Open Letter to Oprah

Dear Oprah,

First, thank you so much for your recent show that featured the mothers of 11-year old suicide victims Carl Hoover-Walker and Jaheem Herrera . You are wonderful for launching this conversation about the devastating consequences of bullying and what we can do about it.

That said, I was really disappointed that, despite both boys having found anti-gay bullying so gut-wrenching, your professional guests addressed bullying without ever talking about the URGENT importance of addressing homophobia and prejudice through EDUCATION. The best bullying programs and the best psychologists working one-on-one with bullied kids won’t put an end to anti-gay bullying. Until we’re willing to have teachers talk about gay people respectfully, kids will use homophobia as the weapon that our silence puts in their hands.

What else do I wish you would do?
1. Check out www.safeschoolscoalition.org.
2. Have someone on the show to talk about the work of the Safe Schools Coalition.
3. Invite Kim Westheimer to talk about the Human Rights Campaign's wonderful Welcoming Schools project.
4. Have Debra Chasnoff of Groundspark talk about their amazing film-based curricula.
5. Invite Stephanie Brill of Gender Spectrum to talk about her unbelievable work with schools.
6. Invite the folks from the Committee for Children, Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League to talk specifically about how their bullying programs address bias-based bullying, and anti-LGBT bullying in particular.
7. Ask principals and curriculum directors to put aside preparing children for high stakes testing just one week every year and focus for that week on prejudice reduction
~ a day about religious diversity and, at older grades, prejudice against the religious (of various faiths) and prejudice against the unchurched;
~ a day about immigration, refugees and, at older grades, about xenophobia and its costs all over the world;
~ a day about race and the history of racism and about white privilege and what it means to be an ally (actually that would be part of each of the 5 days);
~ a day about sexual diversity -- about families with lesbian, gay, bi and trans parents/guardians, about the contributions of LGBT people and, at older grades about homophobia and transphobia and the history of anti-LGBT brutality; and
~ a day about women who've changed the world and, in later grades about misogyny and violence against women and what some men and women are doing to change that.

If schools devoted just one week early in the year, every single year starting in elementary school, it could change climates dramatically. In combination with good anti-bullying programs, it could save the lives of the Carls and Jaheems, and the Gwen Araujos and Matthew Shepards too.

It is time schools worked to reduce the PREJUDICES that underly the most horrific bullying and not just the bullying (the symptom). Please take the lead on this, Oprah. Nobody has a voice like you do.

Beth Reis
Public Health Educator and Co-Chair of the Safe Schools Coalition
10501 Meridian Avenue N
Seattle, WA 98133
206-296-4970

P.S. I hope your staffers watch the blogosphere, Oprah, because I couldn't find a place on your web site to say more than 180 characters and I couldn't figure out how to do this in that much space.

Article: Homophobia damaging lives across Europe-EU study

"From their early years, the derogative words used for gays and lesbians at schools teach them to remain invisible," said the study, published on Tuesday.

Read Homophobia damaging lives across Europe-EU study
31 Mar 2009 - Source: Reuters

GLSEN's New PSAs a Mixed Blessing

Let me begin with congratulations on a social marketing campaign that will totally get people talking and thinking all over the country. GLSEN, the Ad Council and ArnoldNYC should be entirely proud of that. And their teachers' guide, downloadable free from http://thinkb4youspeak.com/, is awesome.

That said, I hope that teacher trainers all over the country will ask teachers NOT to take the ads literally and NOT to try their strategy at home ... insulting young people to get them to stop insulting others. It's like hitting kids to get them to stop hitting. While it may be funny in the context of an ad and when you aren't the youth in question, it's neither effective nor ethical in the real world. The ads are meant to get people talking, NOT to model good ways to intervene when people say, "That's so gay!" to mean something is stupid or boring.

I use a strategy a teacher once taught me. I use my own name, Beth, as an analogy and ask the offender how they think I would feel if I heard people call disgusting things "so Beth" 99 times a day. Using my name or my own identity is way preferable to using that of the student. Attacking a student, even in a sarcastic way, only reinforces the idea that meanness is funny. It doesn't build empathy.

Another strategy is so simple that my niece used it successfully when she was about 9 years old to shut down a harassing situation. Two girls were surveying their class on the playgound about which of two classmates they liked better. Sarah said, "That's so mean!" One of the offenders tried to blame the other and Sarah just repeated, "I don't care; it's still so mean." After about the 3rd time she called their survey mean, they gave it up altogether.

Anyway, I hope teachers -- and students for that matter -- will find some alternative to the "That's so Emma and Julia" of the ads. Maybe it sounds saccharine, but life is too short to run around hurting one another, especially in the name of prejudice reduction.

