The Answer to Bullying

Walk Talk Fight / Win The Fight = WTF Squared = WTF². In today’s world of hashtags, the program is easiest named and can fully leverage social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and others) by using the hashtag. Therefore, the program logo will incorporate “#WTF²”.

What does it stand for?  NOT “What the f**k?” but…

Walk, Talk, Fight… and if you must fight…

                                                                                    …Win The Fight

Basic Premise: By punishing students and children who fight only in self-defense, we are training them to be willing victims. This results not only in further encouragement to the bully but also increases the chances of the victims becoming victims of more than bullying in the future: it increases the chance of them becoming the victims of personal crimes. To teach them the necessity of self-defense but in such a way as to insure violence is seen as a last resort, the three-step Walk-Talk-Fight protocol can be used.

Walk away:
WALK away from the situation if you can. Walk away as many times as it takes. Do not remain in a location that allows you to be a target unnecessarily. Walk away again and again.

Talk your way:
If you cannot, for whatever reason, walk away, then TALK your way out of the altercation. Talking can include communication to the bully, to friends, to teachers, to parents, to faith leaders… to anyone who can assist you. If you can talk to anyone who brings a cessation to the bullying, then you’ve succeeded in your goal. If you can’t walk away and you can’t talk your way out of the situation; when fighting in self-defense becomes the last and only remaining option, then FIGHT.

Fight:
As a last resort, to keep from becoming a willing victim and to avoid being bullied both in the moment and in the future, fight. If you must fight, WIN THE FIGHT. Do not be timid. Do not hold back. Understand that you will most likely experience discomfort, pain or injury in the process of inflicting such, but it is preferable to bring that upon yourself voluntarily and in the process of defending yourself rather than receiving discomfort, pain and injury as a victim who willingly accepts it.

Broken down more completely:
W – the first W stands for WALK as in “walk away.” One of the easiest ways to avoid being the target of a bully is to not give them a response when they try to provoke you. Inevitably a bully will make targeted and instigative statements before any physical aggression occurs. In fact, in today’s world of social media saturation, most especially for school age children, the bullying can be entirely verbal / virtual talk (text, posts, etc). If an individual is confident enough and has enough sense of self security to simply ignore this verbal non-threatening aggression, the bully(ies) may eventually realize they are wasting time and energy and risk making themselves look foolish. Therefore, if it’s possible to either physically walk away from the bully and his/her words or to virtually ignore them as they post insulting / threatening / aggressive materials, you take away their power to impact you or stir a response. WALK AWAY if you can – physically or virtually. If their verbal – in person or in the cyberspace – are threatening, you need to report such to the appropriate people. That would be included in the TALK as described below.

T – the first T stands for TALK as in “talk your way out of it.” Talk can include communicating with a variety of people. First and foremost, it can be the aggressive person / bully you’ve been targeted by. If walking away / ignoring them has not discouraged them but has, as can sometimes happen, encouraged them to become more aggressive as their determination to impact you grows, then you may face the situation of having to talk them out of their course of action, or talk your way out of the circumstance of being a target. In addition to that specific scenario, you can talk to the staff and/or faculty (as appropriate and trusted) in your educational institution. You can talk to you siblings, parents, relatives, clergy, counselors, coaches, mentors and more. Any and all of them could potentially either intercede on your behalf to the aggressor/bully OR they can act as support as the situation is dealt with by the appropriate people of authority (teachers, principal, law enforcement, etc.) So, if you can’t WALK away from the situation, you could potentially TALK you way out whether it’s directly or obliquely through the intervention of others.

F – both Fs stand for FIGHT, but we’ll discuss the implications of the first usage. If you haven’t been able to walk away and you can’t talk you way out of it, that means you find yourself the target of a direct and imminent physical assault. At that point, no moral law or regulation can prevent you from defending yourself. The Right of Self-Defense is one of the longest recognized and honored innate human rights of document. Above all else, it’s vital to understand that fighting is the last option and the one to be avoided as much as possible. As was observed by Dalton in the movie Roadhouse: “No one ever wins a fight.” The idea being that if you have to fight you already lost; you either failed to control the situation or you failed to use your language skills to avoid the conflict. That all said and recognized, if you find yourself in a situation where the assault is imminent or has already occurred, there is no moral reason NOT to defend yourself.  If you MUST fight to defend yourself from assault or further assault, then it’s your moral duty to do so. And IF you must fight then…

WIN

THE

FIGHT