Workplace or learning environment abuse & 'the grass' complex

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share something today.

Workplace abuse, boundary incursions, disruptive/bullying behaviour and when to call a halt on trying to deal with it alone without internalising the self as a grass or a snitch.

There is a guy on my teaching course in his 40's, he is a Psychology post grad, he identifies as ADD. He is a constant disruptive force and boundary pusher in the classroom environment.

We have what I considered at the time a silly and slightly childlike set of classroom conduct rules in our Post Grad classroom. We did this when we first started our teaching course.

It takes up speaking over others, inappropriate language, respect for the learning environment and all the sort of things that protect students and make their learning experience safe and productive.

This guy spends six hours of my main lecture calling out tutors on their dress sense/choice of work sheets/ typos/ etc as well as indulging in constant sarcastic and unhelpful banter whilst tutors are talking, to the extent that often we can't hear our teachers due to this fool shouting and crowing from his spot behind us.

He has added sexist and inappropriate jokes to his disruption his latest being after safeguarding training and in the presence of myself and two young female students. 'What is the point of being a lecturer if you can't **** your students?'

Yeah ha ha right are we seeing boundary incursions of note? A pushing of the limits to show that HE is not limited whilst we are demonstrated to be limited by our adherence to protocol.

To cut to the chase I called him out, several hundred red flags, disrupted lessons and inappropriate comments into the course, I had enough.

I asked him to 'Please shut up.' I had been watching my lecturers lips move offering info on our research project for ten minutes and was unable to hear due to this guy shouting and laughing behind me.

For me this is confronting the behaviour not the person and this is for me a reasonable thing to do. I have boundaries and needs and I am paying for the right to hear my lecturers not Mr innuendo and banter.

I expected a 'Aw sorry mate, got you and yes my bad.' After all we are trainee teachers and behaving professionally is what we are taught to do. Admittedly the seminars we do can be a place to let off the steam of teaching practice, but we have respectful limits on appropriate times to speak and the language that we use needs to be considerate and inoffensive.

What this guy did was use a presentation to the entire class to call me out on being intolerant. In his description of Carl Rogers Self Actualisation he said to the entire class whilst looking at me.

'PEOPLE may not like me, but I am as I am and I can't help that, so PEOPLE should be more tolerant.'

This is the same man who told my my male lecturer in front of the whole class that by taking his wife's name and adding it to his own he was showing who wore the pants.

This was said knowing that the lecturer had recently divorced.

This is the guy after safeguarding training looked me in the eye and said 'What's the point of teaching if you can't **** your students?'

All these things red flagged for me and on Monday having had my learning disrupted for two hours I called him out politely and publicly.

He chose to make it personal, to tell me I was intolerant and to do so on a platform that allowed me no voice to respond to issues of 'tolerance' and self regulation' in a working or classroom environment.

I am Dyspraxic, I am CPTSD, I am a care leaver who was abused institutionally and for me to have my reasonable and open confrontation of his poor behaviour become an issue of me having no right to challenge, me having no right to disagree and me having no right to respond and have that framed as MY intolerance left me at the point where......I check my feelings.

To the internet, to read disruptive behaviour, boundary incursions, gas lighting and the link to violence once again.

I read these things when I was counselled for domestic abuse and I was taught the value of boundaries, what protected characteristics means and why red flags need to be acted on and made public.

Today I read them again, because today I realised that I cannot and should not deal with this alone. This man is violating my rights, he is violating my right to learn without disruption, to learn without inappropriate behaviour being an inescapable part of my learning day, he has violated my right to personal boundaries and my right to ask for respect as a woman who has been abused and as an equal fellow in a cohort of learners.

I was not wrong to confront his behaviour, it is disruptive, boundary pushing, sexist and inappropriate. RED FLAGS ARE THERE

He was wrong to respond by attacking me as a person and diminishing my right to be in a space where I am not subjected to abusive or humiliating language or behaviour. He minimized his behaviour, blamed his spectrum disorder and set about shaming me for challenging him by using a platform of authority that I could not respond to.

