Making Sense of the Senseless - and What Can Educators Do? with SSC's Beth Reis

This article by our co-chair, Beth Reis, was just published in Teaching Tolerance Magazine, a project of Southern Poverty Law Center.

Certainly there are potential costs for a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender student's honesty … discrimination by teachers, rejection by "friends" and, yes, even assault, rape, or murder. Are these experiences universal consequences of coming out? No. Do they happen? Yes.

But there's a flawed prevailing assumption: that being out necessarily increases a child's risk over some sort of bully-free baseline. Gay and, especially, gender variant children are often harassed long before consciously deciding whether to be out. It starts in primary grades. Gender variant little kids don't "choose" to be defiant about the larger culture's gender straight-jackets; it's how they're born. They may become more overt about it as they become more aware, at puberty, of its meaning and of their rights, but the harassment is hardly something they bring on themselves. In fact, whether you're gender variant or gay/lesbian/bi or both, coming out sometimes reduces the harassment you experience. It's not so much fun to hurl the vicious, "What are you ... gay or something?!" at a person whose response is a simple, non-defensive "yes."

The secrecy of the closet isn't without its own costs. These can include academic decline if you can't pay attention in class for worrying when a word or a gesture might lead to your life's unraveling. The costs can include profound loneliness. You can never be sure if those who love you are loving the mask or the person. You may deny yourself a supportive peer group because even accessing the gay-straight alliance may feel dangerous. You may deny yourself conversations with caring adults, unsure if you'll lose their esteem. You may forgo the typical adolescent social venues and, instead, find yourself in riskier adult environments. The closet can lead to depression and self-harm.

Read all of:
Making Sense of the Senseless: The Murder of Lawrence King
by Beth Reis, Safe Schools Coalition Co-Chair
Published in Teaching Tolerance Magazine, Number 34, Fall 2008

Web Exclusive! What Can Educators Do?
Teaching Tolerance sat down with Beth Reis and Helen Stillman of the Safe Schools Coalition, which shares the latest research, programs and ideas about preventing and responding to anti-gay harassment in schools to zero in on ways teachers can curb anti-gay bullying.

And: RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Newsweek Gets It Backwards

Newsweek's cover story this month is entitled "Young, Gay and Murdered: Kids are coming out younger, but are schools ready to handle the complex issues of identity and sexuality? For Larry King, the question had tragic implications." [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/147790/page/1 ]

The reporter, Ramin Setoodeh seems to me to have concluded that it was because Larry came out and because he dressed in a vampy way and directed sexual and romantic comments toward boys at school that he was gossiped about, harassed and finally murdered. I would question the chronology. I am totally skeptical about the assumption that his behavior led to the other boys' hostility rather than their hostility fueling his behavior. Because it’s the latter that I have seen so often. A little kid starts out gender variant by nature, even in pre-kindergarten. But often subtly so. Then other kids' discomfort and grown-ups' refusal to address their discomfort or teach about stereotypes leads to their excluding that child from play and refusing to sit with the child at lunch. The teachers continue to hope the problem will go away.

In each grade, the class' meanness grows and teachers still don't talk with them about gender as a continuum rather than a binary concept. They don't even bring up female athletes or male dancers. In each grade, the targeted child tries new strategies to manage the hurt. One year, they will hardly talk at all. Another year, they'll talk nonstop. Often, eventually, they will become defiant and exaggerate what comes naturally: a gender expression others find discomfiting. Their peers' meanness -- and adults' refusal to address it in meaningful ways -- often accompanied by isolation from healthy well-adjusted LGBTQ role models -- precipitates the targeted child's using bitter humor and dramatic flair as a defense. And sometimes that works. Once you are clearly not trying to hide your sexual orientation or gender identity or whatever about you is different, it sometimes makes calling you "gay" anti-climactic and gets kids off your back. Sometimes, it doesn’t work. It didn't work, in the end, for Larry.

Know that I am not saying that transgender youth are necessarily exaggerating anything. I have no idea if Larry would have eventually identified as trans or not. I just imagine that, in time, Larry's spike heels and glitter might have given way to more garden-variety femininity or andogyny. If it hadn't, so what?

The point is that Setoodeh infers from his interviews, especially with Brandon's father, that the way to protect Brandon would have been to change Larry's behavior. But liking someone and wanting them to like you back is not a crime. Middle school is the time when most kids get crushes and tell friends. It doesn't sound to me as if Larry's behavior had risen to the level of stalking at all. If it did, then why haven't all the girls on that pre-Valentine outdoor quad been charged with stalking? Their behavior and Larry's appear to have been the same.

Maybe, rather than changing Larry's behavior, the most effective way to protect Brandon would have been to help him see someone's flirting -- even another boy's -- as flattering instead of insulting. We let homophobia and transphobia go unchallenged all the time and then we seem shocked when a young person becomes enraged at the thought that his peers might think he was gay. We let Brandon down not by failing to prohibit Larry from saying he liked him. We let Brandon down by letting him grow up believing that who Larry was (and who he would be by extension if he liked Larry back) was the worst thing a person could be.

And we let Larry down by letting his whole school grow up hating his difference and making his life there hellish. His femininity and his getting a crush didn't lead to his murder. Brandon's soul-searing transphobia and homophobia did. And adults' behavior, in turn, led to that.