Say What? The "Think Before You Speak" Campaign

GLSEN, together with The Ad Council, has created the thinkb4youspeak.com campaign.

Think Before You Speak

This multimedia public service advertising campaign - which includes the videos above and below - and several others - is designed to address the use of anti-LGBT language among teens. The campaign aims to raise awareness among straight teens about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as “that’s so gay” are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens’ vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.

This campaign aims to raise awareness about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce and prevent the use of homophobic language in an effort to create a more positive environment for LGBT teens. The campaign also aims to reach adults, including school personnel and parents; their support of this message is crucial to the success of efforts to change behavior.

"SAY WHAT?" on the website is where you can click on a floating word to see what it actually means, or actually doesn't mean. (See the left column on the website.)

Think Before You Speak - Cashier

GLSEN has also created an Educator's Guide to assist middle and high school educators in presenting the various components of this campaign to students, framing and discussing the ads in class, and extending student learning about the negative consequences of homophobic language and anti-LGBT bias.

Parents are also encouraged to Say Something Original and pledge to support safe schools efforts, and speak to your children’s teachers about using the Educator's Guide to the Campaign.

In an October 7, 2008 article in The New York Times, author Stewart Elliott wrote:

FOR the first time since the Advertising Council was founded in 1942, the organization — which directs and coordinates public service campaigns on behalf of Madison Avenue and the media industry — is introducing ads meant to tackle a social issue of concern to gays and lesbians.

The campaign, which is scheduled to be announced by the council in Washington on Wednesday, will seek to discourage bullying and harassment of teenagers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Read the article: Advertising: A Push to Curb the Casual Use of Ugly Phrases

Find out more about this campaign: thinkb4youspeak.com

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.

This is not what bravery looks like.

A teacher colleague (and friend) wrote me today about what he called my “courage” for “standing up, being visible, saying the truth, taking risks, being a leader, teaching teachers and policy makers, changing the climate …”

I have to say: This is not what bravery looks like. I appreciate the compliment from the bottom of my heart, but this is not bravery. Robert Anthony once said, “Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway." I have rarely been afraid. Because, unlike teachers, I flit into schools as a guest speaker, and the institution has less power over me. And because I happen to work for a city and county and public health department that have always had my back. The voters in this place and the honorable people they elect passed ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation decades ago. And my supervisors and their supervisors have always stood up for the need to protect the health and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender variant and transgender youth and families of King County.

Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism under threat of losing my job or, God forbid, my spouse and children. I have never faced those threats. Teachers all over the country do that every day.

Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as people were repeatedly stealing your identity and cyberharassing you … as happened to this teacher friend twice this year. Students set up false web pages purporting to be him and containing lies about him. Twice. Courage is remaining in the profession and continuing to teach social justice, even as the student "contributors" to those fake sites go unpunsihed.

Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as graffiti about you continues to shout from the walls of the restrooms, and the school refuses for weeks to paint over it. That’s what my colleague Kyle did this year, his senior year in high school. He, too, was cyberbullied and received death threats to his face and online. Courage is to keep going to school every day and even continuing to insist that the school stand up for your friends in the gay-straight alliance, knowing that you will graduate and be gone.

Courage would be having a teacher keep mocking the way you speak, as has been happening to my grandson this year in high school, and still going to class and trying to pass! He tells me he hears the N-word all the time at school and teachers don’t intervene. Being an African-American kid in a mostly Caucasian school for the first time in his life is taking a toll on him this year. And yet, he goes back every day. That’s courage.

I think that those of us who don’t work in schools sometimes forget just how fragile the safety of teachers and students really is. Or we think it must be better in 2008. Or we imagine that we would have courage like that of Martin Luther King and be willing to die and leave our spouse a widow and single parent for our principles.

It’s easy to be glib when you lose perspective like that. Earlier this year, I spoke at the Northwest premiere of the film It’s STILL Elementary. I said, almost with disdain, that ten years ago, when the filmmakers were scouring the country looking for teachers and principals willing to be filmed addressing gay issues in schools … I said that nobody in Washington State was brave enough, even if they were addressing sexual diversity, to allow the camera into the classroom. We hunted and couldn’t find a single school. I said it as if it were an indictment, a description of cowardice. I’m ashamed of myself. I apologize.

“Cowardice” is not even remotely a description of a teacher who intervenes in anti-gay or anti-racist bullying and who finds ways to dispel students’ stereotypes and replace them with accurate portrayals of sexually and racially diverse people … and who decides not to risk being allowed to continue that life-saving work by going on camera. I apologize for the implied disrespect.

I promise to keep cognizant of just how scary life is – still in 2008 -- for so many school employees and students.

-- by Beth Reis

Don't Take it Personally...

