ManicLewis21 Wrote:i just wonder if he had that special friend with him, his backbone. did he have one? did he have a friend to walk with him, to be with him? i think every gay child should have that one friend. to be there. forever. be each others backbones. support each other. and make it out of school alive. it almost burst into tears when i read the paragraph about them shoving batteries down his throat. even as i write this that breaks my heart. its one of the few reasons i have wanted to be an art teacher. i want to be there at the root of all evil. the soulness i want to intervine and strike down this wall. between homophobes and gays. i want to stand up for these children. i would have never allowed it to pass. i light've broken the students fingers for doing such an act. i dont care if would lose my job. i cant bare to watch another gay be tormented.
i get what your saying but i think every child in general( because gay children aren't the victims of bullying) should have that friend to be thier back bone.
10-19-2011, 05:04 PM (Edited 10-20-2011, 12:39 AM by Genersis.)
I always found the whole cheerleader and football team thing in the US as a catalysis for bullying.
It kind of places a crown on these peoples heads, and makes people look at them, and some of them look at themselves, as "better" than everyone else.
It's very sad to see.:frown:
But yeah...I hate bullying obviously with my experience with it...
i love how media blow up jocks to be big-buff- and popular. which in turn makes the actual jocks thing they are awesome like that. i actually know some jocks that arent corrupt imbeciles. i blame media and bad 1990 movies lol
Xandor Wrote:When I was in high school and 17, I was bullied for being gay. I was not the effeminate type. But people suspected. I hated sports and had nothing to do with girls. So I was automatically labeled as gay. It started out as taunting, namecalling. Stuff I could very easily ignore. But then, later, it got physical. I remember one time in the gym locker room a bunch of jocks decided to give me a hard time. They pushed and shoved me, slammed me into lockers. All the while, they expressed their hate of "fags". It culminated with a hard punch to my stomach. I fell to the ground in intense pain. I had never felt anything like it,. The gym teacher eventually came out to see what was going on. He chased the jocks away and asked me if I was alright. "Do I LOOK alright to you?!" I asked. He took me to the nurse's office where she checked me out. No permanent damage. I was so enraged that I insisted on seeing the principal. He showed up 15 minutes later. I told him exactly what happened. While he was apologetic, he said that there was very little he could do. I suggested suspension, but he brushed that off. After all, the jocks were the football team. And they had a big game coming up. No, can't have that. I threatened to go to the newspapers and the police. THAT got him thinking. A few days later, I came to school to find that the guilty parties had been suspended, and not permitted to play in that Friday night's game. Well, of course, I was seen as the bad guy. I was responsible for us losing that game because I stood up for what was right. It took weeks for me to live it down.
Ha, sounds like not much has changed since then. the administration at my school had the same attitude. Nothing they can do about bullying, students on a popular team were untouchable.
I remember one kid named Gary, who was bullied so much, the admins all but BANNED him from going to the office to complain. It was so bad, that even approaching him in a friendly manner made him paranoid. I know this, cause I tried to befriend him at one point.
Inchante Wrote:Recently, "Harry's Law" (Kathy Bates) did a very good episode on this. I couldn't find more than a trailer, but the show is worth watching if you get a chance.
Im gonna watch this as soon as i find it
dfiant Wrote:And the ignorant should also be punished. Tremendous progress would imply that the issues of bullying and suicide would become LESS prevalent, quiet clearly it isn't.
More aware, more welcoming? Yeah maybe they are, but they are hollow and empty words when it is only School admins being more aware and welcoming, filtering that awareness and welcoming down through the school environment is obviously NOT happene...FAIL!!!!
More work to be done???? no shit, nothing has changed in 30 years, so how much work do the pathetic creatures in the education department think they have really done?
The sad part is, these are mostly hollow words like you say. Most schools wont change, while the small number that do will be recognized for it, allowing these things to continue.
BYoNexus Wrote:The sad part is, these are mostly hollow words like you say. Most schools wont change, while the small number that do will be recognized for it, allowing these things to continue.
And even sadder when you see 'private' schools that are usually religious allowed to flout all laws, including anti-discrimination laws, and taking 'progess' back to the 50's.
A couple of years ago I was subjected to what is now termed in the UK a "Hate Crime".
For a period of six months I was subjected to homophobic verbal abuse by a near neighbour.
I was called all sorts of vicious names in public, the guy who was the ring-leader with his friends would shout neo-nazi slogans at me, give raised arm nazi salutes as well as throwing stones and on one occasion a half-brick at me in the street. That was the final straw.
Before it got too out of hand I aproched the guy in the street and told him his behaviour was unacceptabe and incidentelly against the law. I told him if he stopped now I'd say no more about it, but if he continued I'd issue no more warnings - I'd go the police.
He laughed, he thought I wasn't serious. What I didn't tell him was that I was keeping a detailed diary and recording every single incident under date, time, location and remarks. I also recorded my thoughts on each incident. I kept this diary in a small pocket note book that I could take out and easily conceal again afterwards. I also kept a copy of the diary in case the original was lost.
When I had recorded the equivelent of about two sides of A4 I went to my local police station and made a complaint. The police were great, I didn't get any "attitude" or and form of discouragment. They took a statement, took the pages of my diary as evicence and a few days later paid the guy a visit.
He was arrested, charged and prosecuted.
He pleaded Not Guilty at court but elected not to give evidence or be cross examined. One thing I noticed was that he was permitted to sit in the Well of the court. A part of the court normally reserved for solicitors/lawyers and other "Officers of the Court" (Unless of course you're representing yourself - but he wasn't - he had a solicitor.)
He was found guilty by the Magistrates who two weeks later gave him a £100 fine, a 12 Month restraining order and £40 costs.
I would encourage anyone experiencing the same to take a stand. I know it's easier said than done, I'm a pretty reasonably confident individual but there are support organizations out there and if there aren't do what I and some friends did... start your own!
I'm buggered if I know how to get YouTube videos to display properly as I keep getting an error message when I check if it works in preview, But I urge you to click the link and watch this video about a father who lost his 13 year old son to suicide after being bullied for being gay, share his experience as a father with a hall full of kids.
dfiant Wrote:But I urge you to click the link and watch this video about a father who lost his 13 year old son to suicide after being bullied for being gay, share his experience as a father with a hall full of kids
The link is invalid. Can you remember the title? If we had the title I bet many of us could find it and then post it here.
I just tried a general search on YT and wow, there are A LOT of young kids killing themselves over being gay and/or being bullied.
Though given that there are thousands of suicides by bullied kids every year in the USA alone I shouldn't be surprised. :frown: It's odd to me like how some people will talk about the dangers of kids trying pot, E, and other drugs with low risk (IIRC, more people die on rollercoasters or bee stings every year than they do on E) but ignore the high death toll of bullying, despite that unlike drugs those bullied can't "just say no." And "zero tolerance" is already in place for drugs (to an insane degree, IMO, like a girl strip searched for Midol and then sent home), but they won't do the same to bullying.
Pix, I tried pasting every possible link in the youtube tags, from the link provided in the embedding to the link in the browser window and it all yeilds the same result, I tried for about 20 minutes and yet it comes up as that above. the link is
And yeah, I have spend the last 3 hours watching bullying and suicide videos and it aboslutely distresses me beyond belief that kids aa young as 9 years old are commiting suicide from homophobic bullying, regardless of wether they are actually gay or not
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Virgo
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