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[Audioworm333]

Either I'm doing it wrong, or all the people saying to stand up for yourself are full of shit. I am very quick to call out people when they're being an asshole and nothing happens. No matter what I do, people just spit in my face and keep doing what they're doing, and I'm getting sick and tired of it. It's getting to the point where it feels like I'm getting fed a constant stream of bullshit 24/7, and there's nothing I can do.

Am I really doing it wrong? Are people just that awful?

[nenjin]

People ARE awful.

What's the context though? Guy takes candy from a baby and you tell him he's an asshole and he doesn't care?

I know someone is going to disagree with me but....there's two ways this works. One is respect. The other is the threat of physical violence. If someone does something to you, that you dislike, and you ask them to stop and they don't....it's because either a) they don't respect you enough to try to make you happy or b) they know there's nothing you can really do to them if they don't stop. Usually it's the threat of physical violence that makes the second one important. If they aren't "afraid" of you, and they don't respect you, they have no incentive to not do the stuff you hate.

If this is family, good luck. Family are the most difficult people to change the behavior of because it's a learned behavior.

If it's random people you meet during the day, I dunno, maybe there's a problem with your presentation. My experience is strangers in face-to-face contact are more likely to adhere to social norms than close personal friends or family members.

[Audioworm333]

Well, it's not entirely my family; it's more just assholes I encounter in general. But my father is definitely one of those people, and as I still live with him-- I'm 18, but still in school-- I have to deal with his shit on a daily basis. I've long given up the idea of trying to change him, though, and I'm definitely planning to move out when I can, but until then, I'm stuck with him...

[nenjin]

Well, it's not entirely my family; it's more just assholes I encounter in general. But my father is definitely one of those people, and as I still live with him-- I'm 18, but still in school-- I have to deal with his shit on a daily basis. I've long given up the idea of trying to change him, though, and I'm definitely planning to move out when I can, but until then, I'm stuck with him...

Well, as someone who dealt with respect issues with my father (going both directions....)

Dads will be dads. They carry a lot of baggage around that tends to land on their sons. For me, I'm pretty lazy. My dad is not. He's sort of a workaholic. So when I was 18, and living in a different house than him, he'd show up to my house at 7am and scream at me from the driveway to get out of bed so I could help him with some project he was hot to do.

This kind of interaction went back and forth between us for years until....one day in a car ride he said something, I don't even remember what, and my reaction was to utter ".....asshole."

10 minutes later we had a fist fight in the yard of my grandmother's house.

He ambushed me as we walked into the door of the house, spun me around, slammed into the door and punched me twice in the face and snarled at me that I don't dare disrespect him. I told him to go fuck himself. Then the fight moved out on to the lawn. He swung at me again, but I didn't hit him back. I did get angry though, and said something to the effect of "is that all you got old man!" Then he came at me again and I just sort of got annoyed with his flailing, shoved his ass good and hard and shouted "Get the fuck off me!"

After the awkward dinner we had immediately afterward, he and I had a (non-violent) heart to heart. Tears, hugs, the works.

We've been great friends ever since. This was probably 10 years ago.

What really tripped HIM up and made him violent is that HE thought I was disrespecting HIM, and was channeling all the years of us not being on the same page about how to do things. He essentially believed my laziness was a sign of disrespect to him, made crystal clear when I verbally disrespected him. I asked him at one point, when things were at their hottest, if we could EVER be equals and he said "No! I'm the father and you're the son and you'll never be my equal!" To which I said "that's a crock of shit. If you're being an asshole I'm going to call you an asshole. You don't get a pass on getting called out on your bullshit by me just because you're my father. I'm not 15 anymore."

So if you question where my beliefs about respect vs. violence come from, that's where.

I'm not saying get into a fist fight with your dad. But you know....sometimes this is just shit fathers and sons have to work out. My dad didn't really respect my time, what I wanted or any of that stuff. He was still trying to mold me at the age of 18. We didn't fight until I was in my 20s, when he'd long given up hope of changing who I am but had not let go of the anger and resentment that caused.

