Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools

I always found it really frustrating that a "zero tolerance" policy to bullying seemed to disproportionately affect people who eventually fight back.

I would guess it's a combination of "nobody sees the first hit" (since your attention is elsewhere, of course) and that bullies get quite good at testing boundaries and thus know how to avoid detection.

But, really, it's truly frustrating that as I child I was bullied relentlessly, and when I finally took my parents advice and stood my ground, I was expelled from school (due to zero tolerance). Those bullies continued to torment some other kids, of course.

This is far from an uncommon situation, over the years I've heard many more scenarios like this.

I was bullied in elementary school and middle school. I fought back and generally if not always, beat the main person who harassed me. I mean, I remember in 7th grade one kid used to harass me daily for not taking a shower after gym (which I didn't 'cause the showers involved more bullying). I eventually (2/3rds of the way through the year) picked him up by the heels and slammed his head again the gym locker as hard as I could, let him fall head-first to the cement floor afterwards. He didn't bother me again ... But ... it didn't change anything overall, it didn't stop either me being in the harassed group or harassment at the school.

In fifth grade, however, one teacher confronting the bullying did change the entire tenor of things for that year and the next (then I moved and graduated).

Which is to say, all the posters here hot to recommend fighting back as some kind of solution. Stop, just don't. Schools need systems for stopping bullying and those system are social changes. "What about the fight-backers" is someone's cowboy trip.