Stop the Bigotry

[xXEtherealXx]

This year, two lesbian girls at my school got suspended because these three straight chicks told the princepal that they (the lesbians) were watching them take showers and change clothes in gym class and stuff... Grrr I wanted to tear them apart! Damn bigotry! Has anything like that happened at your schools?



By the way, referring to the title of my post, I'm not saying all straight girls at bitches Sorry if you got that impression or if it offended anyone ^_^;; Don't wanna piss you all off on the first topic I've attemped to start...

Edited by: xita  at: 8/19/04 7:32 pm

[foreverpiper]

We don't take showers at my school so nothing like that's ever happened but thats crap! Didn't the girls who got suspended get to say anything!? They defended themselves right? Stupid question, course they did, but still! Dude that sucks! And is totally unfair!

Galahad: What a strange person. French Dude: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. Galahad: Is there someone else up their we could talk to? French Dude: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time. - Monty Python

[MellindraX]

Pardon me for playing the devil's advocate, a position I am too inclined towards for my own good, but that isn't necessarily bigotry. The level of defence the accused were allowed to put forth and the amount of evidence those in authority bothered to accumulate would say whether or not it was a case of bigotry. It could very well be two perverted lesbians, doing what straight men aren't allowed to do either.



Two cents, so I'll go away now.

I’ve never purposely gone out to take somebody out. Well, maybe, in elementary school I once did try to trip somebody. –Amber Benson

[Gatito Grande]

Hoo boy, let's take a trip down the highways and bi (ahem)-ways of GG's Childhood/Adolescent Trauma, shall we?



*I was first accused of "staring" at undressed/undressing (older) girls at the age of (get this) *7*. I cannot begin to tell you how much this accusation messed me up---it was only decades later that I realized that in this experience, I was the one who was being abused.



*After that, every situation wherein I had to change clothes/be around other girls changing clothes, was Panic Attack City {Head, point down at my own shoes the entire time } Of course, other pre-adolescent girls can smell fear like freshly broken wind, so natch', at Campfire Girl Camp (~age 11) I was accused of "staring" again.



*By the time I reached junior high---w/ compulsory gym, in compulsory gym clothes, changed into inside compulsory locker room---I was One Big Ol' Neurotic Mess. And, of course, I couldn't talk about this w/ anyone. My "solution" was to try to avoid taking showers, and hiding out in the bathroom stalls (at least until others were gone)



Mix in an upbringing of sexual repression, a little gender dysphoria, and hey: it's the charming bag of mental mishaps which is GG today.



But enough about me: back to the thread (and it's title). I think we better underline your disclaimer again, xXEtherealXx, OK? There are plenty of wonderful, non-homophobic, sexually well-balanced heterosexuals, male and female, inc. a ton of 'em on this board.



So why do these experiences, like mine and the one you describe, happen? Well, I'd like to believe that the homophobic aspects of same are on the wane. But I think it's unrealistic to expect children to be more tolerant than their parents/society. Adolescence (before, during and right after) is a time of pecking and sorting (and re-sorting) . . . and it's frequently not a pretty process: various implements of destruction are used to separate "Me and My Kind" and "Not Me and Not My Kind" as a way to discover one's identity. As long as homosexuality is looked down upon by society, then kids are going to use it as one weapon of this whole in-group/out-group slicing-and-dicing process. That's the Bad News.



The Good News---much better news than I had a million years ago when I was growing up (Am I grown up yet? Not hardly! )---is that adults are supposed to be stepping in to minimize this kind of clique-y adolescent destruction. Especially of the most vulnerable kids. Especially of LGBT and Questioning youth.



No queer (or at least less-than-straight/less than gender-normal) kid, like myself back then, should feel so all alone, while the trauma happens. Kids do NOT raise themselves: responsible adults should be around to say what kind of words/behavior are NOT ACCEPTABLE (e.g. stopping all this "That's So Gay!" crap I've been hearing about). And, turning around the kind of "bitchy" behavior you describe above: it's the ones who "accuse others of being/acting gay" who have the problem . . . and who should be (age-appropriately and non-violently) disciplined.



