For my
final project, I intend to research LGBTQ youth in public schools and their
experiences. Since I attended high school, rules and regulations regarding
bullying have grown more stringent. Bullying, as per our class discussion a
while back, seemed like a rite of passage. Students bullied each other until
one person stood up for himself or herself and put a stop to it. Once that
happened, they were left alone. Unfortunately, such advice did not work as well
in my experience. Given the ten years since I left high school, I can only hope
things have improved since then.
For our
midterm, we wanted students to feel included and to feel like their desires and
interests were valued. Since our midterm represented an ideal, it is easy to
see how such things might not play out well in real life. In the south,
particularly, racism and homophobia are very common. While I had expected this
to some degree, I believe living in the north isolates one from the prejudice
that certain southerners encounter daily. Democracy and equality only work as
well as the dominant force wants them to work.
I confess I
have only watched the first couple minutes of the documentary I intend to use
for class. However, it starts out worryingly. The first words on the screen
read “they said they wanted to play ‘capture the fag’”. At first blush, I
thought this might be a typo. Surely no one would do that now. It reminds me of
a line from The Simpsons—“…And this will be one
nation, under the dollar, with liberty and justice for none...” (Mr. Lisa Goes
to Washington). In the episode, all the wrongs were righted because of how her
public display showed that children lost their faith in democracy. In real
life, things do not work out quite so neatly.
Yes,
there are projects like “It Gets Better” out there to help LGBTQ students cope
with their identities and problems they have in school. As per an article on
Wired.com, there are problems with this message. For all that it seems helpful,
there is a limited amount that it can really do. Savage, the founder, insists
that it gives hope. Yet, is hope really enough to stem the tide of prejudice?
What kind of things are we telling our kids when they see other children
bullying them for something they cannot change?
On
the plus side, this did allow for Stephen Colbert to have a candid moment, out
of character, on YouTube about It Gets Better. Perhaps, with voices like this,
the project can, as Savage points out, imbue the LGBTQ youth with the hope they
need to fight the prejudice. It still feels to me like holding a candle against
the oncoming darkness.
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