I NSI G H T
SCHOOLS
WILL IT GET BETTER? →Despite
progressive policies and media attention homophobic bullying remains a dangerous problem Writer Michael Pihach
S
hameal Daniel knew being gay in high school would be tough the day a student told him, “You should be dead.” Daniel, an artsy and outspoken student who loves painting, listening to Linkin Park and watching Glee, says he was targeted by homophobic bullies beginning in Grade 9. “It started with kids calling me a fag. You know, the usual stuff,” says Daniel, who moved to Toronto from the island of Antigua in the Caribbean when he was nine. He’s now 18 and in Grade 12. None of his tormentors got suspended because the bullies at his school would pretend to act innocent whenever a teacher intervened, he says. “Except for the time when students threw rocks and snowballs at me,” he adds. Then there was the time a student threatened Daniel with a knife because, according to Daniel, he “didn’t like the fact I was gay.” In a school with no gay-straight alliance or LGBT resources, Daniel felt utterly alone, and often contemplated suicide. “I’d tell my friends I wanted to kill myself, and they’d start crying,” he says. Daniel is now a student at the Triangle Program, an alternative school for LGBT students seeking refuge from homophobic bullying. It’s a story no friend or parent wants to hear. However, in light of a recent spike in media reports in the US and Canada about gay, lesbian and transgender teens killing themselves due to homophobic bullying, Daniel’s brush with attempted suicide sounds all too familiar. Today’s news, it seems,
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November 2010
has become a eulogy to gay teens bullied to death because of their sexuality (or perceived sexuality). Homophobic bullying in schools is very real — even in Toronto, a city’s whose school boards have equity policies that are the envy of progressive policy makers in most parts of the world. Still, the system educators, save for a few leaders, are not responding quickly enough to stop homophobic bullying. Interventions in schools are “quite often reactive, not proactive,” says Anna Penner, program coordinator of TEACH, an anti-homophobia workshop proj-
“I WONDERED HOW ANYONE COULD EVER LOVE ME.... I STARTED TO CUT MYSELF.” ect led by students between the ages of 16 and 22. Started in 1992 by Planned Parenthood Toronto, TEACH workshops encourage students to think critically about the negative impact homophobia has on LGBT teens. Schools will invite TEACH students into classrooms to speak… but often, it’s too late. something that has already happened to a youth, instead of cutting it off at its root,” says Penner. Lives could have been saved. In 2007, there was Shaquille Wisdom, a 13-year-old student at Ajax High School in Durham Region, who hung himself because of homo-
phobic bullying. Recently, there was Tyler Clementi, 18, a freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who plummeted off the George Washington Bridge after his dorm mate allegedly secretly streamed video of Clementi having sex with a man; Asher Brown, 13, from Houston, Texas, who shot himself in the head after being bullied at school (earlier Brown had revealed to his stepfather that he was gay). Mere hours before Spirit Day, a national LGBT anti-bullying campaign on Oct 20 that urged people to wear purple, Corey Jackson, a 19-year-old student at Oakland University in Michigan hanged himself. The headlines go on. “Youth who take their own lives have been pushed into a corner and made to think that there is no joy or option for them. They’ve been made to feel that way because of their peers,” says Jennifer Fodden, executive director of Toronto’s LGBT Youth Line, a toll-free Ontariowide peer-support phone service for youth in crisis. Fodden feels the media reports on gay teen suicide do not necessarily indicate an acute crisis. In light of all the coverage, however, she says, “calls to the Youth Line have gone up.” The spike in gay suicide reports is what prompted syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage to launch the It Gets Better project, a popular anti-suicide Internet campaign urging people to make YouTube videos that stress the message to LGBT youth that life is worth living. Several celebrities have recorded videos, including Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris,
Perez Hilton. Even US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and President Barack Obama have gone viral. “For every youth that commits suicide, there are hundreds of others who think about it, or make attempts,” says Fodden. “A light is being shone on something that has happened consistently, and quietly, for a long period of time.” In 2009, Egale Canada, a gay rights lobby group, pioneered the First National Climate Survey on Homophobia in Canadian Schools, a report that surveyed thousands of students to identify and measure the extent of homophobia in high schools. It found that three-quarters of LGBT students feel unsafe in at least one place at school, such as a change room or hallway; six out of 10 reported being verbally harassed about their sexual orientation. The numbers are higher for trans students. “I think it’s a crisis when we’re ignoring it and allowing this to go on,” says Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale. Kennedy says Canada’s federal government isn’t taking the stand it should to eradicate homophobia in schools. “They have to start talking about this,” she says. Egale is currently seeking support for MyGSA.ca, its website that shows parents, educators and LGBT students how to start a gaystraight alliance (GSA) and make schools safer. Egale’s annual fundraiser this year raised $60,000 for the initiative, which includes assembling gay-straight alliance kits for schools.