Basically, fathers can be the hardest people for sons to earn respect from because your father has high expectations of you, higher than are probably fair, because they see your life as a referendum on their parenting, their manhood, their ability to be top dog. Anything that threatens that, be it your choices in life, your attitude....can cause them to become hostile.

The watershed moment for me and my dad was me ultimately showing him I'm a man and I won't take shit from him anymore....and I didn't even have to punch him. I just weathered a couple punches without falling over and crying and then showed him that I have a line...and woe to him if he crossed it. It pretty much re-defined our relationship.

And to note...my dad isn't like, a big 'ol redneck or a real tough guy or anything....he's left leaning, thoughtful, sensitive, spiritual person. All that went out the window when dealing with me though. (My brother didn't have these conflicts with him...but he was the elder.)

So good luck. For me earning the actual respect of my father, as dramatastic as it was for me, actually changed my perspective on myself too and I learned how to be more assertive in general, and send the vibe out to strangers and others that I stand unbowed.

[x2yzh9]

   Yea. I've had comparable situations. I'll describe one: My roommate had moved in, and we had lived together for almost a year. He was sleeping on the couch as my parents had moved back in; however before this for a period of 3-6 weeks his friend has been sleeping, eating, showering, etc. there without paying for a thing in the living room. I confronted them one night and my roommates brother came in and tried to block the door and told me to post up(meaning to get ready to fight/a stance) and I ran out the back, called the cops, and they didn't do shit and told them not to call them unless there's a real fight.

   My roommate then later texted me shit and was talking about how I was disrespecting my mom, blatantly lying about things he was constantly complaining and yelling about if I did them. Anyway, I came home then and there and, booming my voice across the apartment room told him not to talk to me and not to look at me maliciously. I came back after he told me that the least I could do was have some respect for my mother. I came in there and told him to mind his own business, and that I would not tolerate him raising his tone or coming at me anymore. He shut his mouth, I closed the door, and we didn't talk until he moved out basically. He never said another word talking shit, or disrespectful gesture. He played nice to get on my good side. Some people are bullys. Don't wait to deal with them. Recognize them when you see them. That's all I have to say.

[kilakan]

It depends on the situation but I'm gonna just add in quickly on the 'violence' response.  At heart we are all still driven by pretty basic emotions, I got absolutely shit on my entire school-life for being the 'Big soft dude who don't hurt nobody' so of course I was a massive target.  Come grade 10 and when I finally had enough, a dude I'd never even met before in my highschool (school of 3000 people grade 9-12...) decide he was gonna punch me in the kidneys from behind.  I grabbed his arm, flipped him and with one stomp broke three ribs. 

I regret my actions, cause it's not like me, and I got in some massive shit from the teachers (even through I got hit first) but I will say... it was the last time I ever got disrespected/treated badly/attacked for the rest of my highschool life.

Also, generally just calling people out for being assholes tends to make them go 'f-you asshole' back to you.  If it's disrespect against you trying to talk it out (with family) or unfortunately if it's with school peers (the way you carry yourself, fighting back, ect is kinda the only option.)  Usually trying to avoid people/conflict makes it worse in my experience cause then they purposefully hunt you down and then it's worse cause they've been intent on doing whatever for however long it took em to find you.

[nenjin]

It depends on the situation but I'm gonna just add in quickly on the 'violence' response.  At heart we are all still driven by pretty basic emotions, I got absolutely shit on my entire school-life for being the 'Big soft dude who don't hurt nobody' so of course I was a massive target.  Come grade 10 and when I finally had enough, a dude I'd never even met before in my highschool (school of 3000 people grade 9-12...) decide he was gonna punch me in the kidneys from behind.  I grabbed his arm, flipped him and with one stomp broke three ribs. 

I can relate. I had this moment pretty much. It wasn't always easy growing up not-quite-white in the Midwest. Used to get teased a lot for my heritage. It only increased as I got into a high school and I took it, partially laughing along, whatever, despite how I felt. Then one day I just made a conscious decision I was going to send the message it wasn't cool anymore and the next person who said something, didn't matter who, was going to get the message.

