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.

"Weeding Out" Homophobes

Two weeks ago in South Carolina, Eddie Walker resigned from his principalship at Irmo High School after a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) was created at Irmo. His resignation letter stated that his religious and professional beliefs “put him at odds” with such a group. Recently, there has been quite a fuss over Walker’s resignation. (See http://www.thestate.com/local/story/417460.html for more information.)

Let’s tell it like it is: An admitted and unapologetic homophobe has chosen to remove himself from a position of authority over children. This is a sign of hope for LGBT youth in public schools, because it indicates that Walker felt it would be futile to attempt to destroy the GSA from within.

Though he was clearly hoping that the school board would ban the GSA, Walker’s resignation doesn’t seem to have hurt the Irmo High School community yet. If anything, it appears to have further cemented the solidarity among queer-positive people in Greenville. Earlier this week, a large crowd gathered outside the district school board meeting to support the foundation of the gay-straight alliance that Walker protested. One Greenville resident spoke about the homophobic murder of her son this past year. The crowd sent a message to the school board about the absolute necessity for the gay-straight alliance that Walker had such a personal problem with.

Though I believe education is a crucial first step in effectively addressing LGBT ignorance, I also believe that it doesn’t hurt to put pressure on homophobes and transphobes to get out and stay out. People who are unwilling to self-educate and open their eyes to ever-growing worlds of sexuality and gender should be made to feel unwelcome. I have no qualms about forcing people like Eddie Walker to confront their own biases, and I have no sympathy for bigots who are put on the spot and called out for their violence. Claims about so-called “reverse discrimination” against heterosexuals are completely bogus.

We need to trash this trumped-up notion of “tolerance” that fosters condescension from heterosexuals and cisgendered people towards LGBT individuals. Let’s dispose of the concept of “tolerance” that does nothing to prevent the stigmatization and phenomenalization of queer and trans people. I wish more public schools would send the message: We will not tolerate anyone who propagates bigotry and hate. Not around here.

To Eddie Walker: Good for you, for standing with your convictions. And good riddance.

Another LGBT Issue More Important Than Gay Marriage

On May 20th, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) put out a report on anti-LGBT hate violence that indicated a 24% increase in incidents from 2006 to 2007. I wish I could say I am surprised to hear this.

Jovida Ross, the Executive Director of Community United Against Violence in San Francisco, stated that the increase indicates that “more people within the queer community are reporting sexual assaults” and considered it a “hopeful sign that [queer people] are coming out of isolation to heal from trauma” and a demonstration of “the positive impact of education and outreach.”

While Ross’ optimistic, “the glass is half full” approach to the rise in reported anti-LGBT violence is refreshing, I remain skeptical. So does Avy Skolnik, National Programs Coordinator of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, who suggests that the actual number of violent anti-LGBT incidents is probably even higher than reported: “We know that the 2, 430 people who called on our organizations in 2007 are only a small fraction of the actual number of LGBT people who experienced bias-motivated violence.”

Over the past year, LGBT-related bullying and violence has particularly stood out as a daunting challenge to the self-determination and self-expression of students in public schools. Perhaps the biggest tragedy was the February 2008 murder of eighth grader Lawrence King by fourteen-year-old classmate Brandon McInerney in California.

King’s death touched close to home for many educators, including myself. I witness verbal and physical harassment regularly in the hallway of my school, often involving words like “faggot” and “sissy,” and it frequently goes unreported by students and teachers alike. This year a large number of violent attacks have been made by and on our students, both inside and outside of the building of my school. While none of these attacks have been explicitly connected to LGBT issues, gender plays so significant a role in the nature of the aggression that it seems inextricably linked to gender identity and expression. Unfortunately, though, bullying is considered a fact of life for middle schoolers - “well, they’re in middle school, what do you expect?” and “it builds character” are used far too often by teachers and administrators as excuses to look the other way.

Fed up with our school’s general complacency about bullying, which is a more pressing concern than bubble sheets in the lives of our students, several teachers – most of us queer women - created a group called Respect For All to meet once a week. Despite its cheesy name, we anticipated that Respect For All would jump-start our school’s progress towards effectively addressing bullying. Unfortunately, founding and maintaining this kind of group has proven extremely challenging. Initially, several unnamed colleagues in the school expressed discomfort about the group, telling administrators that it would take up valuable time even though the meetings took place after school hours. Administrators failed to attend meetings, provide resources, or lend an open ear. Also, few educators have the energy to create and advocate for institutional change while mired in individual lesson planning and the everyday exhaustions of teaching. Between administrative discouragement and a lack of teacher investment, for which I am partly responsible, Respect For All has disbanded.

Combating bullying requires more than the existence of groups like Respect For All – it requires a collaborative effort and careful allocation of schools’ resources. As in many public schools under No Child Left Behind, my administration will abruptly halt regular school programming to give “pop” standardized tests. But it seems unfathomable that a school-wide day of education about the devastating effects of widespread bullying could feasibly take the place of scheduled classes. The efforts of Respect For All to create a “Respect Week” to kick off the 2008-2009 school year are wasted if administrators at our school aren’t willing to make room at the beginning of next school year for anti-bullying, pro-awareness workshops and activities for students.

So what can we do, in schools and outside of schools, to combat anti-LGBT violence?

First, we must advocate for collaborative efforts among teachers, staff, and administrators to confront bullying and violence in schools. Everyone in schools must recognize that classroom time and the learning students do in the education system are about more than test preparation – regardless of what the state and federal governements would lead us to believe. Tearing down No Child Left Behind is crucial in this endeavor.

Second, there needs to be a shift of some of the focus of LGBT organizations and resources away from gay marriage and onto issues like anti-LGBT violence and homophobia and transphobia in the education system and the justice system. Though I’m not inherently opposed to gay marriage, marriage laws will not fundamentally change the fact that violent homophobia and transphobia seem to be socially sanctioned just about everywhere in the nation. We need some of HRC’s - for one example - money and time to be channeled into ensuring universal LGBT and HIV-positive health care access, eradicating LGBT harassment in schools, fighting police brutality, ending the discrimination against undocumented immigrants that affects many LGBT communities, and addressing the abuses of transgender people in United States prisons.

Third, we must challenge the misconception that throwing more people into jail will effectively address anti-LGBT violence. Though Brandon McInerney committed a horrifying act of hatred, trying McInerney as an adult and pushing for a life sentence without parole will not ultimately help to prevent anti-LGBT violence. Though some might convince themselves that it will in order to cope with the anger such a tragedy incites, the prison industrial complex is more about quarantining society’s “unwanteds” than it is about rehabilitation or protection. Even hate crime legislation may not ultimately serve LGBT aims. Due to their selective enforcement, bias laws may ultimately harm "the most disadvantaged members of society and ironically those whom [they] are intended to help,” as Frederick M. Lawrence states in the abstract for his recent book. The criminal justice system is notorious for its blatant targeting of minorities, transgender people, and queer youth, and reinforcing its power by looking to it to solve our problems with anti-LGBT violence without addressing its many problems will only hurt LGBT people more in the end.