"But hitting back only works if you're stronger than them. Otherwise they'll just kick your ass and things will get worse."
Not true. Bullies tend to pick on people who won't fight back* because they're easy prey. If you demonstrate, even by losing, that you're not willing to take it from them anymore and that you will resist, you are no longer easy prey.
*Obviously this isn't true 100% of the time, but more often than not.
Bullies pick on you as long as the benefit is greater than the cost. If you don't fight back and the school/parents don't provide effective punishment, the cost is zero, so the bully will pick on you whenever it's worth slightly more than nothing to him. If you make the cost "getting kicked in the junk", the bully is only going to pick on you if he thinks it's worth getting kicked in the junk, which is not very often.
You don't need to be stronger, or a better fighter, you just need to make fighting you painful enough that the pain outweighs the gain. This is one of the key principles of deterrence (even on an international scale) -- you don't need to be strong enough to win the fight, you just have to be strong/vicious enough to inflict enough pain that "not fighting" becomes a better option for your opponent.
> *Obviously this isn't true 100% of the time, but more often than not.
See, but that's the crux of the entire issue, and you (nor the OP) have not offered statistics backing this up. Anecdotes are not data, so I don't care if this "worked for me" or whatever.
A bully who gets his ass kicked, or doesn't win soundly enough, could easily escalate the next encounter with a knife or bat or something worse. Or maybe not! I don't know, neither do you or the OP, and so maybe we should not be making authoritative declarations about these things without consulting actual research.
If he escalates with a knife or a bat, that's no longer bullying, that's assault with a weapon.
Although you could say bullying is assault, nobody is going to send the kid to juvenile for punching you. But they will sure as hell will send a kid with a knife to another place to protect the other kids.
Not true. Bullies tend to pick on people who won't fight back* because they're easy prey. If you demonstrate, even by losing, that you're not willing to take it from them anymore and that you will resist, you are no longer easy prey.
*Obviously this isn't true 100% of the time, but more often than not.