GG Let's see, I'm 42: if I was 7 . . . somewhere out there, there are some 47-48 year old women---who grew up in Sacramento, California---to whom I would like to give a piece of my mind. Nah, I probably shouldn't bother. Out



Um, do I see that the thread title has been changed already? Sounds good to me.



ETA:



"This year, two lesbian girls at my school" = "It could very well be two perverted lesbians"



???



MellindraX, please tell me you're joking.

Edited by: Gatito Grande at: 8/19/04 7:55 pm

[MellindraX]

Oh, goodness, sorry Gatito (and others). The line does seem a little off-color when placed alone, and I completely missed that. I didn't mean "perverted lesbians" as a single phrase, merely as saying "women who are attracted to women and also happen to not respect the socially imposed boundaries to prevent sexual harrassment".



I just mean it's possible the girls were looking , and not falsely accused. Suspension would be harsh for a first offense, certainly, but not a great deal of context was provided for this example. For all I know, it could have been an ongoing problem the teachers had heard about before.



And if I've still managed to explain myself in a manner not quite reaching the nuetrality I was reaching for, apologies.

I’ve never purposely gone out to take somebody out. Well, maybe, in elementary school I once did try to trip somebody. –Amber Benson

[Gatito Grande]

Apology accepted, MellindraX---though I'm still not certain we completely agree.



I believe that---within the context of, say, a 4 year high school (i.e. age differences are no greater than 4 years)---we should not make "perverts" out of teenagers: gay OR straight. Any kind of violence or coercion must be stopped immediately, of course. Ditto harrassment, that creates an atmosphere detrimental to learning.



But teenagers are teenagers. Hormone-bombs that they are (Teenage Kittens excepted, of course. Not! ), they are naturally going to be curious . . . and w/ curiousity, comes the occasional "inappropriate behavior." Sensitive (and discreet) intervention? Sure. ("Um, unless specifically invited to look, anymore than a 'Who is in my immediate vicinity?' glance is not OK, get it?" ) But calling out the "Registered Sex Offender" dogs is a gross over-reaction (I shudder to think that *that* might have been my fate, in Our Litigious Society of today).



. . . and that goes double for any kind of same-sex exploration (inc. the overlong glance). In a still-homophobic society, any kind of over-reaction will have The Accused ("guilty" or not) thinking it was the same-sex nature of the action that was wrong, not that it was intrusive or unwelcome. Good googly-moogly, no one dies from a stare! (Suicide from a false accusation or over-reaction? Way too often. )



GG Just wish I'd had the presence of mind, at age 7, for a "Don't Flatter Yourself!" comeback. Hell, I was into David Cassidy then (a sure sign of future f/f attraction, to be sure! ) Out

[Arron CFF]

see and I can understand how the girls would have felt, and yes if some one were checking me out while I was being forced to change in a large area I would have been upset and demanded something be done about it. I wouldn't care if was some hormonally challenged teenager or not. Just because they are made to dress and undress in front of others does not mean that they have to be appraised like show cattle. Sexual harassment goes all ways no one has the right to make you feel like that and if in fact they were, then they should have to have the same consequences as anyone else. Fair is Fair and we can not exclude ourselves for indecent behavior just because it was girls that allegedly did the offending.



just my 2 cents

Arron

She walks in beauty, Like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright; Meet in her aspect, and her eyes. ~ by Byron ~

[Gatito Grande]

. . . which is exactly why, Arron, we need intelligent, sensitive, non-homophobic, and both harrassment- AND bigotry-stopping adults to step in and make judgment calls.

Quote:

---

Just because they are made to dress and undress in front of others does not mean that they have to be appraised like show cattle.

