Does anyone project great vulnerabilty?

[Rectify]

If I could go back in time, I would have, as a minimum, swore at them and let them know how pissed off I was. If that did not work, I would fight back physically. I would have gotten beaten up, but if others saw I as fighting back, maybe I would have earned some respect and would not have been bullied as much.
I still do not know what i would have done with the guy in aerobics class who lifted me up and moved me.
I would not want to lose my gym membership over it.

It's hard to know what is the ideal reaction and how things would turn out, isn't it?

Btw I used to do step classes. I really liked them a lot. The music was always good. I'm a member of a gym now but they only have a few step classes to choose from. I might try and make one or two in the future.

 

[All-Rounder]

cant you report it to a gym teacher? there must be a system in place for people who do these things

 

[Progster]

I project under-confidence and lack assertiveness, which makes me appear to be vulnerable, but that doesn't mean that I am. If pushed I can and will defend myself, there's only so much I can take before I snap and retaliate. I was bullied as a child, but also had some ferocious meltdowns, which meant that many would-be bullies kept their distance. A lot of the bullying came from my siblings, not just from school. As an adult, I've been in situations where work colleagues have ganged up on me to push me out, using my under-confidence and inability to effectively handle the situation as a means to strengthen their own social position, then, when I retaliate or defend myself, that's when the problems really start, because they have the power and backing, and I don't - its me against all of them.

 

[Edward764]

I project under-confidence and lack assertiveness, which makes me appear to be vulnerable, but that doesn't mean that I am. If pushed I can and will defend myself, there's only so much I can take before I snap and retaliate. I was bullied as a child, but also had some ferocious meltdowns, which meant that many would-be bullies kept their distance. A lot of the bullying came from my siblings, not just from school. As an adult, I've been in situations where work colleagues have ganged up on me to push me out, using my under-confidence and inability to effectively handle the situation as a means to strengthen their own social position, then, when I retaliate or defend myself, that's when the problems really start, because they have the power and backing, and I don't - its me against all of them.

I am fortunate, that unlike school, I was never bullied at work, although some co-workers would express displeasure at my incompetence.
At work, one must formulate rational responses to deal with others and to avoid physical confrontation.
At school one would be suspended at worst, at work one could be fired.

I was also bullied at my old small apartment. My neighbor was a former gang member who blast music so loud through the thin walls it could be heard down the street,
I confronted him twice politely. The first time he sneered and just closed the door. At a later date I confronted him again and he said " it is not 10:00 bro".
A third time I asked the landlord who lived on the other side, " Doesn't that bother you"? He replied." I don't hear it in my bedroom". His bedroom, unlike mine was on the far side.
After 21 years, the owners threw me out of this small eight unit apartment for no reason. but the gang member next to me, and the wife abuser under me, who was carried away once in handcuffs, got to stay.
I put up with this crap for one reason: cheap rent.

 

[Fino]

I only ever fought back once, and I got detention.

 

[sisselcakes]

I was reading an article about autism and why autistics are more vulnerable to rape and domestic abuse, etc. Some of the reasons it suggested was lack of friends to warn us of someone's reputation. Gullability and naivety and inability to recognize dangerous situations and read peoples motives. And I'll add, at least for myself, inability to defend oneself or nicely fight off unwanted advances or treatment.

My mom pressured me into dating - because I needed to get out and be with others. She pushed me into dating M. I was 15, naïve, shy, no friends, didn't know how to deal with the world, immature in social aspects, etc, etc. Of course my mom didn't know I had these problems, when I was bullied or mistreated no one ever knew about it, I kept it to myself out of embarrassment. So I go out with M and all he's interested in is sex. I'm saying no over and over, I don't want to but he doesn't stop and I don't know how to physically fight him off. I don't tell anyone because I feel embarrassed and guilty and should have stopped it, even though I didn't know how. My parents like M, who happens to be my brothers best friend, and even my brother gets mad at me if I don't want to go out with M any more, so I'm pressured into continuing to date him. By the time I'm 16 I'm pregnant and my parents force me to marry M. I really didn't want to, but even M was making threats if I didn't like if I didn't he would kill himself. I was a little girl in maturity, what was I supposed to do?

So I guess I'm saying, we ARE more vulnerable to mistreatment because everything about us says we are weak and don't fight back and easy prey. I feel like if we could be taught from a young age how to defend ourselves and stand up for ourselves the worst part of being autistic would not be such a problem and everything else wouldn't be so hard to live with. Sure, we're taught to 'just say no', but just saying no doesn't work and we need to learn how to STOP the abuse. So far, the only thing we have as a solution is to get away. Think about it - every mention of mistreatment, every piece of advice is get as far away as possible. Yes, that's a feasible solution, but there has to be something else so we can actually live among this type of person because they are everywhere, and actually stop it instead of always just running from it. (And I'm guilty, too - I always advise to get away. But that's the first step of protecting self, not the only step).

