بیایید از قربانی شدن همسالان جلوگیری کنیم نه فقط از زورگویی

This commentary is not a proposal to abandon the bullying concept and the plausible hypothesis it asserts that power imbalance and repetition make for some particularly serious, enduring, and harmful kinds of peer victimization. Given its popularity and incorporation into law, such an effort would be futile. Continuing research to specify and understand the dynamics and impact of this phenomenon has great potential. But we would propose that researchers and advocates, especially those working on “bullying,” increasingly emphasize that the domain of interest is “peer victimization and aggression” or “peer victimization, aggression and bullying,” explaining that it goes beyond bullying to include peer sexual assault, dating violence, gang violence and single episode assaults. As rape has come to be understood as a subcategory of sexual assault, the more common term in recent years, so bullying would be recognized as a subcategory of the more commonly used peer victimization. Overall, the peer victimization concept has much more openness and flexibility. It would seem to provide a more empirical and less constrained and less problematic foundation for a field that is looking for to become more systematic and evidence based.