ABSTRACT
Rivers et al. (2007) neatly sum up this different way of looking at bullying, ‘not as the sum of unpleasant behaviours that are owned by children, but the product of complex interactions within a system of social relationships that cannot be changed by simply removing bullies or reinforcing victims’ (p. 35). This concept made sense in relation to our research as we came to see that the behaviours young people reported were multi-layered and more about group dynamics and identities than individual personalities. In this chapter the term sexual bullying encompasses bullying situations between individuals that incorporate sexual behaviour, and in behaviours that refl ect a cultural/societal imbalance of power between various groups and exhibit repeated incidents of sexualised behaviour that are intended to harm. I have used the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ to refer to gender throughout as these were used during the study as the most accessible terms for young people.
