While we are not the sort to criticize media attention to very important issues – such as the current realization that bullying is a bad thing – we would like to point out an underlying problem. For clarification, the issue at hand is the recent suicides resulting from homophobic bullying against young students. This is a dire issue for many reasons, but it is in no way a new one.
This has been a problem for a very long time.
School children and teenagers do not newly possess the ability to be cruel; society has not recently decided to reject people for their sexual identity.
Those responsible for the bullying are following in a long tradition of tormenting their peers for sexuality – their parents did it before them, their grandparents before even them.
We, as a society, pass discrimination down to our children – either that or we share it with those around us. We make enough jokes, lobby against enough rights, and cite enough outdated or poorly gotten statistics to make it well within the socially acceptable norm. Enough people are prejudiced to where few would outright reject those who express that prejudice.
It is no wonder that children would repeat those prejudices in the way they do any other until the bullied cannot take it anymore.
And for all students who were driven to suicide, there are countless others that remain tormented, who are told to “suck it up” when they complain to authorities, who are told that it’s just part of being a kid to be bullied. Being treated as subhuman because of an actual or perceived difference in sexual orientation or gender identity is not normal – should not be normal.
Again, we do not understand why people are finally realizing that this is an issue. Did it really take deaths for us to become aware? Did it really take the stacking of names of those deceased for America to wake up and realize that this is an issue, that we cannot condone such mistreatment.
For every one who has made a gay joke, for every public figure who has been publicly outspoken against homosexuality, for every individual who has openly expressed a disdain for any sign of a difference in sexuality or lifestyle, there is a child listening and realizing that it is OK to think that homosexuality is wrong or bad or gross.
They aren’t getting it from thin air. This is not some innate idea within the human psyche. Children are bullying other children because “fag” is an insult, because when something is stupid it is “gay,” and so on and so forth.
Why are we surprised that this is happening? These children are merely mimicking the society they are surrounded by.