This Book is Gay (9 page)

Homophobic and transphobic bullying can take many forms:

• Verbal abuse (name-calling)
  
• Rumour spreading
  
• Exclusion (being left out of stuff)
  
• Cyber bullying (online or text messages)
  
• Death threats
  
• Physical violence
  
• Sexual assault
  

The law is on your side again. BY LAW a school has to tackle all forms of bullying AND provide a safe space. Schools must also take POSITIVE steps to make young LGBT* people feel included – it's not enough for schools to merely tolerate us.

Be a SQUEAKY GATE: If you politely make enough noise at school, someone will eventually oil the hinges.

In 2008, I moved back to Scotland after having lived abroad – a sixteen-year-old with my mind set on going to university in two years' time.

‘Aye, see that new boy from Canada? F**kin' poof.'

What Kyle had said to Graeme in the corridor, oblivious to my presence, stuck with me. How did he know? I thought. Where has all this come from? I barely know him!

Having spoken to me once previously, he had made all of the assumptions he needed to start a two-year campaign of fear and isolation in my final years at high school. I could put it down to his immaturity – he was a year younger than me – but that only washes so many times. There were outright verbal attacks and a few physical attacks in PE by Kyle and Graeme. Trying to explain why you've got massive bruises down your side from being hit repeatedly with hockey sticks isn't easy to do. Somehow, I managed to explain it away.

I must admit, I look back at what happened and scream at my naivety for not having said anything sooner. In my last class on a Friday, I was discussing with a friend whom I had told I was gay what our plans for the weekend were. The plans involved seeing my then boyfriend on Saturday for one thing or another.

‘It's so nice', said Gemma, ‘that you've managed to find yourself a boyfriend.'

To my shock and total terror a girl who sat behind me exclaimed, ‘You're gay?! I would never have guessed!'

This would have been bearable, but there were two problems: first being that my entire French class now knew, and the second that Kyle sat directly behind her. The last fifteen minutes of the class dragged on, and I can't remember much apart from my overwhelming sense of guilt, shame and excruciating lack of hubris; people were demonising and defending me all at once. Kyle finally had his confirmation: Douglas is gay.

I remember leaving early to collect my instruments from the music department and scurrying to my locker.

By the time the rest of my year were down at the lockers, everyone knew. Some people were supportive, but Kyle, Graeme and their friends took great delight in tormenting me as I gathered my things together.

I didn't want to return to school on Monday. I was deliberately late so as not to have to deal with anyone in registration. By this point, my guidance teacher had a log of any incidents I had reported to her.

A few weeks later, I was standing at my local train station waiting for a taxi to take me home. (I didn't and still do not feel safe walking home at night on my own.) Kyle and Graeme walked past me and started shouting abuse at me in the street. I had learned to deal with it in school but not in the street. They left and I got in a taxi. When I was finally in my house and safe, I cried. Why me? How could they find this acceptable? As far as I could make out, it was my bedroom practices they were ridiculing, but somehow they'd cut to the very core of my identity.

How to tackle homophobic/transphobic bullying at school

These steps would work well for any kind of bullying:

• If you feel you're being victimised, start a journal. Not like, ‘Dear Diary, he's so dreamy …' – more like names, dates, times and places. List reliable witnesses to the incident(s).
  
• This is the tough part. Tell someone you trust and show them your journal.
  I KNOW – if you tell someone, it'll only get worse, right? WRONG. That is what people rely on to control you. Bullying is all about power and control. If you play along with what your aggressor wants, you are giving them all the power.
  Your journal (and witnesses) will be very hard to argue with. A lot of young people think they won't be believed. YOU WILL. If the first teacher is unresponsive, go over their head. Find someone who will listen. Again, you're in control.
  
• Teachers are also under scrutiny. NO teacher or school wants to be perceived as homophobic or transphobic – their job or reputation would be on the line. They WILL help you.
  
• If you have been physically or sexually assaulted, you should call the police.
  
• What will happen next? Well, it depends on the school and the circumstances. By law, they have to act. I'm not gonna lie – the situation probably won't go away; but if you persist, your school will have to take tougher and tougher action to provide a safe space for you.
  

My advice is NEVER TAKE IT. As hard as it is, FIGHT.

As a final word on bullying, be aware that the day you leave school, your life as a young LGBT* person will improve, but only because everyone's life improves when they leave school.

It's become the slogan of the anti-homophobic-bullying movement, but IT GETS BETTER.

‘About a year in [to my MTF transition], six months after I started presenting as myself full-time, my employer, which had seemed understanding at first, took steps towards showing me the door. I wound up saving them the legal hassle and just quitting, because it was getting unbearable. There is essentially no protection, and you are definitely going to change jobs at some point, either because they fire you or because they make things very unpleasant until you leave voluntarily. As an example of unpleasantness, it's also fairly common (as happened to me) that they'll ask you to limit your bathroom usage to a single-occupancy facility if they have one; in my case, the only one available was an elevator ride away and badly ventilated, so it smelled horrible, unlike the normal facilities in that building. I also know several trans women who are required by their employers to use the men's room.'

