Sunday, October 23, 2011

Talking Points #3: GLSEN article reflection

Harsh Realities Finds Transgender Youth Face Extreme Harassment in School


This article discusses transgender youth harassment in school.
"Nearly nine out of 10 transgender students experienced verbal harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation and gender expression, more than half experienced physical harassment because of their sexual orientation and gender expression and more than a quarter experienced physical assault because of their sexual orientation and gender expression."
This article made me really think about how much harassment there is in school, whether its by students or teachers. I know of a couple of students from my high school that are transgender. One of my friends, who I knew as Eva has just recently changed her name to Evan. Since the end of high school, I feel as though she has become more comfortable with herself. In our high school, most of the students were not very accepting to the LGBT community except for those students in our Gay-Straight Alliance. It is sad but there were a lot of students harassed in school because of their sexual orientation and/or their gender expression. I heard many people referring to some of my friends in the LGBT community as"faggot" or "dyke," it really bother me. Honestly, even though I was bothered by it I was usually just a bystander and never did much about it, even though I felt bad for not speaking up.
Similar to the statistics in the article, few of the teachers from my high school ever said anything if they heard a homophobic remark. Unlike the article, as far as I knew, there were no incidents of teachers making homophobic remarks to students.
The statistics in the article were very upsetting cause I had never realized how bad harassment towards the LGBT community was. 
Now that I have read this article I want to do something about the harassment that occurs. I have been considering joining ALLIED if I had the time to keep up with it because I would love to be a part of the solution rather than just a bystander.

1 comment:

  1. you bring up several good points I actually based my post on yours!

    ReplyDelete