It is absolutely heart-wrenching that these kids are being dehumanized and made to feel like something is wrong with them because of whom they want to love. This is not just a problem of kids being kids, this is a problem of adults creating an atmosphere that is extremely toxic to young people growing up and trying to find their way. They believe things cannot get better, and the pain they endure day after day does not seem like it will ever let up... and worse... they are made to believe they deserve it.
This is a very important message. It gets better!
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I was so lucky to have a family that accepted me unequivocally regardless of my sexuality.
Here is a note I wrote last month about LGBT and Suicide...I'm sorry if it is a bit self-indulgent to post it.
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Suicide is a rejection of life; a determination that the finality of death is preferable to life.
LGBT often do not live easy lives - especially those of us who are not open about who we really are. We are tormented internally by feelings of inadequacy and the fear of not living up to the standards and expectations of those who we love. We are tormented externally either through physical abuse or the emotional trauma of those who label us even though we may not even know our own "label". So what do we do? We sacrifice our integrity to contort to society's expectations. We often end up in relationships and sometimes even marriages that are loveless but at least allow us to project a twisted form of normalcy. At the same time, we lock ourselves into a closet that, on the one hand, keeps us safe from rejection and prejudice, but on the other, slowly suffocates us by depriving the essential freedom to live a life according to who we really are. Life in the closet is hardly a life at all; it is a person slowly bleeding drop by drop until they reach their ultimate demise. Unfortunately, progress along the path of destruction is often hastened by self-destructive behaviour such as drug/alcohol abuse, promiscuity, eating disorders, self-mutilation and sadly far too often suicide.
Why do people live in the closet? The answer is devastatingly simple: Fear. Fear of rejection from family and friends who put conditions on their love. Fear of hurting those with whom they have entered "romantic" relationships under false pretense. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear of judgment from churches that believe in a wrathful God who would create an entire group of people who are inherently sinful. Fear of being told that they are unequal by the government who's own Declaration of Independence states that "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Fear of fighting the homophobia that has been drilled into their own heads for so long that it has become internalized and slowly corrodes from the inside out.
For too many LGBT youth, the option is to choose between living a miserable life of lies in the closet or risking losing people and things that they love. Death isn't scary anymore when faced with making such a choice.
Suicide for an LGBT person isn't just a case of someone deciding that they don't want to live anymore. It is a preventable loss of life that would have been avoided if people believed that they could simply be themselves and be loved anyways. The good news is that eventually love and education can and will conquer hate and fear.
Even though it appears that acceptance is winning the battle, it is obvious that people are still dying. Each life that is taken away should ring out as a Clarion Call to action stirring us from our apathy and reminding us that giving up the fight is simply not an option.
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I think there are two issues here:
#1) Schools are only paying lip service to combatting bullying. Teens are being harassed for anything different... being gay, being fat, being too tall, being too short, being too rich, being too poor.... teenagers enjoy making others suffer. And the schools do little to nothing about it.
#2) The hatred of gay men and women, unlike that of being tall or short, is coming from the adults and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There are far too many powerful institutions that are anti-gay. Religion, be it Christian or Muslim, would just be a start. There are many political organizations that are dead set against gay rights including gay marriage. (ie National Organization for Marriage). Yes, opinions have changed dramatically over the last 20 to 30 years for those that are socially liberal. But I think there is still a long way to go.
This is more than just a gay issue though. Someone close to me came out recently, and to our family, it was difficult to understand at first, but at the end of the day it was quite easy to accept.
This was a very moving speech by the man, however, there is much deeper problems than bullying if someone is so depressed they are willing to kill themselves over it. Of the 4 people I know of that have committed suicide, not one was a result of bullying. But all at the end of the day were people that had mental conditions that became much more obvious after the fact, as hindsight is always 20/20. So saying there is an epidemic of suicides as a result of it, is a little irresponsible.
I had a year of High School that was literal hell. As bad as you could ever imagine. I was getting it from every angle, cool kids, dorks, even teachers seemed to go out of their way to humiliate me and single me out. And my behavior at home as a result, turned my parents on me, as I had turned into a total recluse and totally given up on school and sports. All starting over the fact that I had befriended a very troubled kid at school that was the target of bullies, and I felt so bad for him, and tried to stick up for him when he was getting publicly humiliated by a few of my team mates. I went from the cool Hockey player club, to a zit faced gawky loser in 1 minute flat, because of my refusal to pick on some kid that had obvious problems at home, and was the easy target. It went so far that my team mates ripped all the badges off of my team jacket, then one day in the cafeteria stole it and defecated on it. It carried on to numerous locker room humiliations at the rink and at school and it snow balled from there, for my entire grade 11 year, and in grade 12 I simply dropped out so I did not have to endure it anymore.
