&gt;I believe bullies target what is different.<p>Fully agree.  I think the problem is how people react to different differences.  Kid who has clear physical disability getting bullied is seen immediately as a problem and dealt with.*  Special education children getting bullied aren&#x27;t quite as well responded to (lots of justification by adults that the children are treating them differently because society treats them differently), but any overt bullying is still squished.  But being bullied for being different in just social skills but not other means... many adults will look at the bullying as a natural reaction to the victim being socially awkward instead of as bullying.  And there is a bit of truth in that, because the difference between ostracizing someone who is socially awkward because you just don&#x27;t want to be around them and ostracizing someone who is socially awkward as a way to bully them is not that clear cut.  At the end of the day, the kid ends up ostracized either way.<p>*If they recognize it.  Many forms of treating someone differently are hard to recognize if you haven&#x27;t experienced them.  A classical example is people asking extra questions to gay people that they would never ask to straight people, even though the questions themselves are mostly benign.  Regardless of how harmless the questions themselves are, it is still treating them differently, which has subconscious effects.