I am doing a homework assignment on bullying of LGBT students in school for my graduate class in Social Work and it is amazing what I am finding. There are many research papers that have been writing on bullying gay and lesbian students, but very little on gender variant students and those that report to be LGBT, trans-students are a footnote.
As a result, I have had to shift the focus of my paper from bullying against trans-students to bullying against LG students.
I was the object of bullying in grade school and high school and even college. It was trans-related, but I did not know it at the time. The bullies picked on me because of my feminine mannerisms and called me out for being a "girl."
ReplyDeleteI, too, was bullied. Like Staci, I didn't know that it was related to being trans, for I didn't know what that meant.
ReplyDeleteThe bullying stopped when I started working out and turned myself into an athlete. The other kids still whispered, but I didn't experience any overt violence or harassment. Of course, not all trans kids can or should do what I did.
I've met far too many LGBT people who dropped out of school because they were bullied. Even worse, some also left their homes because they were bullied by family members.
Some people say that bullying, or being bullied, is just part of growing up. But what are we teaching those who are bullied--or the bullies themselves--when whether or not some smart, talented but diffident kid gets to realize his or her gifts and dreams depends on his or her ability to meet brutality with more brutality?