"Grow A Pair"

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Porterville, California (CNN) -- For anyone who has experienced the brutality of a bully, a blunt-talking mayor in California with a horseshoe mustache now weighs in with this bit of wisdom: "Grow a pair."

Looking and talking like an Old West figure, Mayor Cameron Hamilton made his declaration while on the dais of the Porterville City Council last week.

"I'm against bullying, but I'm getting damn tired of it being used as a mantra for everything and the ills of the world," Hamilton said during the City Council meeting. "(Most) people just have to grow a pair and stick up for them damn selves."

Hamilton imparted his advice while discussing a proposal to create an anti-bullying safe zone for students.

His remark immediately ricocheted around the council chambers -- and, in subsequent days, around the country.

Councilwoman Virginia Gurrola immediately challenged the mayor.

"It's hard to just grow a pair when you're a 10-year-old girl," Gurrola shot back.

The councilwoman's retort was just the beginning of how the mayor's tough-talking comments have roiled many people nationwide, especially advocates of bullying prevention.

What's bullying

Indeed, in the past few years, a robust debate has been unfolding about what is -- and isn't -- bullying.

Sponsors of National Bullying Prevention Month say it's wrong to view bullying as "a childhood rite of passage" and something to make "kids tougher." In fact, bullying can be a traumatic experience, causing school avoidance, anxiety, depression and loss of self-esteem.

Some researchers, however, say "bullying" has been misused and misstated in recent years -- recklessly assigned to describe mere slights, teasing or inevitable growing pains in childhood relationships.

The bald, cigar-smoking Hamilton seemed a little wounded this week by the resulting controversy, but he wasn't backing down. He has also received some hate e-mail.

"Of course, I wish I would have put it a little different, a little less colorful, but let's not lose track of what the message is," Hamilton said in a CNN interview.

"We're starting to define any action that is a little bit controversial as bullying," he continued. "We're not addressing the fact that the students are running to or running from (something) or never allowed through the zero-tolerance policies of the schools to actually stand up for themselves.

"The one I worry about the most is physical intimidation, and that's certainly not advocating that we meet violence with violence," he said. "But if somebody puts their hands on you, it's up to you and your friends to put a stop to this."

People should "just tell the bully we're not going to put up with this," he said.
 
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(CNN) -- In the last few months, the word rippled through news reports of tragic teen suicides in Connecticut, New York, Nova Scotia and Britain.

It's the same word sometimes used to describe the way reality TV stars treat one another on camera, or how unfriendly office mates interact or why grade school pals stop getting along.

Every parent, teacher and child knows the word: "bullying." But this month, as schools and communities launch fresh campaigns around National Bullying Prevention Month, some are urging more precise use of the B-word.

"Bullying," some researchers say, has been misused and abused in the last few years -- too casually uttered about every hurt, slight and fight, too frequently used in place of "teasing" or "fighting," too often brought up before there's proof it happened.

The very word, some say, has been bullied.

"By calling everything bullying, we're actually failing to recognize the seriousness of the problem," said Elizabeth Englander, a professor of psychology and founder and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University. "It's one of the unfortunate side effects of doing an awareness campaign ... everyone wants to adopt it."

It began a few years ago, as horrifying stories of bullying hit the media and serious awareness began to spread. Educators, lawmakers, parents and children all tried to make sense of it, even as it evolved with the latest social network. But along the way, people sometimes confused bullying with the unfortunate -- but normal -- moments of angry, thoughtless or hurtful behavior.

Actual bullying, many educators and social scientists say, is intentional, repetitive abuse by a powerful person toward a less powerful target.

But not everyone defines it the same way: Although most states have bullying laws on the books, according to the Education Commission of the States, it's handled differently around the country. New Hampshire's law specifies that an act need occur only once -- not multiple times -- to be bullying. Nebraska's law calls on local districts to create bullying policies. Several states recently added provisions to cover cyberbullying -- bullying or harassment through technology. Laws in Massachusetts and New Jersey detail how educators should prevent, report and investigate bullying.

Say the word in almost any school these days, and it will get a quick reaction. In many cases, advocates said, that's helpful. But sometimes, when it's not really bullying, kids miss out on a chance to learn to cope with minor conflicts on their own.

"The label 'bullying' is really incendiary," Englander said. "It ratchets everything up emotionally. It makes it hard to really address, rationally, what the best course of action is."

The people hurt most by the overuse of "bullying," Englander said, are young people most desperate for a solution -- those in the midst of very real, traumatic instances of bullying, students whose pain might be overlooked in a crush of reported cases.

"Being deliberately isolated and laughed at cruelly every single day can be devastating socially and academically, because the target must both endure the present and constantly dread the future," Englander wrote in the book "Bullying and Cyberbulling," released this month. "It's this unrelenting cruelty and the callous nature of such an environment that is watered down when we include every social slight or quarrel under the bullying rubric."

"If everyone's a victim," she wrote, "then no one's a victim."
 
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