It gets better
The It Gets Better project is a good thing.
The interview with Dan and Terry on Fresh Air was also good. Terry had an especially horrible time the first two years of high school. He said he couldn’t even walk down the hall in such a way that he didn’t attract bullying. Everything he did – the way he moved, the way he talked, everything – got him bullied. His mother went to the school and asked them to do something about the bullying.
Their response was, ‘There’s nothing that they could do. If he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do to protect me and it was probably just going to happen and that my family should probably just get used to it.’
That really brought me up short. I think I’d heard it before, when they first started It Gets Better, but if so it shocked me all over again. Jeezis – his school telling his mother if he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do…that’s so complicatedly horrible I can’t deal with it. Which is why It Gets Better is so necessary.
I find it too moving to watch. I hope the kids don’t! I hope for them it’s a lifeline, not something that makes them go all maudlin. But I found the one by White House staff very…powerful.
I absolutely love the It Get Better Project. One of the video entries is a song by Rebecca Drysdale (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQNwMxqM3E), and I listen to it all the time. Although I’m in college, it still gives me hope.
I instinctively couldn’t help noticing the comparison between the body language/demeanour and imput of the people in ‘It Gets Better’ videos and that of the Archbishop of New York > http://bit.ly/edFtKS<
The former came across as being the epitome of all gracefulness and all elegance as opposed to the slovenly mauling mannerisms and aggressive speech of archbishop Dolan. To think that the former are held to ransom because of pathetic ideologies held by men of the ilk of the latter is stomach churning. The videos speak volumes. Powerful stuff.
I find this project deeply moving and a source of great hope. Seeing the messages from Obama and Biden was wonderful.
Love, love, love this campaign. These are the sorts of things I found myself telling my kids at various times, but of course, coming from their mother, they couldn’t really be sure I wasn’t just trying to make them feel good. Neither of my now grown kids are gay, but they were targets of other sorts of bullying, partly for being from a freethinking home. If these vids had been available then I would SO have shared them! I’d bet many others besides the gay kids are being reached by these, and many lives being saved.
There’s a funny YouTube video someone made called “it gets worse.” The person who made it pretends to be a guy who bullied LGBT kids in his school days, and he describes how his life after being a bully has just gone down hill.
My daughter got bullied for years. Not a gay thing, just she was different enough that she became ‘the target.’ And I tried, for years, to get the school to fix the situation by ‘being nice.’
Ultimately, by dropping my ‘accommodationist, work-it-out’ parenting and becoming a ‘mean’ and ‘rude’ ‘gnu parent’ worked it out. (So take that Chris Mooney, you fucking idiot.)
The bottom line was after years of being nice and appealing to reason and fair play and responsibility, what stopped Baker from bullying my daughter was my going into the office and blowing my cork loud enough to be heard half-way across campus. With the point that if they continue to refuse to suspend the bully (according to the district policy) it was going to be <b>lawsuit time.</b> They got the message and the bully was suspended three times in the next eight days and that was the end of the bullying.
As a bit of back-story to Baker, the Mom was a ‘courageous volunteer’ who helped tutor the minority students and dad was a big-time lawyer. Both their kids were brilliant little sociopaths in training because they were crappy-assed parents, not because the kids were inherently defective. The parents were negligent, work-aholic, look-good-in-the-community parents who put their kids last and never gave them consequences for their crappy behaviors. I felt sorry for the kids because it was so obvious they wanted time-and-attention from their parents and other adults and they were going down the wrong-path in the worst-way.
Anyway, it’s not that the school ‘can’t’ do anything about it. It’s dependent on the administration and if they don’t want to do anything about it, they won’t. There are a lot of reasons for this negligence, beyond they probably were closet homophobic. So I would hesitate to say (with certainty) that was the reason, though I suspect it.
