toughest of six-year-olds is no match for someone who is nine. A lot of that
power differential disappears in adulthood, however, with the rough
stabilization and matching of physical size (with the exception of that
pertaining to men and women, with the former typically larger and stronger,
particularly in the upper body) as well as the increased penalties generally
applied in adulthood to those who insist upon continuing with physical
intimidation.
But just as often, people are bullied because they won’t fight back. This
happens not infrequently to people who are by temperament compassionate
and self-sacrificing—particularly if they are also high in negative emotion,
and make a lot of gratifying noises of suffering when someone sadistic
confronts them (children who cry more easily, for example, are more
frequently bullied).^26 It also happens to people who have decided, for one
reason or another, that all forms of aggression, including even feelings of
anger, are morally wrong. I have seen people with a particularly acute
sensitivity to petty tyranny and over-aggressive competitiveness restrict
within themselves all the emotions that might give rise to such things. Often
they are people whose fathers who were excessively angry and controlling.
Psychological forces are never unidimensional in their value, however, and
the truly appalling potential of anger and aggression to produce cruelty and
mayhem are balanced by the ability of those primordial forces to push back
against oppression, speak truth, and motivate resolute movement forward in
times of strife, uncertainty and danger.
With their capacity for aggression strait-jacketed within a too-narrow
morality, those who are only or merely compassionate and self-sacrificing
(and naïve and exploitable) cannot call forth the genuinely righteous and
appropriately self-protective anger necessary to defend themselves. If you
can bite, you generally don’t have to. When skillfully integrated, the ability
to respond with aggression and violence decreases rather than increases the
probability that actual aggression will become necessary. If you say no, early
in the cycle of oppression, and you mean what you say (which means you
state your refusal in no uncertain terms and stand behind it) then the scope for
oppression on the part of oppressor will remain properly bounded and
limited. The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made
available for their existence. People who refuse to muster appropriately self-