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By: ZACK HUDSON
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Georgia’s gay students are subject to humiliating physical and emotional bullying in the state’s public school system, but access to gay-straight alliances or other supportive organizations can help mitigate the effects, according to two separate studies released this month.
“Schools, Violence, and Sexual Minority Youth in Metro Atlanta,” a study commissioned by Atlanta’s YouthPride and conducted by the Georgia State University Center for Research on School Safety, School Climate & Classroom Management, surveyed 437 middle students about bullying and interviewed another 17 “sexual minority” high school students from in and around Atlanta.
The YouthPride study summarizes what other researchers have found for years: “Victimization of and aggression toward sexual minority youth is pervasive,” the study states.
Bullying, though, is hardly a new phenomenon, especially for kids perceived to be gay.
“I think everyone in the whole entire school somehow knew I was gay because I was just referred as the little dyke. Like even before I came out, everyone was like picking on me and stuff like ‘do you have a boyfriend yet.’ It was just scary to go in there,” a lesbian high school student told the Georgia State University researchers.
The YouthPride study comes on the heels of a separate study by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, a national organization based in New York. Released Oct. 3, the report, dubbed “From Teasing to Torment: A Profile of School Climate in Georgia,” was drawn from an online survey conducted for GLSEN by Harris Interactive. The survey interviewed 3,450 students ages 13 to 18 from around the country, including 160 from Georgia.
Georgia students were significantly more likely than the national average to report that bullying and harassment were serious problems in their schools (49 percent versus 36 percent), and less likely to report that their school had a gay-straight alliance to help students deal with the issues (9 percent versus 22 percent nationally).
Some 75 percent of Georgia students surveyed said they heard homophobic slurs like “dyke” and “fag” from fellow students, and 66 percent reported hearing negative comments about gender expression.
“This is the generic allowable insult for anyone who’s different. It just also happens to be linked to a particular group of people who are marginalized and despised by society, the LGBT people. And some of the young people will do almost anything to avoid that label,” GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings, a former teacher, told Southern Voice.
Overall, Georgia students who participated in the Internet-based poll “reported that physical appearance and sexual orientation were the most common reasons students were harassed in school.”
‘Picture harsh, but not bleak’ The study conducted for YouthPride by GSU showed similar trends, although YouthPride Executive Director Edward Gray emphasized the report’s positive indicators.
“The picture is harsh, but not entirely bleak. We know that young people face a lot of harassment, mostly verbal, some of it physical. But what this study helps to show is the coping mechanisms of young people are incredible,” Gray said.
Students who the studies found to be coping well in the Georgia school environment, particularly those targeted by harassment, almost always reported some access to an understanding adult or peer group, like a GSA or YouthPride.
The GLSEN study found that only 17 percent of students in Georgia schools with such clubs reported that bullying was a serious problem, compared to 52 percent in schools without the clubs.
Students interviewed for the YouthPride report offered similar anecdotal evidence.
“I think that just having some exposure to the like, queer community, through events like Pride and Youth Pride or stuff like that maybe gives someone a little more knowledge or understanding, if like, only a little bit,” one student told interviewers. Students in rural areas, which defines most of the county school systems in Georgia, were less likely to have access to GSAs, according to a list of Georgia student clubs posted on GLSEN’s website. The vast majority of the GSAs are in metro Atlanta schools.
Making it out of high school unscathed is a particular challenge for openly and perceived gay youth,” who Gray said “appear frequently in pathologies,” like suicide, drug abuse, addiction, and poor educational performance.
Local issue, state says The powder keg of peer rejection and instability has exploded to the forefront of national concern as evidenced by the recent spate of school shooting violence.
Eric Hainstock, 15, who shot and killed Weston Schools Principal John Klang in Cazenovia, Wis., on Sept. 30, had complained to Klang about a group of students who he said had harassed him and called him gay, the Associated ...
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