Gay bashing

Homophobia and gay bashing are longstanding and current issues, and have been officially documented worldwide for as long as gay people have been documented.[3] Homophobia in the United States was widely documented in the press in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when many gay people were forced out of government by boards set up by Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.[4] As historian David K. Johnson explains:

The Lavender Scare helped fan the flames of the Red Scare. In popular discourse, communists and homosexuals were often conflated. Both groups were perceived as hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, literature, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty. Both groups were thought to recruit to their ranks the psychologically weak or disturbed. And both groups were considered immoral and godless. Many people believed that the two groups were working together to undermine the government.[5]

Johnson concludes that Senator Joe McCarthy, notorious for his attacks on alleged communists in government, was often pressured by his allies to denounce homosexuals in government, but he resisted and did not do so.[5] Using rumors collected by Drew Pearson, one Nevada publisher wrote in 1952 that both McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, were homosexuals.[note 1] Washington Post editor Benjamin C. Bradlee said, "There was a lot of time spent investigating" these allegations, "although no one came close to proving it." No reputable McCarthy biographer has accepted it as probable.[note 2]

Gay and lesbian youth can develop severe forms of depression and anxiety as they grow up. Around 70% of LGBT people experience major depressive disorder (MDD) sometime in their lives.[19] For LGBT individuals, MDD can be caused by any of the following: self-esteem, pressure to conform, minority stress, coming out, family rejection, parenting, relationship formation, and violence.[20] Self-esteem and pressure to conform can cause anxiety for LGBT youth. When they are told what to look like and whom to love, it puts a toll on their self-esteem. When people make comments about who they are, what they look like, whom they love, etc. it begins to make them feel insecure, and as though they aren't good enough the way they are.

"Coming out" is when an LGBT individual makes it known that they are gay, lesbian, etc. Coming out can be very stressful, and youth need family support at this time. But often they instead experience rejection, leaving them feeling unwanted and unloved. This can set them into a downward spiral of depression. Parenting and relationship formation are very closely related. It was only in March 2016, that it became legal for LGBT parents to adopt in all 50 states.[21] Not being able to conceive their own child can already cause depression, but being denied the right to adopt has caused LGBT people additional pain and stress. Minority stress is defined as a stress experienced by LGBT individuals due to their sexual orientation/gender identity.[22] Violence can slip anybody into a depressed state whether the violence is a type of physical abuse, mental abuse, or verbal abuse. A person can be harassed to the point where their depression becomes too much and they no longer experience any happiness. These factors all work together and make it extremely hard to avoid MDD.[20]

Being bullied can make victims feel chronically sad and unsafe in the world.[23][24] Bullying will affect a student's experience of school. Some victims might feel paralyzed and withdraw socially as a coping mechanism.[8] Other victims of LGBT bullying may begin to live the effects of learned helplessness.[24] LGBT or questioning students may try to pass as heterosexual in order to avoid LGBT bullying. Passing isolates the student from other LGBT or questioning students, potential allies, and support.[10] Adults who try to pass also may feel the effects emotionally and psychologically, of this effort to conceal their true identities.[16] LGBT and questioning youth who experience bullying have a higher incidence of substance abuse and STI and HIV infection,[12][25][26] which may carry through to adulthood. LGBT bullying may also be seen as a manifestation of what American academic Ilan Meyer calls minority stress,[27] which may affect sexual and ethno-racial minorities attempting to exist within a challenging broader society.

Homophobic and transphobic violence in educational settings can be categorized as explicit and implicit. Explicit homophobic and transphobic violence consists of overt acts that make subjects feel uncomfortable, hurt, humiliated or intimidated. Peers and educational staff are unlikely to intervene when witnessing these incidents. This contributes to normalizing such acts that become accepted as either a routine disciplinary measure or a means to resolve conflicts among students. Homophobic and transphobic violence – as with all school-related gender-based violence – is acutely underreported due to subjects' fear of retribution, combined with inadequate or non-existent reporting, support and redress systems.[28][29][30][31] The absence of effective policies, protection or remedies contributes to a vicious cycle where incidents become increasingly normal.[32]

Implicit homophobic and transphobic violence, sometimes called 'symbolic violence' or 'institutional' violence, is subtler than explicit violence. It consists of pervasive representations or attitudes that sometimes feel harmless or natural to the school community, but that allow or encourage homophobia and transphobia, including perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Policies and guidelines can reinforce or embed these representations or attitudes, whether in an individual institution or across an entire education sector. This way, they can become part of everyday practices and rules guiding school behaviour.[33][34][32] Examples of implicit homophobic and transphobic violence include:

