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365gay.com 08.06.2009 12:00pm EDT
columnist,
365gay.com 08.06.2009 12:00pm EDT
Culture & Ideas
Across the country, kids are preparing to stuff their backpacks with
notebooks, textbooks, pens and pencils, probably a cell phone and, among the
luckiest, a Nintendo DS.
And, across the country, so many students will be heading back to school
silently hoping that this year will be better than the last. The least of their
worries is that they’ll earn high marks or rate a top test score. Ask a gay high
school student whether he’d rather get an F than get called a “fag” or a
“fruit.”
I remember back-to-school joy. Shopping with my mom for new tennis shoes and
Levi’s when I was in elementary school. Shopping with friends for new tennis
shoes and Levi’s when I was in junior high school and high school. Packing up
unused notebooks and finely sharpened pencils. Opening a new box of 64 Crayola
Crayons and searching for a new color in elementary school. Learning from very,
very, very, very best friends - vvvvbf in our shorthand notes scribbled with
fancy Bic marker colors - what classes we shared and who was mad at whom.
I also remember back-to-school fears.
There were the mundane worries: “What if I forget the combination to my
lock?” “What if I get have to make a speech in class?” “What I have a zit on my
face for class pictures?”
There were the nagging concerns about being embarrassed, “What if other girls
make fun of me because I won’t wear a bra?” “What if they tease me and say I
dress like a boy?”
I didn’t come out until some years after graduation, but I was outed as a
lesbian in high school, even before I myself recognized my sexual
orientation.
I remember it like this: I fell asleep next to a girl friend - not a
girlfriend - on a bus returning from a ski trip in Wisconsin and the rumor went
around, buzz-buzz from seat to seat, that we were kissing.
The episode passed without further incident, without future harassment,
without ruining my school days.
But I was fortunate.
For so many students, out or closeted, questioning or transitioning, the
incidents increase, the harassment escalates. Learning becomes impossible.
School becomes unbearable.
I spent all my years in school in Illinois, where my dad was a teacher and
coach, where my sister is now a certified teacher and where lawmakers have
enacted a measure to explicitly protect students from bullying and harassment on
the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or gender expression.
A report released this summer by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education
Network shows that Illinois GLBT students face extreme levels of harassment and
assault and skip school at alarming rates because of feeling unsafe.
Nearly nine out of 10 Illinois GLBT students experienced verbal harassment
based on sexual orientation in the past year, 43 percent said they had been
physically harassed and more than a fifth said they had been physically
assaulted, according to GLSEN.
The report further stated that 97 percent of Illinois GLBT students regularly
heard the word “gay” used in a negative way in school and 91 percent regularly
heard homophobic remarks, such as “faggot” or “dyke,” from other students in
school.
Illinois, in so many ways, is an exceptional place.
But the anti-GLBT climate in Illinois schools is not exceptional.
GLSEN issued a news release headlined, “Research Shows Alarming Rates of LGBT
Student Victimization in Illinois,” but it also issued releases headlined,
“Research Shows Alarming Rates of LGBT Student Victimization in New Jersey,”
“Research Shows Alarming Rates of LGBT Student Victimization in Ohio,” Research
Shows Alarming Rates of LGBT Student Victimization in Colorado” and “Research
Shows Alarming Rates of LGBT Student Victimization in Pennsylvania.”
Is that the bell ringing? Or an alarm sounding?