In all of that, not once did I contemplate suicide. I was miserable, but life was just to valuable to 'an hero' over it. Bullying in general is is never going to go away. In a weird way I feel it shaped me into a better person, and was a rite of passage per se. Had I not had to endure it all, I very likely would have ended up like half of the idiots that treated people like garbage, which many of them still do to this day. I ended up subbing on a beer league team a couple years back, and ran into one of my "tormentors" who out of the few, actually made an about face, and apologized for it all. I thanked him for the apology and said "In a weird way it made me a much more compassionate person, as I saw it from the other side." As we got to talking, he admitted, even to this day almost 20 years later, some of those guys still joke about the stuff they did to me. Which is very, very sad. Especially since most of them are parents now.
Last edited by pylon; 10-15-2010 at 04:06 AM.
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Are you saying that bullying is not a cause of suicide, but only a possible trigger to those that are mentally defective enough to contemplate suicide?
Isn't that blaming the victim - it's not the bully's fault. He just took advantage of a pre-existing mental condition?
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Are you saying that bullying is not a cause of suicide, but only a possible trigger to those that are mentally defective enough to contemplate suicide?
Isn't that blaming the victim - it's not the bully's fault. He just took advantage of a pre-existing mental condition?
There is no reasonable excuse to pick on anyone. Bullying is weak and lame. But mentally stable people do not end their lives over being picked on. All I am saying is, there is more to the picture than just saying "He/she was picked on, so he/she killed them self."
I think it would be more fair to say, "He/she was very fragile mentally, and or depressed/anxious/masochistic etc...and the torment contributed to them killing them self." There are underlying insecurity issues etc.
And no, you cannot pin the blame on just the bully. Bullies are dicks, and can do horrible things. But like I said, killing yourself is not a rational nor a reasonable reaction of a completely sane or mentally healthy individual. I really don't think there are very many bullies that truly hope their victims blow their brains out.
Words can't kill you, a bottle of pills or a razor can. A bully does not plug your nose make you swallow the pills. As I said in my post, I can see it from the side of the victim, and what I endured almost daily for a year, was beyond anything most normal people ever will, and never once, did suicide become an option.
I may not have been liked, but I also just said to myself ,"Just put up with it for another year or two, and start anew in the real world." I knew I never had to see those people again, and just accelerated the process by dropping out.
There was an episode of Flashpoint where a reclusive senior high student -- who endured bullying on a regular basis -- was forced to deal with a particularly humiliating attack one day after he and the bully's girlfriend were found having a conversation over a painting he was doing for art class. The bully was a football jock, and always had a posse with him.
In the episode, the bully and his posse ganged up on this kid outside the front of the school. The bully assaulted the victim, knocked him to the ground and continued to assault him before lifting him up and throwing him into a garbage can, which then capsized and spilled its contents all over the victim. One of the posse members was filming the whole thing on his cell phone, capturing the entire incident. As a last act of humiliation, the bully knelt over the victim, hands on his throat, and forced him to confess to being gay for the cell phone video camera, though it was a falsehood. The recording posse then MMS'd the video to half the student body with a single press of 'send' and the help of Facebook.
Humiliated, embarrassed, and defeated, the victim then went home. His deadbeat dad was sitting on the couch watching TV, oblivious to his son's pain. He asked his son to get him a beer. The son ignored him, and instead went straight to his room upstairs. He spent a moment to collect himself, then went into his dad's room and took his loaded revolver. When he tucked the gun into his pocket and left the house to go back to school, I said to myself quietly under my breath, 'I would be doing the exact same thing.'
But how do you solve this problem? How do you prevent it from getting to that point, where the victim feels that the only solution is to end their own life, or the lives of those responsible? My dad, and my junior high school gym teacher taught me the importance of standing up for myself, courage in the face of intimidation, and when all else fails, making the first shot count. School staff love to insist that the issues be brought up with administration to deal out discipline and consequences, but just like in real life, there's never a cop around when you need one. Sometimes, the only person you're going to be able to count on is yourself.
Back to the Future was a movie that really exemplified this. In the early part of the movie we see George McFly as the same loser of a father he was when he was high school, still being bullied and intimidated by Biff Tannen. But we also saw how much he had changed after Marty had coached him on being more confident in himself. It was a great David and Goliath analogy when George laid out Biff with a lucky punch in the high school parking lot. But as much as we love to see the underdog win in those scenarios, I don't know if it can be said that it works anymore. I graduated nine years ago and don't have any family going through school now, but from what I hear the social dynamic has drastically changed. It seems that if bullying victims fight back, they only make things worse for themselves. Either they lose the fight and get humiliated even more, or they win the fight, and the "rematch" a week later involves twenty buddies and blunt or sharp objects. Even as much as I was being bullied, I would draw the line at being a martyr.