That fell on a rather random kid who was just doing what everyone else thought was cool, making fun of my heritage, one day in gym class. He said it in passing but that was that. I snapped, threw him into a wall, wrapped my hands around his neck and told him if he ever said it again I would bury him. Terrified the shit out of him, tears pouring down his face and everything, because he had no idea I'd gone from "hahaha...yeah" to "I'll fucking kill you."

That was the last time anyone in my age group ever said shit about the color of my skin. Funny enough, I became friends with that kid later that year.

edit

I still had to put up with some bullying my junior year though. Standing up for yourself never really stops being a thing, it just changes shape as time goes on. Now that I think on it, I've found myself cornered and fighting more times in my life than makes me happy. Such is life I suppose.

In truth there's some degree of bullying that no amount of standing up for yourself can really ever solve. Like, in my senior year, I had some skinny punk a couple grades down slap me as he ran by the halls, and when I went for him, his absolutely enormous friend just stood in my way and said "You touch him and I'll beat your ass." I asked him "You're just going to stand there and let your friend act like a little bitch and do his fighting for him" and he was like "Yep." So my choices were a) take it or b) prepare to get my ass whooped in the hallway. I chose the former. The next day, about 8 seniors found these guys and told them if they didn't leave me alone, they'd stomp their guts out. And that was that. I have no idea where the support came from, I think they were all friends of my brother who heard what happened and were pissed off about it. Or like when I worked kitchens with a lot of hotheaded guys in their 20s, who could be real dicks in the middle of a busy night shift even to their best friends, and I got into at least one minor scuffle while I worked there.

Fact is the shit never truly ends, sometimes not even when you're an adult. So it's worth asking what you might be doing to add to it. Because I've learned I'm kind of a hothead too, and my disposition makes people want to challenge me. I don't take shit from people who are earnestly dishing it out and that inevitably leads to trouble one way or another. So, I've lived long enough without a serious assbeating but a lot of close calls to know that I've got some responsibility for everything that's happened to me too.

Just as a cautionary tale about the whole "live by the sword" mentality...

[Flying Dice]

Yep. The only real problem with the violent response thing is that you'll eventually run into some shithead clever enough to never go after you physically, and society these days is soft enough to come down on people who respond physically to verbal provocation as if they instigated it. I dealt with the physical stuff pretty early on, but I wasn't willing to take the step to attacking people for saying shit and wasn't composed enough to shut them down verbally, so it sorta fucked me up. In school you can still get away with it to some degree, but out in the real world there are plenty of assholes who will try to push you over the line and then fall back on the police and legal system to fuck you over.

On the father thing, I suppose I don't have much to contribute--I was "lucky" that my paternal grandfather was a shitty enough parent (largely because his father was an abusive jackass) that my father (as he told me a few months back) vowed to himself that he'd never treat his children like that. It's sort of strange, I think; even from a young age we got along well, despite my mother and I being near-constantly at each others' throats over stupid shit. It helped, too, that he went through a lot of the same sort of bullshit as me in his childhood, so there were points of understanding.

As long as your pops isn't just a flat-out worthless person who treats everyone around him like trash, there's (as others have said) probably some underlying insecurity on his part, or a difference in worldview that he perceives as a flaw on your part (which, for a lot of parents, would feed back into his own insecurity). Even the best of people tend to be at least a little self-centered, and it's pretty common for parents to see the perceived success or failure of their children as a measure of their own worth, never mind that their assessment is subjective.

[NullForceOmega]

While this won't help OP at all, there is another problem with applied force.  Even if you don't run into someone tougher or smarter than you, and you get into a lot of fights, you get the joy of having all the minor injuries you sustain degrading your overall health in later life.

As for standing up for yourself, the important part is to take your position, be firm, and not back down.  You may take a few beatings, or be laughed at/insulted/whatever, but you will have made your point.  That doesn't sound like it means much, but it matters for your own mental and emotional health.  You won't 'win' ever.  You might change a few minds, but the reason you 'stand up for yourself' is yourself.

[ChairmanPoo]

Yep. The only real problem with the violent response thing is that you'll eventually run into some shithead clever enough to never go after you physically, and society these days is soft enough to come down on people who respond physically to verbal provocation as if they instigated it.

Deservedly. Cavemen who cannot deal with other people in a civilized fashion deserve to be shunned.