---

Yes, but just because one feels like "show cattle" (a pretty good description of adolescent hyper-self-awareness: I know that, at times, I had it then!) does not necessarily mean that one is being appraised as such.



There's a whole lot of "eye of the beholder" (as it were!) going on here. Maybe, by some standards, I was looking at those undressed girls overly-long at age 7 (I really don't think I was hormonally-challenged then though ). That's not the way I remember it, but regardless, it doesn't mean that those girls didn't feel uncomfortable (however, I see no excuse for their calling me "lezzie": not that I had the slightest idea of what that meant, at the time, other than that it was Something Unspeakably Horrible ).*



Speaking of disclaimers, it may sound like, because of my searing experience, I'm making light of sexual harrassment (in the way of blatant leering, or peeping toms, for example): I'm not. I am counseling a gentle way to deal w/ adolescents (and pre-adolescents), that recognizes that the line between Victim and Victimizer can be so thin that it evaporates in a different light (and that, moreover, an obvious Victim in one context, can be an obvious Victimizer in another).





GG And how many of the problems---harrasser, homophobe, neurotically self-aware, false accuser (as weapon or attention-getting device), sexually-fixated, etc.---begin at home? Kids practice what they grow up with. Out



*Oh, FWIW, the sitch: it was an elementary summer school drama program, in which I was among the youngest participants, and they the oldest. We all had to change into our costumes in a drawn-blind classroom, and that's where, variously, my "crime"/their false accusation occurred.

[thx1123]

I knew the other kids thought I was gay.So I took wet wipes and cleaned under my arms and down as there well as reapplying deoderant in a bathroom stall so nobody could accuse me of staring at their backside or johnson.I was coming out the stall and three jocks jumped me,broke my nose and bruised a rib cuase they wanted to show all fags they were not welcome in their school.



They told the prinicipal I grabbed their buuts and wthout even bothering to hear my side they got 3 days in house suspension and I was told to go to the nurse and after he worked on me to call my mom and let her know I was suspened out of school for ten days and when I faced a board of education tribunial he was going to recommend I be sent to alternative school for a year.



well the nurse sent me to the hospital and i found out how badthey beat me. and at the tribunal I was put on academic probation meaning if I was sent to the principal for even talikng in class i would not go to alternative school but be expelled.The jocks three days in house was stricken from their record.



I cannot tell you before I got sick how frstrating it was to see a sclorship I was well qaulified for only to fine out the ten day suspension on my record made me inelligible.





After that I yurned homophobe outing others so they would think I was on their side and leave me alone.



I outed a girl that they drove to suicideThat will haunt me for the rest of my life.



So it could be the two lesbians are pervs but in she said,he said kinda stuff like this due to the persecution gays still endure I think the lesbians should be given the benefit of the doubt.



I go to Ashlen's grave every chance I get.I met her mom when I was 22 and home on a visit,I told her I did not bully her but I ponted her out as a target so those who drove her to her death would leave me alone.She slapped me and walked away.I make sure she is not there before I even get out of the car.



I have seen what bigotry can do,it turned the sweet guy who all the girls could go to with anything into a monster that I still hate.



it destroyed a sweet girl who had a crush on Lita Ford.





She came out to me becuase she trusted me.And i betrayed her becuase I really believed it was her or me.



They called her ugly names and put dildos in her locker.They had beat me and threatened to kill me.I told myself words can't kill.The gun that was put to my haed at a kegger could.I thought they were bluffing,that the gun was not loaded then they beat me.I knew if I did not curry their favor they woud kill me and my principal not only did not stop them but apprved.



i told my dad we were arguing and i hit one of them in the face and threw my bookbag at the other.Two.I was so afraid my dad woud hate me if he thought i was gay,I told him i got what I deserved.





I refuse to hate bigots.I sunk to their level once,never again.



Maybe that is why I search for the good in everyone.





i am sorry.I just needed to say that.





Tabby Tabby