So, what -- if anything -- can be done?
Last edited by HeartsOfFire; 10-15-2010 at 08:05 AM.
i hope that the parents of these children who have died can find some peace, and i hope that those that did the teasing can look within themselves and see that despite the fact we are all different, we are all the same....i hope that when my kids get old enough that they will not follow the herd when it comes to judging people, that they get to know a person first.....
I think one day, when our kids are my age they're going to look at the way our society treated gays the same way we look at the way blacks were treated in the 50/60s and be ashamed.
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In all of that, not once did I contemplate suicide. I was miserable, but life was just to valuable to 'an hero' over it. Bullying in general is is never going to go away. In a weird way I feel it shaped me into a better person, and was a rite of passage per se. Had I not had to endure it all, I very likely would have ended up like half of the idiots that treated people like garbage, which many of them still do to this day. I ended up subbing on a beer league team a couple years back, and ran into one of my "tormentors" who out of the few, actually made an about face, and apologized for it all. I thanked him for the apology and said "In a weird way it made me a much more compassionate person, as I saw it from the other side." As we got to talking, he admitted, even to this day almost 20 years later, some of those guys still joke about the stuff they did to me. Which is very, very sad. Especially since most of them are parents now.
The difference between your case and the gay (perceived gay) cases is that regular bullying (which is still pretty traumatic) usually goes away when you get older but being gay will never go away and can lead to ridicule for the rest of their lives.
It's especially tough if kids either are being shunned by or fear being shunned by their family. It's hard to find out that their love really isn't unconditional and that they are rejecting a family member for something that they can't change.
Many of these kids feel that there is something intrinsically wrong with them because they've bought into the messages of their peers, their church and their families. If they feel sinful but simply can't escape it, it isn't a big leap to think that some kids/teens/young adults would want to self-mutilate or commit suicide as a form of punishment.
I haven't been able to get anything that doesn't take complete social upheaval. I think people will have to just "outgrow it", the same way we had to outgrow racism. When will that happen? I don't know. I hope it's sooner rather than later though.
There is no reasonable excuse to pick on anyone. Bullying is weak and lame. But mentally stable people do not end their lives over being picked on. All I am saying is, there is more to the picture than just saying "He/she was picked on, so he/she killed them self."
I think it would be more fair to say, "He/she was very fragile mentally, and or depressed/anxious/masochistic etc...and the torment contributed to them killing them self." There are underlying insecurity issues etc.
And no, you cannot pin the blame on just the bully. Bullies are dicks, and can do horrible things. But like I said, killing yourself is not a rational nor a reasonable reaction of a completely sane or mentally healthy individual. I really don't think there are very many bullies that truly hope their victims blow their brains out.
Words can't kill you, a bottle of pills or a razor can. A bully does not plug your nose make you swallow the pills. As I said in my post, I can see it from the side of the victim, and what I endured almost daily for a year, was beyond anything most normal people ever will, and never once, did suicide become an option.
I may not have been liked, but I also just said to myself ,"Just put up with it for another year or two, and start anew in the real world." I knew I never had to see those people again, and just accelerated the process by dropping out.
So because you survived it, those that don't should suck it up?
and some people still believe it is a choice, people make. Yeah I'd choose to be bullied to the point of being suicidal, instead of hooking up with good looking chicks.
Just to let you know, today is Spirit Day so hopefully you'll be seeing lots of people wearing purple to protest bullying against LGBT or perceived LGBT people.
It has a link for your Twitter or your Facebook status to show support.
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The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true. Go Flames Go!
I am not gay, but had to put up with a small fraction of the abuse these guys have had to. It seemed like it was the easy insult to throw when I was in school. I can tell you that I hated it. It never got to physical abuse, but the verbal didn't hurt any less.
I feel for these kids, and can't imagine how much they have to take before they make the choice of ending their lives. It's sad to hear those stories, because of a lack of acceptance.
I don't know where to point my finger, I don't know what the answers are. All I know is that specifically wore a purple shirt to work today. In the grand scheme of things, it's just a shirt, but to me it's more.
It's proof to those who thought that slander would knock me down that I'm stronger than ever. It's to show my two sons that I will fight for them, no matter what their life style choices are, as any father would do. And I hope that anyone going through this knows that there are people who can only try to understand what they are going through, and are willing to help.
I don't want to come accross as knowing what these kids are going through. As I said, on a scale of 1 to 10, I probably experienced a 2... and it followed me into my professional life at a very popular company in Calgary. What I went through sucked, but it's small beans compaired to what these guys go through.
"it gets better"