As for standing up for yourself, the important part is to take your position, be firm, and not back down

And choosing your battles, I'd say. Not every issue is worth fighting over. This is particularily true if you are in a position of relative weakness

[Flying Dice]

Yep. The only real problem with the violent response thing is that you'll eventually run into some shithead clever enough to never go after you physically, and society these days is soft enough to come down on people who respond physically to verbal provocation as if they instigated it.

Deservedly. Cavemen who cannot deal with other people in a civilized fashion deserve to be shunned.

To some degree, I agree. But there are barbarians who abuse the norms of civilization to get away with treating others like garbage because nonphysical attacks aren't often perceived as attacks. Someone with a talent for quick-talking may not put you in the hospital directly, but they can do a world of harm to you and are often the sort of person who won't get the message unless it hurts them--with the type of ego that insulates them from being cognizant of the unacceptable nature of their behavior when informed via normal channels.

Maybe you're lucky. Maybe you've never encountered someone like that, or only did so within the context of a situation where you could easily avoid them and perhaps never meet them again. But if they're a daily presence in your life, as a classmate, co-worker, or family member, if there's absolutely nothing you can say to make them back down, and if they're careful enough to never make what they do obvious to outside observers, I'd like to know how you think you can resolve that situation short of a physical response.

I have the healthy dislike for violence shared by most all lean, unathletic people, but in hindsight I've become well-aware that there are people you can't reason with, who become an actual problem if you also can't ignore, avoid, or use the system against them. Could have saved myself a lot of grief and I'd probably be in a better place mentally if I'd realized that sooner. Like it or not, there are some conflicts that can't be resolved without coming to blows. It's not desirable and shouldn't be the first, second, or third option, but it's delusional to pretend that we live in a world where it's never necessary.

[NullForceOmega]

Yep. The only real problem with the violent response thing is that you'll eventually run into some shithead clever enough to never go after you physically, and society these days is soft enough to come down on people who respond physically to verbal provocation as if they instigated it.

Deservedly. Cavemen who cannot deal with other people in a civilized fashion deserve to be shunned.

If you have lived a life that has never required you to use physical force against someone I envy you, however you shouldn't try to disregard human physical and psychological evolution in the way your statement indicates.  There are times that violence is in fact the only solution to a problem, and our minds and bodies have developed with that in mind.  Calling people cavemen for responding in the way nature programmed them is very denigrating, try to remember that 'civility' is a mask we wear to interact with people in a way the helps avoid violence, it doesn't make it go away.

[cango]

you dont stand up to them in order to change them (except if theyre just being antisocial and are strangers) you do it to protect your own dignity for yourself. you dont have to be aggressive to stand up to bullies etc. standing firm on your ground and not being affected by their manipulations is usually the advice given in such situations.

[Wiles]

If you have lived a life that has never required you to use physical force against someone I envy you, however you shouldn't try to disregard human physical and psychological evolution in the way your statement indicates.  There are times that violence is in fact the only solution to a problem, and our minds and bodies have developed with that in mind.  Calling people cavemen for responding in the way nature programmed them is very denigrating, try to remember that 'civility' is a mask we wear to interact with people in a way the helps avoid violence, it doesn't make it go away.

The thing is it's not a not situation where violence is the only answer that is being discussed. The discussion is about escalating a non-violent situation into a violent one.

I don't believe calling a violent person a "caveman" is unjustified. I'm not going to feel bad for ostracizing someone who "acts in the way nature programmed them". Pulling the human nature card is really just a cop-out used by people who can't control themselves properly.

[Shadowgandor]

Although I've never been physically abused, one thing that I found out quite late in my teens was that key to not being bullied was to not care so much about what they say. I used to be pretty hurt when people called me gay, fat or a faggot. Eventually I just started responding with comments like "For you, I'd make an exception *wink*" or "Careful I don't start waving this fat around". The bullying stopped within a week and some of the guys that used to be giant assholes were now treating me normal. It's just that getting a response out of people and making them feel bad or uncomfortable can be "fun" and as soon as it's not working anymore, the "fun" goes away. But like I said, it was always verbal abuse and not physical, so not sure if this would work in that case too