Wow. Your story is harrowing! I’m so sorry you went through that experience as a teenager.

I audit behavioral health records for a living. I often see the precipitant for a kid being admitted to a psych hospital is their being bulled at school. It breaks my heart.

I’ve thought about prevention and agree with you. If there was a process by which children could be assessed as at-risk for bullying and given skills training (like assertiveness), we could reduce the incidence of it.

 

[Edward764]

Wow. Your story is harrowing! I’m so sorry you went through that experience as a teenager.

I audit behavioral health records for a living. I often see the precipitant for a kid being admitted to a psych hospital is their being bulled at school. It breaks my heart.

I’ve thought about prevention and agree with you. If there was a process by which children could be assessed as at-risk for bullying and given skills training (like assertiveness), we could reduce the incidence of it.

The good news is that today there are anti bullying campaigns and awareness in the schools. I think that this appeals to the moral fabric of students today in a way that did not exist in the 70's when I was in middle and high school. My high school counselor was actually friends with my greatest bullies.

Being admitted to a psych ward for being a bullying victim is awful and inexcusable.I hope students who see the bullies in action will not hesitate to report them to school personnel.
If any high school students are reading this thread, bullying IS a HUGE deal. It can ruin lives, and is partly responsible for ruining mine. PLEASE report it if you see it at your school. You could be making a great positive difference in some ones life.

 

[SixTimesNine]

For some reason, some people continue to believe it is perfectly fine to pretend that I am not talking and speak right over me--and then complain that I am rude because I do not talk enough. They start talking about a movie. I get two words out, and then they start speaking over me--often about a completely different topic so I don't get to contribute to the conversation about the movie!

Lots and lots of bullying as a kid. There were some kids I didn't even know who threatened me with things like telling me they would put me in a cemetery. When I finally took Kung Fu and learned to fight back, this one kid I don't remember ever seeing before during all of high school "Benny Hilled" my neck during gym. I had enough and slapped his neck back. So what did this big tough guy do? He jumped me while I had my pants down in the locker room! I slipped while trying to kick because I was in my socks. (It continues to infuriate me how some girls would be impressed by a tough guy attacking someone who obviously could not fight back. Not only was this cowardly behavior, they failed to realize that guys who beat up helpless boys are very likely to beat up other people who can't fight back--like their girlfriends and wives.)

I used to teach college. The students would try to walk all over me.

One extremely narcissistic former boss bullied me. I was rude, for example, because I did not stand up every single time someone entered the office--even though I had a ton of work to do keeping the place running!

 

[AloneNotLonely]

@AloneNotLonely

I would fear getting in trouble with the law for kicking people in the face, or getting beat up by them in the middle of a crowd for fighting back. I would rather have my butt touched than my jaw broken.

I would feel I'd be very violent if I did that, and it resembles the behavior of the people I don't like, gotta not lower myself to their level.

I would also try to understand people acting like such because it's maybe some issue they have and I dont think harming them would help them or me much.

I also would seek to see if I didnt misunderstood what they meant, e.g. grandma is old fashioned and touches people easily, even store people. I tend to be paranoid about such acts but sometimes it can cloud my logical thinking and stress me more than help me.

I wouldnt say people have physically harrassed me as much as they did to you, especially strangers

Most of it was filtering out all of the situations that happen. This doesn't happen every day, even the bums attempting to touch me is more of a weekly occasion than daily, but that's because I only go out of the house once a week.

It appears like I was a total violent badass but that's not how it went. The bum grabbed me (out of a crowd, this sort of stuff does not happen to normal people, only an autistic weirdo like me) and the next like 20-30 seconds were me standing there like a moron looking around to see what other people were doing. Nothing. The whole situation was completely invisible, no cops around either (obviously I would've called a cop if one was there, probably only to be told I'm evil and a terrible person for not letting a poor bum touch me).

So I was there thinking carefully about it for some time... and then I was like "What the heck, I'm going to kick him real hard, hard enough that he can't really react and then quickly walk away". So I did. He had no time to react, although crazy bums often seem to be immune to pain, this one wasn't so the situation didn't escalate. There was this woman clearly staring at me in shock as I walked away, but this is the same type of woman that would just walk past. Typical judgemental cowardly piece of trash so who cares if she disapproves. Clearly it could've ended far worse, with the guy slobbering all over me in some crazy bum rage. Obviously that would've been suicide fuel, so my course of action now is to avoid this altogether. Never will I come close to a bum within, say, 3 meters of range. The situation wasn't one where "I'm so awesome I just beat the crap out of any people that bother me!" but more like "Holy crap thank goodness I got away from that without it getting worse, I'm never risking this type of nonsense again".