As the end of the school year approaches, it becomes easier and easier to take what students say as a personal attack. To successfully do my job and be a responsible adult, I must understand that the words and actions of my students have more to do with themselves than with anybody else - but with less than three weeks left, I can feel myself losing patience and perspective. On my more selfish and self-victimizing days, it can feel like stepping into my classroom inherently means I consent to constant ridicule and criticism. This line of thought is absolutely ridiculous, I realize - if there is anyone wielding an inordinate and oppressive amount of power in my classroom, it is me.

Instead of placing "blame" on students for whom cruelty to others is simply a necessary part of their adolescence and nothing to do with me specifically, I consider the crux of the problem my lack of community around LGBT issues. While several teachers at my school are out to their peers as gay or lesbian, none of my colleagues or friends who teach at other schools are, to my knowledge, explicitly out to their students. Many educators I know can and do discuss abstract instances of homophobia – when one student calls another a "faggot," for example. But I do not personally know any other teachers who have watched one of their students point at them and say "I can't stand her class because I don't like gay people" (in a conference among this students' parents and all of his teachers, my colleagues). I also do not know of any other teachers who have received a message from one of their students reading "shut the fuck up you fucken pussy licker faget," as I did a few months ago from one of my sixth grade students.

The way my "authority" is undermined through these displays of homophobia causes me much more anxiety than I often admit. While my sixth graders may be twelve years old, their parents and many of the people in their spheres are not. From what I have seen and heard about, it is considered a matter of fact that parents often share or even encourage their student's homophobic sentiments. When a queer or trans teacher is criticized, it is impossible to know who – if anybody – will step up to defend us. Merely having used the word "queer" to identify myself to students could be grounds for increased scrutiny or suspicion.

When my aforementioned student stated in a parent-teacher conference that he didn't like my class because I am queer, I did not respond. To do so would imply that I need to defend myself or my identity – which I refuse to do. I did appreciate it when one of the other teachers at the meeting firmly established that the student needs to get over his issues with gay people if he expects to continue in public schools, where he will learn about "all different kinds of people." However, it was difficult to determine how the student's parents were reacting to this message. His father sat there and appeared to scowl.

Just two weeks ago, the mother of a student who is failing my class came to the school to speak to the Assistant Principal. She blamed her daughter's grades and disruptiveness on "a personality difference" between her and me. Her daughter has done no classwork and no homework for months, and she distracts other students during class on a daily basis. This student is currently failing multiple classes, and I have spoken with her other teachers and discovered that they take similar issue to her work and behavior. But for some reason, this student's mother did not use "personality difference" excuses with regards to any of the other teachers. When I brought this student to the Principal’s Office during my lunch period recently, it seemed as though the principal gave her more credit than she gave me.

Some would call me paranoid for feeling this way. However, considering the current climate in public education – which pushes administrators to do anything to minimize complaints and criticisms leveled against their schools – I worry that it would be easier to turn against an openly queer and gender variant teacher than to stand by me.

This brings up the question: Who bears the burdens to “be careful” in public schools? It seems that queer and trans teachers are weighed down more heavily by the burden of “carefulness” than some others. When I had my students read an article about the homophobic murder of Lawrence King, I was admonished by several colleagues to ‘be careful” bringing up such “mature” topics with middle school students. Another teacher at my school, though - a white, straight, normatively gendered man - apparently didn't feel any obligation to "be careful" last week when many teachers overheard him shouting to an eighth grade boy "What happened, did you lose your vagina?"

When I inform my colleagues that I am out as queer to my students, I often get “wow, how is that?” and “how does your administration feel about that?” Many people express incredulity that administrators and parents could have possibly not voiced some kind of problem. I almost sense a vague "tsk tsk" in some people's voices, as though I should know what to expect in being out, and particularly in allowing queerness and sexual orientation to arise as fodder for discussion, in my classroom. If I lose my job for allowing students to learn about such "mature" topics as the etymology of the word "faggot" or what "homophobia" means, then in the minds of some people I will have deserved it.

If it were not a large risk to one’s job security, I know for a fact that many more educators would come out and be open about their identities. If it did not entail putting your neck on the line in some way, more educators would push students to think critically about homophobia, transphobia, and social justice. As it stands, the emphasis of the public education system and the national government are to blame teachers for as much as possible, which puts pressure on teachers to cram every minute of every lesson with content that No Child Left Behind has deemed "valuable." I feel I constantly have to be careful, and that all it takes is one wrong step - and I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking 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.

Hazing gone awry?! What’s that?!

Have you ever been so stunned you could barely speak. I’m over it, but that’s how I felt after reading an article just now from The Buffalo (New York) News. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. Just staggered.