• Asserting that some subjects are better suited to students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression (for example, science for heterosexual male students and drama for gay male students).
• Suggesting that it is normal for heterosexual students to have greater agency or influence (for example, with the opinions of LGBTI students treated as marginal and unimportant).
• Reinforcing stereotypes related to sexual orientation or gender identity/expression in curriculum materials or teacher training, such as through images and discourse (for example, that refer to heterosexuality as 'normal').
• Reinforcing stereotypes related to sexual orientation or gender identity/expression in educational policies, rules and regulations (for example, by not even acknowledging that LGBTI students are part of the school community and by not specifying them in relevant policies).[32]

Teens face harassment, threats, and violence. A 1998 study in the US by Mental Health America found that students heard anti-gay slurs such as "homo", "faggot" and "sissy" about 26 times a day on average, or once every 14 minutes.[35] In a study conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a union for UK professionals, the word "gay" was reported to be the most popular term of abuse heard by teachers on a regular basis.[36]

About two-thirds of gay and lesbian students in British schools have suffered from gay bullying in 2007, according to a study done by the Schools Education Unit for LGBT activist group Stonewall. Almost all that had been bullied had experienced verbal attacks, 41 percent had been physically attacked, and 17 percent had received death threats. It also showed that over 50% of teachers did not respond to homophobic language which they had explicitly heard in the classroom, and only 25% of schools had told their students that homophobic bullying was wrong, showing "a shocking picture of the extent of homophobic bullying undertaken by fellow pupils and, alarmingly, school staff",[37] with further studies conducted by the same charity in 2012 stated that 90% of teachers had had no training on the prevention of homophobic bullying. However, Ofsted's new 2012 framework did ask schools what they would be doing in order to combat the issue.[38]

The rate of suicide is higher among LGBT people. According to a 1979 Jay and Young study, 40 percent of gay men and 39 percent of gay women in the US had attempted or seriously thought about suicide.[39] In the same study conducted by the Schools Education Unit for LGB activist group Stonewall, an online survey reported that 71 percent of the girl participants who identified as LGBTQ, and 57 percent of the boy participants who identified as LGBTQ had seriously considered suicide.[40] In 1985, F. Paris estimated that suicides by gay youth may comprise up to 30 percent of all youth suicides in the US. This contributes to suicide being the third leading cause for death among youth aged 10–24, reported by the CDC.[41] The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has found that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth attempt suicide at a rate three to six times that of similar-age heterosexual youth.[42] The Schools Education Unit also reports that in the same online survey, 25 percent of the people who identified as LGBTQ, have attempted to commit suicide.[43]

Some U.S. states have implemented laws to address school bullying.

  Law that prohibits discrimination against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity

  Law that prohibits discrimination against students based on sexual orientation only

  Law that prohibits bullying of students based on sexual orientation and gender identity

  School regulation or ethical code for teachers that address discrimination and/or bullying of students based on sexual orientation and gender identity

  School regulation or ethical code for teachers that address discrimination and/or bullying of students based on sexual orientation only

  Law that forbids school-based instruction of LGBT issues in a positive manner

  Law that prohibits bullying in school but lists no categories of protection

  No statewide law that specifically prohibits bullying in schools

The state of Illinois passed a law (SB3266) in June 2010 that prohibits gay bullying and other forms of bullying in schools.[64]

In the Philippines, legislators implemented Republic Act No. 10627, otherwise known as the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013, in schools. According to the said law, gender-based bullying is defined as ˮany act that humiliates or excludes a person on the basis of perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)ˮ.[65]

In Europe Stonewall UK,[66] and Anti-Bullying Network[67] are active in the UK, while Russia has the Russian LGBT Network.[68]

Notable in the United States is the It Gets Better Project, for which celebrities and ordinary LGBT people make YouTube videos and share messages of hope for gay teens.[69][70][71] The organization works with USA, The Trevor Project[70] and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.[71] The Safe Schools Coalition provides resources for teachers and students where bullying is a problem. Egale Canada works with LGBT Canadian citizens.[72] In Brazil, the Gay Group of Bahia (Grupo Gay da Bahia) provides support.[73][74][75] LGBT South Africans can turn to the South African Human Rights Commission.[76]

• Abuse
• Anti-LGBT slogans
• Bash Back!
• Bullying
• Corrective rape
• Cyberbullying
• Hate crime
• School bullying
• Significant acts of violence against LGBT people
• Trans bashing
• Violence against LGBT people

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 License statement/permission on Wikimedia Commons. Text taken from Out in the Open: Education sector responses to violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, 26, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

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