Respect"me" is a human rights organisation working to reduce the impact of bullying in Scotland. In this work, some useful conceptual and practice frameworks have emerged, distinguishing between aggression, as legitimate, if sometimes unpleasant, dominance behaviour and violence, which is unethical action involving the intent to harm. Bullying pushes beyond dominance/subordination to render the person not just subject but abject: incapable of finding any peaceful place in the social structure or any capacity for agency or effective action. This distinguishes bullying from other relationships of violence, and calls for intervention which promotes the restoration of agency in the person being bullied. "Hitting back" and "letting them sort it out" are discussed in this context. This also has implications for the definition of bullying. While emerging definitions of bullying have been useful, they have also been broad. At a practice level, we have ourselves generally avoided definitional questions as part of a non-labelling strategy. However, the increasing penetration of bullying discourse in legal and workplace contexts (with potentially serious implications for the accused and for host organisations) requires more careful specification of what bullying is and what it is not. Here again, we believe the concept of agency can prove useful. (Contains 1 note.)