To begin with, the headline speaks of “Hazing Gone Awry” … instead of “Hazing By Rape.” In defense of the newspaper, rape was not the charge. The article explains that three high school varsity athletes are accused of what amounts – in my mind – to anally raping two junior varsity players on a team bus. In New York State, you get 12½ to 25 years for forced intercourse but only 2⅓ to 7 years for forced insertion of a foreign object. Go figure. Could it be that the crime more often perpetrated on one sex is taken many times more seriously than the one more often perpetrated on another? But don’t worry; it was just hazing gone awry.

Not angry yet? OK. Further down, the article explains that, in addition to the students, “Two coaches aboard the bus were charged with endangering the welfare of a child” for failing to intervene. Excuse me? These were the chaperones! Not conspiracy to commit rape? Not even accessory? What kind of court system would let this unconscionable behavior pass for a misdemeanor? “Endangering” is what people have been charged with for cursing in front of a child or driving recklessly with a child on board. Allowing the rape of a child is just “endangering”? Oh my.

Chances are, neither the adults nor the student offenders will get jail time anyway. The reporters did a good job of citing the outcomes of similar cases. Generally, offenders have gotten away with pleading to a reduced charge and doing a little community service. Some will say they shouldn’t go to jail. In fact, the article quotes professor and psychologist Doug P. Jowdy’s opinion that “healing … those responsible for the incident” (whom I would call offenders, but he doesn’t) is more appropriate than their incarceration.

But, if it were possible, it gets even more disturbing the further you read! Susan Lipkin, a psychologist and author is quoted as saying, “There is a tradition to initiate new members on a team, particularly on male athletic teams … It normally involves older team members taking steps to humiliate and demean the boy at the lowest level … The common trend over the past five years or more has been basically to turn a boy into a girl by penetration ... In other words, they get engaged in homosexual play and then they call the victim gay because he’s been sodomized. Ironically, it’s the perpetrators that are committing the homosexual act.”

Where do I start? Let’s begin at the end: “homosexual play”? Since when is rape playful? Who was feeling playful, the haters? One presumes they were feeling, instead, entitled, contemptuous, blood-thirsty and possibly aroused. Or is it the bystanders we should think of as feeling playful? One hopes that at least some of them were feeling nauseated, terrorized, and as helpless as the targeted youths. Were the adults on the bus feeling playful, perhaps? More likely … God, I have no idea what adults who stood by and let this happen could have been feeling. At least the psychologist goes on to point out the irony of the whole equation.

But just as troubling as the rape-as-play concept is the notion that turning a boy into a girl is the worst possible humiliation. Not turning him into a pig or an object. A girl. Could the psychologists and the reporters please give even passing mention to the need to address misogyny starting long before high school, please?

And the equating of female with gay? I know I’m supposed to feel insulted … but as a woman or a gay person? Where are the conversations with students about both “accusations” being compliments, at least according to some families’ values? Have schools in upstate New York been having those conversations this week? Because we need so much more than lectures about the rules. Or even in-depth classes to teach skills for standing up to bullies and to explore the value of breaking a code of silence. We need classes that speak to the awful, ugly prejudices that lead to such horrific acts. Through literature. Through history. Through civics and geography. We need for schools to take on the misogyny and the homophobia that consummate their relationship in rape.

Finally, let’s revisit Dr. Lipkin’s use of the word “tradition.” If this is a tradition, and I agree that it is, then there are victims of last year’s hazing and the year before’s walking among us. Those who have not yet resorted to suicide have undoubtedly begun self-medicating, dropped out, and/or run away to the streets. We need a community commitment to track them down and offer them wrap-around mental health services at no cost. It’s our institutions that allowed – even facilitated -- their being tortured. I suspect most of them have at the very least given up sports, but they are in our homes and in some cases our schools. And still on most teams are the bystanders: a whole lot of young people carrying huge burdens of guilt and shame for not intervening. We need to work towards their healing, to stop the cycle of this incredible “tradition” today.

How will early and meaningful prevention education happen? How will mental health services for targets and bystanders happen? Only with, as Dr. Jowdy suggests, courageous leadership. From the superintendent, the principal and the athletic director. From the school board, the mayor and the governor. From the parents and guardians. From student government and the clergy. And from the prosecutor and the legislature.

One last thing: Wilson High School in upstate New York is hardly unique. This sort of sexual assault in the guise of hazing has happened this year in every state in the union. It usually isn’t held in the light by brave targets and their families or by the press. So thank you to these young men and to Buffalo News reporters Paul Westmoore and Aaron Besecker and their editors.

But considering that it happens in your back yard, too, what are you doing for the walking wounded? And what are you doing to help your staff and students to explore the values that could make your school district (or your state or university) the next home to what someone will call “hazing gone awry”?