I have made an official complaint to my faculty. I agonised over it. I don't want to be the overly emotional Diva who flags the bloke who is just the cheeky chappy being who he is. ( His version of everything)

But he is not this. He is a potential abuser testing his boundaries and the boundaries of others and he is intelligent enough to rein it in for observations of him teaching and rein it in for people of importance watching and he tests what he can get away with and he targets people using his behaviourist subject specialism.

He pushes a button and watches for a response. He is used to this going unnoticed. I am a hyper vigilant trauma survivor and I NOTICE EVERY LITTLE THING.

I see the switch from good personality to bad one, I see the projection changes depending on the audience, I see the manipulation, the violence of language and speech and I KNOW this bloke is a potential danger because he smoke screens like a pro and he plays to the crowds greatest worry. The worry that he might target them as misunderstanding, intolerant, maybe prejudicial and none liberal.

This is why I have bust him. When you kick the ball in the game and you meet someone who responds by kicking you, behind a plant and with a plausible reason why it was not meant to be like that..... then.....YOU FLAG and you flag and you paper trail and document and you go on record. Because that is the beginning not a 'one off'

Because as bad a you might feel and no matter how much you might second guess how others will see this choice, you can guarantee A) You are not alone in seeing what this guy/woman is doing - there is always at least one or two others who have noticed or been on the receiving end and B) You CAN trust your instinct because you have BEEN THERE, sometimes multiple times and these creeps rely on people NOT saying what they see and being too frightened by the witnessed personal attacks that follow any sort of fair criticism to pursue observations further.

You know when you watch someone shuffle their feet awkwardly, look at the floor and say.....That is just Tom **** or Harry being Tom **** or Harry, that is their way, it is who they are. ( yeah narcissistic and thus environmentally and emotionally dangerous if allowed to flourish unchecked)

How not so amazing to discover that Tom **** and Harry ( excuse gender it is a cliche and this stuff definitely applies to women) are the three most poisonous toxic individuals running freely through a workplace or any communal type endeavour. What naturalizes their behaviour, covers it and accommodates it is FEAR from others of being on the receiving end.

This is why I took it beyond a peer to peer call out and chat. I was hammered by this guy today publicly for DARING to ask him to be quiet.
That's the last red flag I need. It has now gone to faculty and my red flag is loud and clear on every issue.

I WILL NOT fight this person by myself. I will not allow myself to be put at risk from his narcissistic and misogynistic behaviour and I will make myself safe and take myself from the front line in confrontation by passing it to people more able to close his **** down than I am.

I went through 'grass' feelings but ultimately I am not able to have an open and fair conversation with this individual without it turning into gas lighting, blame switching , personal affront and generally angry attacks on myself.

I don't do that now. None of us should do that because we KNOW what we SEE and HEAR even if others don't. And we KNOW when we need to turn it over to a higher level that is functioning for general human good. Not just for ourselves which is important, but for vulnerable others who are likely to come into contact with Mr or Miss Toxic who feel free to do as they wish minus confrontation.

Say no to any form of abuse and report this stuff. There are no prizes for enduring vile abuse. If anyone knows this we do. I am still feeling rattled for going the next level and reporting, because I was raised never to grass or tell. But damned if I am going to take any more of this sort of **** in my life. It's not by job to sort out abusers in my learning place, it is the job of the faculty. I sort out the abusers in the classroom where I teach.

I do this in my classroom, as a teacher I safeguard my students from inappropriate behaviour and I make sure their space is a safe one. I expect that from my own teachers or managers as well.

None of us should be fighting abuse alone in any workspace or learning space or home space. My message is that we are cultured to keep the secrets inside. It is hard to get past that but we must accept that taking on abuse is not a one player game. We need openness and support to get this sort of stuff on the radar and not sliding neatly underneath.

Cheers all . This was long but I felt I needed to share it.