just took everything they threw at us. They never stopped. My sister's husband even had to listen to people saying bad stuff when they started dating because he loved a girl from that weird family.
In 2010, my parents' house was partially destroyed by a fire. At that point, rumours didn't matter. People helped them and got to know them better and realized that my family was quite normal and that those rumours weren't true. Life in that village is good for my parents now, they are involved, they have friends. But it was too late for me.
On the other hand, I know someone who is extremely peaceful and, if he can, will always choose to walk away. But one time as a kid, he had too much. He was 13 and was being bullied by three older guys. It had been going on for a long time. One day he saw red and hit them back. Not enough to really injure them, but enough for them to be shocked and to realize they couldn't just do that to him. They never did it again.
I think becoming a bully yourself is wrong. But today I also think that it is important to make it stop. That might need to happen in different ways, depending on the situation. But I wouldn't teach my future kids to just take every bs people throw at them, never say anything and be the victim. I know from experience that eventually, you believe you're scum, you internalize it, you begin to feel that the others are probably right because they keep tellig you you're worthless. When I eventually became suicidal, I didn't really want to die, but I didn't see a reason to live. I was too worthless to live. And because Christians had kept telling me God didn't want me to stop it, I felt like God wanted me to feel like a worthless piece of s***. I thought maybe I was treated that way because that's what God thought of me. And I would never want my future children to go through that. Standing up for yourself doesn't mean you have to really hurt the bullies or do your best to destroy their lives. It means that you know nobody has the right to treat you that way and you stand up for that and tell people they mustn't do that and you try to make it stop. That is not taking revenge.
