Bully

Like most of you, I was a quiet little kid. (I know, I know, hard to believe!) Not much good at sports, middle of the class academically, shy around the opposite sex. Not until high school was I able to assert myself, gradually gradually ever so gradually.
Which meant that I was the natural prey for the school bullies.
No, I didn't suffer some of the physical humiliations that many do, but I still had to deal with the name-calling, the insults, the hostility, the exclusion from the In Crowd. And actually such things had more effect than any threats to my physical well-being.
It is only with age and maturity (ahem!) that I have come to have empathy for those bullies. I know now that many of them had their own insecurities, their own need to control another to make up for their own problems. I even (gag, choke, gasp!) forgive them. What's more, I forgive those adults, teachers and others, who stood by and did nothing as this bullying went on.
 But nowadays, bully-prevention is a big deal. Possibly because of all those young nerds like me who were bullied, now grown and parents or grandparents ourselves, there is more sensitivity to the problem, and more programs to deal with it. The very potential for violence has, at one and the same time, been identified and addressed, as well as escalated (can you say Columbine?)
Of course, there is another whole realm for bullying: on-line. With the confidentiality of the internet, a person can cyber-bully, cyber-stalk another person with little likelihood of restriction or retaliation.
The question, even in the face of such changes, remains the same: what should be done? It is easy to suggest that the delete button is a good choice in these circumstances. The real issue, however, lies not in the bully, who may be hard to get to, but in the person being bullied. What resources does such a person have? Friends who can reassure that the calumny is false or at least not valid. In a pinch, legal measures. But beyond such external measures, there is a need to claim our inner worth.
Nobody can make you feel bad about yourself without your cooperation. It is that inner doubt that the bully counts on. Bullies are (as I suggested above) not very secure people; that's why they over- compensate in trying to make others feel bad. They seem to know instinctively who they can dominate or intimidate. Or maybe they do it with everyone, and they find their victims in the ones who don't reject their games.
This does not mean that the victims are to blame for what happens. It does mean that they are responsible for what they do next.