jeni I hope you have a great time.
I have been thinking about this issue while on daily constitutional. I had two thoughts. At a risk of stirring further acrimonious debate I will share them with you.
1. We all of us, I suspect, on GN have sore places where something has hurt us in the past. Some of them may be healed over - you'd have to poke quite hard to get a reaction. Other sore places may still be raw and tender. We do not know each other well, sometimes we inadvertently poke someone's sore spot. Many of us find from time to time that our own sore spots get hurt a little. I find it is always interesting to ask myself "why does this upset me". Sometimes we don't even know those sore spots are there until they are bumped into.
2. If I was sitting in an HR office in a workplace and a member of staff came to me and complained of bullying I would first ask - is it a boss, or someone who has power over you (e.g. they can hamper you doing your work, make you look bad in front of the boss etc). Most workplace bullying falls into this category.This does not apply on a forum I think as we are all equal.
Another possibility is that it would be one or more colleagues being perceived as being deliberately unpleasant. One person - they might be being unpleasant, and they may or may not be doing it deliberately. But one colleague, without power, being surly, critical or put-downy would not, to my mind, amount to bullying. There is a problem, of course, - a person on the receiving end and a person who is unable to be pleasant and professional, for whatever reason. But it is not bullying - it is a problem between two adult equals. At the end of the day we can make decisions about whether we are going to let an individual like that get us down. Whether or not we choose to confront them. Whether or not we look for another job where there are nicer people. As Eleanor Roosevelt said "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission". I'd say the same applies regarding hurt feelings because of something posted by someone you don't really know.
Then there are the examples where a group of colleagues deliberately exclude someone from their social group, or make working life difficult for one individual. This is about social exclusion, rejection and sometimes an unwillingness to let someone different join the group. Jointly they may have the power to make the person's working life difficult, by lack of co-operation. I do not think this is very likely in GN. Someone who is falling out with someone on one thread can just walk away and find a congenial group somewhere else. To qualify as bullying on a forum someone would have to be pursued by a group of people from one thread to another until they felt that they were not welcome by the majority of members.
But I do think there are a few personality clashes on GN and people whose style or value system is seriously at odds with other people - so they tend to disagree and to do so repeatedly. These mainly manifest themselves on political or religious discussion threads. But membership of these threads is not compulsory. In fact nothing is and we are not at work and trying to earn a living. Neither are we powerless school kids that have to be in a classroom with others not of their choosing.
My conclusion is that I have never seen bullying in GN. A bit of fairly minor unpleasantness and some hurt feelings from time to time. A bit of irritation here and there and maybe a lack of sensitivity or an unfortunate way of expressing things.
and a thank you from me, too. 
I've packed all my evening dresses and jewellery though so I'm ok!
