By Karen Ocamb, special to the Desert Sun
In the 1950s and early 1960s, being punched, shoved into lockers and toilet bowls, and being called “sissy” were just a part of growing up. Even the wholesome TV show “Leave It to Beaver” had regular bullies Eddie Haskell and Lumpy Rutherford who learned some lesson in the end, only to return in the next episode with some power scheme that involved running roughshod over Beaver. For Beaver and millions of boys like him, dealing with bullying was a rite of passage to manhood.
But now Eddie Haskell has moved into the White House and the moral sanctions against bullying imposed by a civilized society have vaporized. And LGBT kids know it. The night Donald Trump won the presidential election, the Trans Lifeline and the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention hotline for LGBT youth, reported receiving “a record number of calls” from those terrified about becoming easier targets for increased discrimination and violence, according to Newsweek.com.
A December 2016 report by Human Rights Watch indicates that LGBT young people have good reason to be afraid. While noting that lawmakers and school administrators during the past 15 years have started to recognize and respond to the particular vulnerability of LGBT youth, progress has not been achieved everywhere. “In many states and school districts, LGBT students and teachers lack protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” the report says. “In others, protections that do exist are inadequate or unenforced. As transgender and gender non-conforming students have become more visible, too, many states and school districts have ignored their needs and failed to ensure they enjoy the same academic and extracurricular benefits as their non-transgender peers.”
In the report, Kevin I., a 17-year-old transgender boy in Utah, relays an experience that is not uncommon. “I’ve been shoved into lockers, and sometimes people will just push up on me to check if I have boobs,” he tells Human Rights Watch, adding that school administrators shrugged off his complaints of verbal and physical abuse and instead blamed him for being “so open about it.”
And while California is considered too progressive to turn a blind eye to anti-LGBT bullying, the biennial National School Climate Survey from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) issued last month illustrates that secondary schools are still “hostile environments” for LGBT students.
In addition to not having access to in-school resources and support, the report found that:
* “The vast majority of LGBTQ students in California regularly heard anti-LGBT remarks. Many also regularly heard school staff make homophobic remarks (17 percent) and negative remarks about someone’s gender expression (34 percent).
* Most LGBTQ students in California had been victimized at school. Of those, more than half never reported the incident to school staff (62 percent). Only 39 percent of those students who reported incidents said it resulted in effective staff intervention.
* Many LGBTQ students in California reported discriminatory policies or practices at their school. Almost half (47 percent) experienced at least one form of discrimination at school during the past year. In California, two in five transgender students (41 percent) were unable to use the school restroom that aligned with their gender identity.
“Equality California has helped win passage of numerous laws aimed at helping LGBT students and protect them from bullying and harassment,” says Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California. “But crafting the laws is one thing — making sure that local school districts follow through is another, and this important work by GLSEN shows us how much work is left to do. For that reason, this year we plan to launch our ‘Safe and Supportive Schools Index,’ which will provide a report card to hold individual schools across the state accountable for how they are implementing — or failing to implement — programs to keep kids safe.”
Keeping kids safe may get harder as the Trump administration settles in and education-privatization advocate and Christian conservative activist Betsy DeVos gets her way as Secretary of the Department of Education. The Nation reports that 31 states now “lack any specific, enumerated laws protecting against bullying on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” which means that LGBT youth need to either be protected by the federal government or by local school initiatives. Christian conservative groups such as the Family Research Council are pushing DeVos to reverse President Obama’s pro-LGBT executive orders and his Education Department’s “guidance” in providing “a baseline of school-based LGBT rights protections through civil-rights enforcement and funding leverage.”
Human Rights Watch says the question is: “How do we make sure that teachers feel protected, that there’s adequate training for school counselors, that bullying policies are fully inclusive of LGBT kids, and is there a way to guarantee that kids aren’t being thrown to the wolves?”
2017 may prove to be the year when LGBT adults assume the mantle of virtual parents and ensure that LGBT kids are safe and all right.
http://www.desertsun.com/story/desert-outlook/2017/02/03/anti-gay-bullying-california-schools/97469106/