My question isn't like "Why aren't you girls beating up guys that are stronger and bigger than you for touching your butt?" but more like, why do you keep putting yourselves in situations where this can keep happening? I've decided to avoid the situation.

When a woman at work touched my neck, I made sure she felt extremely embarrassed and uncomfortable. I can't beat up a woman at work, but I can be assertive and make sure she never does it again and that anyone else there knows to not do that.

And after that situation I made sure to avoid anyone standing behind me to avoid having them touch me in the neck. People are always weirded out by me acting really strange and turning to face them whenever they move behind me, but it works and I haven't had my neck or hair touched since.

 

[All-Rounder]

@AloneNotLonely

That's all good. My cousin said something about one kid for he was picking on his friend and the family/friends waited for him to get out of karate class one day and gang beat him up that his face got purple. I don't think he was even 18. People indeed can be a scary violent bunch.

I once was walking down the street with my mom and suddenly I got my butt slapped by some mature man, I was probably 17 y o, so underage. There were 3 men who passed us by and had no shame of my mother or compassion of the fact i was a minor and a human being. I thought they actually did that because I would be ashamed to tell my mom but i did anyway, my mom just said to leave them alone dont look back, but i turned and showed them the Mr Bean finger.

 

[AloneNotLonely]

This sounds so alien to me, I seriously don't see how this stuff happens.

I honestly don't see that ever happening in my country, if a woman were to say something about a guy touching her butt out loud on the streets there would be trouble. A whole family beating up a kid who bullied their family members' friend... uhh yea doesn't happen either. Kids can get their heads dipped in toilets and the whole family will be like "Well you should be his friend, bullies only do that because they don't have friends!".

 

[All-Rounder]

I got my butt touched at school and told my teacher but she thought "he pushed me down the stairs" instead of "he touched my ass" and scolded him. "Luckily" he also did that after touching my butt so it was sort of accurate. These phrases are similar in my language and there was still some noise in the classroom and outside and the door was open when the teacher came in, so no wonder she misunderstood.

That took a lot of willpower and courage to say, but then I stared him down in my victory like the wurm he was and it felt all better. Needless to say he left me alone ever since, or else more public shaming for him.

 

[Jade Baggins-Clark]

Among the many things that gets me wired is an inability to come to grips with how often I was bullied and disrespected in life, including a few times as an adult.

I feel as though there must be something about my personality, temperment, movement, disposition, posture, or something that makes it either fun or OK to disrespect me.

Some of a fraction of the examples include:

1. Not given a seat on my 7th grade bus so I had to sit on the floor on the way to school. Even the bus driver laughed at this.
2. Being dumped in a trash can in 7th grade by two strangers.
3. Having a student put his hand up my shirt and make nipples.
4. Having a student come up to me and shove the books out of my arm.
5. My "friend" dumping a trash can over my head in class.
6. Same friend ripping books out of my hand and taking books out of my locker, multiple times.
7. Student just shoved me down a flight of outdoor stairs for no reason
8. Student passed wind in my face in the locker room every day.
9. same student in charge of passing out towels. refused to give me one so i got dressed wet.
10. Student spent an hour drawing big blob in felt pen all up my arm in class.
11. Student in geometry class sitting behind me would randomly sock me in the back multiple times
12. Student would rip my gym clothes out of my arms as I walked home from school. Multiple times

As an adult when 30 years old,
13 A fellow in my aerobics class wanted the spot where i was standing. He picked me up around the waist, and physically moved me stating " I want you over here"
14, A friend in step aerobics, kicks my steps over and says, "Get these out of here."
He wanted my spot.
15. In college, student kept insisting on borrowing my notes for two days and would not take no for an answer.
16. Two other students in college wanted to take my textbook home since they lost theirs.

I simply cannot be this unlucky. People read the vulnerability in me, and take advantage.

Has anyone experienced anything like these examples? No wonder I am 61 and have never earned more that $27,000.
Did they pick up on my autism, or is it likely something else?

I think NT's have an innate understanding of hierarchical positioning. It's almost like they smell your non-compliance. My boundaries were constantly walked over by those close to me and school and work colleagues because I had a very clear idea that I did not deserve boundaries (Thank you narcissistic mother)...but also because I was gaslit and told that you had to trust family, that they loved you... and that was what love was to me, basically abandonment, manipulation and mocking.... until I had to break it all down, until I realised those people did not want the best for me or care for me in any truly meaningful way.
I was also sexually abused, women being told always to be "nice" doesn't help much either Not many people mock, belittle, embarrass or step on my boundaries these days because I spent a lot of effort understanding what was unhealthy and disrespectful to me. No one tries that **** on me these days, Im very open and kind but know what a healthy boundary is now and beware if you try.... that said I am still pretty vulnerable to sociopaths and narcs just because they are so good at being predatory and I dont have the skills to negotiate that, but I do have the skills to recognize and avoid. An upside of healing from a ****ed up family