Should We Defend a Bullied Victim Against Our Own Friends?

When I was in primary school, there was this boy in my class named Jaden (not his real name). Unlike the other boys in my class, he often hanged around and played with the girls. From what I observed, Jaden didn't have any gender identity issues or anything like that. It's just that he didn't act like the norm of boys that age. This caused the whole class to call him a "girly boy", me included.
I know that this was just meant as a joke and Jaden often laughed it off. From my point of view, Jaden didn’t seem to mind, and we still had a good relationship whether I tease him or not. In retrospect, I never really knew how he felt. Did our teasing ever made him uncomfortable or questioned himself? Did it made him feel frustrated and bullied? Did it affect his characters and actions in the future?

Some bullied victims became a danger to the society and themselves. In the US, there had been many cases of school shooting that shocked the world. In Asia, such as Japan and Taiwan, there had also been cases of public stabbing. After investigations, a lot of these criminals, appeared to be children who had been bullied before. They generally become loners and have a lot of bottled up anger against the public inside.

So the root of a lot of these problems is bullying. Some bullying were made without us realizing it, such as what I did to Jaden. I didn’t mean to cause him any harm and I thought it was all just good fun. But now, thinking about it, we were quite insensitive to what he was feeling.

Children are often ignorant about all this. Growing up, children tend to seek stability and security. They feel safe being in familiar surrounding with familiar people. So it’s natural for children to be apprehensive or reject differences. Thus, respect and toleration should be hammered into children's minds starting from a very young age. They should also be taught to always think of the consequences of their actions, especially bullying.

These must be implemented both at home and school. Unfortunately, some parents either don't care or deny that their children are bullies. Then there are those who don't know what they should do with their children's behaviours. Both parents and teachers must be taught how to deal with bullying and why they should do that. Children should also be taught how to have the guts to stand up for themselves and others.

I wasn’t brave enough to go against my friends and acted that way due to peer pressure. If I stood up for him, my friends would talk behind my back about this and make fun of me. I try my best not to change my relationship with my friends, as I like to be part of the big group. After all, they're also my friends, and I wouldn't like to go against what most of them think. I hope that our ignorance and harmless teasing didn’t affect Jaden negatively. I am grateful to know that now societies are more aware of this problem. Both children and teacher organisations are now trying their best to tackle this problem. Hopefully this will lead to less problems in the future.