I read the news today, oh boy.
Blogging on more of a serious note here. This is going to be long but it is very important. Please just stick with it.
In the last month, there has been news articles about four different people who have committed suicide due to being bullied for their sexual orientation.
This portion will be upsetting and could possibly be triggering to some people. I’m going to be briefly going through each of the people who’ve died and sum up what happened. Please keep that in mind and skip down to the safer area (I’ll post another message like this when its safe) if needed.
Billy Lucas was fifteen. He was from Greensburg, Indiana and went to Greensburg Highschool. He was horribly teased in school. The website that has now been set up for him, billylucas.org, says that in school he had a chair pulled from under him and he was told to hang himself. That’s exactly what he did.
Indiana state senator Tom Wyss has said that he wants to make laws stronger for bullying, I hope he isn’t just saying that because it’s an election year. He wants to hold bullies and the administrators more accountable. The Greensburg High principle says that he didn’t know Billy was being bullied, but according to a students, everyone knew that he was.
Asher Brown was thirteen. He was from the Cypress are of Texas, right outside of Houston. He went to Hamilton Middle school. It’s been reported that he had been teased for his size, religion, clothing, and also for being gay. The school he went to denies getting any complaints from any Asher’s parents, but his mom has been quoted saying, “That’s absolutely inaccurate, it’s completely false, I did not hallucinate phone calls to counselors and assistant principals. We have no reason to make this up. It’s like they’re calling us liars.”
Asher came out to his stepfather, David Truong, the morning he shot himself. Mr. Truong was fine with the fact that he was gay and said “We didn’t condemn” when it came to the subject. Amy Truong, his mom had this to say to the bullies, “I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done. I hope you got what you wanted and you’re just real satisfied with yourself.”
Seth Walsh was also thirteen. He was from Tehachapi, California and went to Jacobsen Middle school. He attempted suicide by hanging himself from a tree. He was found unconscious and was airlifted to a nearby hospital and put on life support for 10 days before he died this Tuesday. In the school where he went bullying is not a crime, so no one will be charged with anything. Police did question some of the students that bullied Seth on the day he hung himself though.
His family says that they aren’t blaming anyone and they want the community to grow and develop more of a tolerance for different people. They want to celebrate Seth’s life and are just trying to stay positive in this difficult time.
Tyler Clementi was eighteen. He was in college and went to Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was outed by his roommate before he jumped off the Hudson bridge. His roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another freshman Molly Wei, actually broadcasted a live feed of Tyler Clementi in their dorm while in the middle of a sexual encounter with another man. Ravi and Wei have each been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for setting up a camera in the dorm and transmitting the feed.
Safe to read again!
Going to throw some statistics at you now. Each of these have been taken from the website for The Trevor Project, which in short is a nonprofit organization which was created to promote acceptance and prevent suicide among the LGBTQ youth.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts 2007 Youth Risk Survey).
Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt (Grossman AH, D’Augelli AR – Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior 2007)
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents are 190 percent more likely to use drugs and alcohol than are heterosexual teens (Marshal MP, Friedman MS, et al – Addiction 2008).
Nine out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school; three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and about one-third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe (2007 GLSEN National School Climate Survey).
Almost all transgender students had been verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened in the past year at school because of their sexual orientation (89%) and gender expression (89%) (2009 GLSEN: Harsh Realities, The Experiences of Transgender Youth In Our Nation’s Schools).
All of that being said, it’s rough. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a supportive family and no real major problems being accepted for being a lesbian. There are those people who don’t have it as good as me though. There are so many other people out there like Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, and Tyler Clementi who have been teased, outed, and mistreated. These are only the stories that we know of. There are so many other kids who aren’t even LGBT who get teased and end up news articles just like these ones too.
I was taught the basic “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything nice at all” and just that you don’t tease or bully other people. I know I haven’t always been the nicest person, no one is perfect, but when you take that extra two seconds to think about what you’re saying and how it may affect someone it really can make a difference. Sometimes there are things that are just better left unsaid. You don’t have to walk on eggshells whenever you talk to someone, just think of everyone like a real person with real feelings. Smile at people even if you aren’t really feeling it. Whenever someone smiles back at you, you just feel that little bit of warmth inside and it can change your day.
Standing up for other people is also extremely important. If you see or hear about someone getting bullied, you can be that person that can make things better for them. You can go and tell parents/teachers/whatever other adult and you can just be a friend to the person too. People always need friends. I was always that kid in school that used to stand up for the other people just because it isn’t right to let that happen. It isn’t right to tease someone because they’re different than you. The great thing about people is that we are all different. No one else is like you and that makes you special.
There is a recent project/campaign thing that came up that’s called It Gets Better. I love it. It’s videos that people have made up on youtube, and they all are telling the LGBT community how things really do get better. This video is probably my favorite one that I’ve watched from the It Gets Better youtube channel.
I’ve said what I’ve had to say now and will leave it at that. Just think before you speak and know that everyone needs to be loved. It doesn’t matter what they wear, how they talk, how they act, who they like, or how they look. People are people and we need to treat everyone like they are a person.