Irene, 33, New Jersey, USA

But what if life doesn't improve once you head into the working world? As discussed, there are small-minded people everywhere, I'm afraid – in your office, your hospital, your police station, anywhere you can imagine. But more good news! Once again the law is on your side: being LGBT* is a ‘protected characteristic' (which I like because it makes us sound like a beautiful rare butterfly on the verge of extinction in Java or something). It means, legally, that you cannot be discriminated against when applying for a job, in education, when buying or renting property, or when accessing public services (e.g. doctors or dentists).

Once you have a job, you cannot be dismissed because you're LGBT*; get less pay than a straight, cisgender colleague; be held back for promotion; or be made redundant (because you're LGBT*). If you're just plain crap at your job, then you're on your own, obviously.

If you think you have been discriminated against in the workplace, you can speak to your human resources department (if you have one) or get mediation from an outside agency such as ACAS (see the ‘Helpful websites and numbers and stuff' section for contact details). You can also go to your local Citizens Advice Bureau. These sorts of disputes are often settled in court.

Earlier, I said that it wasn't all Kylie and canapés, and I wasn't kidding. Homophobia kills. The following statistics are REAL and are why we all have to stand up against hate.

• One in six LGB people in the UK has experienced a hate crime or incident in the past three years.
  
• Young LGB people who are bullied are at a higher risk of suicide, self-harm and depression. Forty-one per cent have attempted or thought about taking their own life directly because of bullying, and the same number say that they deliberately self-harm directly because of bullying.
  
• Forty-nine per cent of lesbian and bisexual girls report symptoms consistent with depression, compared with twenty-nine per cent of gay and bisexual boys.
  
• One in seven gay and bisexual men (thirteen per cent) report moderate to severe depression, compared with seven per cent for the general population.
  
• Seventy-nine per cent of lesbian and bisexual women report a spell of sadness, misery or depression within the past year.
  
• Within the past year, one in fourteen gay or bi men has harmed himself on purpose. This rises to one in five for gay or bi women.
  
• Young LGBT people are 190 per cent more likely to misuse drugs and alcohol compared to straight youths. (University of Pittsburgh 2008)
  

Except where stated, all statistics courtesy of ‘Stonewall – School Report 2012', ‘Gay and Bisexual Men's Mental Health Survey 2011', ‘Homophobic Hate Crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2013'.

That was a maudlin bomb detonating in your face. Yeah, I know this all makes for hugely depressing reading, but I'm all about the TRUTH. Clearly, being LGBT* does not automatically make you depressed or suicidal, but the fact is that young LGBT* people, when exposed to hatred or homophobia or when living with anxiety and threat, are bound to be vulnerable to mental health problems.

This is why all of us – all LGBT* people, young and old – are still working for greater acceptance and challenging homophobia. Even a book like this would have been unthinkable ten years ago. It's CRAY! A book about YOU in a school library! Whatever next?!

Hopefully, as tolerance, understanding and visibility of LGBT* people increases, homophobia will die out with the ignorant people it lingers in.

Aside from a bit of pesky self-loathing, there are more practical reasons why people might choose not to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans – or at the very least keep it under their hat. Depending on where you live and the faith you're born into, circumstances can vary wildly. This section, although hardly filled with LOLs, I'm afraid, is really important because, although it's pretty mega being a gay, it's far from comfortable for thousands of people all around the world. And, who knows,
we
might be able to make a little difference.

What's annoying is that homophobia is a cultural thing. In ancient times, people were super open minded about gay shiz. Look at Sappho on her island; check out the same-sex culture of the Greeks and Romans. I'm afraid the tide turned when Christian missionaries took it upon themselves to travel the world to tell everyone how marriage should be done. From there it was downhill all the way as far as the acceptance of homosexuality was concerned.

If you are reading this book in the UK (or pretty much anywhere in Europe or most of the United States), you should feel very lucky indeed because while bitchy haterz be throwing shade, at least you have the law on your side. As discussed, in the UK you are actively protected.

Although it seems unthinkable now, it was illegal to be gay in England and Wales until 1967, and Scotland didn't wise up until 1981 (what were they thinking?). Northern Ireland dithered about until 1982. Before these dates, homosexual behaviour between men was considered a crime (‘gross indecency') or a mental illness. In 1954, there were some one thousand men in PRISON for being gay.

That lesbian behaviour was never illegal is down to the assumption that two women could not commit ‘sodomy', at least in the UK.

Let's talk about ALAN TURING, a guy you really ought to be taught about in school. Basically, this total dude of a code-breaking genius won us the Second World War but was arrested in 1952 for being gay (again, ‘gross indecency'). He accepted CHEMICAL CASTRATION as an alternative to a jail sentence, before killing himself in 1954. Not cool.

A major step forward in equality was the change made to the age of consent. After much, MUCH ridiculousness, in which many politicians showed themselves to be flaming ignoramuses or plain homophobes, the age of consent for same-sex men (again men, as there had never been any rules in place for women) was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen and, FINALLY, in 2001, to sixteen. This meant the law recognised that you can't have one set of rules for straight people and another set for those who aren't.

With the equally baffling and frustrating fight for equal marriage now wrapping up at long last, the overt discrimination (as that is precisely what it is) is finally drawing to a close in the UK – but more on marriage later.

Basically, my friends, sometimes being LGBT* in the UK is a bit pants but, as you're about to learn, it could be far, FAR worse …