And, by the way, it is career-over by non-contract-renewal for a Principle that gets sued. So if you ever find yourself in that corner, let them understand, in no uncertain terms, while you would hate to destroy their career by highlighting their inaction in this serious issue through a lawsuit, as a parent you will find counsel and sue for damages for yourself and for your child against the district and the principle.
I was only able to watch the video of Joel Burns once–made me cry too hard. He is a truly courageous person. There is a beautiful song by American-Japanese singer/songwriter Angela Aki that I thought should be the theme song of the It Gets Better movement. It’s called “Tegami” (The Letter). I posted it a while back: http://yokohamayomama.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-favorite-song.html
It’s in Japanese, but there’s an English translation below. The “letter” of the song is one that she as an adult is writing to her 15-year-old self, telling herself not to give up, to keep believing in herself.
I was fortunate that I was not really bullied in the same way as the many people who contributed to the LGBT youth (and even more fortunate that I went to a Science and Math specialized magnet school for my last two years of high school, where we were all nerds), but even so, the general cruelty of children can be so high, and there is just no good system to protect the children from it. And all the teachers I know are so busy trying to fit everything they do into a single day that they don’t have the time to be patrolling the halls like hawks. And I know that even if anti-LGBT sentiments die down, it doesn’t mean an end to bullying. Frankly I’d almost see them just sent to different schools after a few repeat offenses, because its amazing how much more pleasant a school gets without the bad apples making everyone tense.
This is such a tough problem. Schools can do a lot to combat bullying, but LBGT, nerdy, freethinking, or otherwise “outsider” kids and their parents still need to be prepared for rough sledding, especially in middle and high school. Even schools with good policies and caring, dedicated staff cannot prevent or catch all the abuse, given how distressingly common it is.
Amy, exactly – I can only watch them in small doses because I get too lachrymose. Which is annoying, because I want to watch lots of them!
D and T said in the Fresh Air interview that the project and what it says isn’t just for LGBT kids, it’s for any kids who feel weird, marginal, outsiderish, bullied. Obama cited the freedom to not fit in. Yes.
It occurred to me that if atheism were majoritarian and dominant, the project would be for bullied or shunned theist kids. Well sure. Contrary to our reputation, we don’t actually favor bullying or shunning people. On the contrary: we insist on the distinction between disagreeing and bullying/shunning.
Frankly I’d almost see them just sent to different schools after a few repeat offenses, because its amazing how much more pleasant a school gets without the bad apples making everyone tense.
Yeah, right. Just send them to a new area for a fresh crop of victims. It worked so well for the Catholic Church.
I’ve watched so many of the IGB videos – so full of brave & inspirational people.
I’ve never made it through one without ending up in tears though. Society can be pretty evil to anyone different.It’s an amazing project, its already changed lives and will continue to do so.
Terry’s experience with school administrators was (and still is in some areas) absolutely typical. When I went to the principal to plead for help with a group of neo-Nazi boys who waited after school for me with a baseball bat, she said, “That’s the price you pay for being so different.” My main tormentor was also a coworker at the grocery where I was a cashier, and he delighted in stuffing porn in my locker, writing my name and phone number on the bathroom wall for anyone who wanted a cheap blowjob, and slamming my head into doors. Management did nothing, of course. Who cares – it’s just a faggot.
Generally speaking adults are much politer to each other than children and teenagers are to each other. The jockeying for power and pushing others down to raise yourself up are more naked among the young. The poet Phillip Larkin said that when he was a child he thought he hated other people, but when he grew up he realised it was just children that he hated – their bullying and their cruelty and their boastfulness. Adults have to be slave owners or maybe sergeants in the army before they can act to other adults as children can act to children.
Josh – are you American? Under Equal Opportunities legislation in the UK you would have redress against gay bullying in the workplace. If the management was turning a blind eye to it they could receive hefty penalties. However, I assume this job of yours was years ago.
The “It Gets Better” project is excellent, and it’s a pity that it’s so necessary. Here’s another exmple of trying to pitch a similar sort of message. It comes from a long-running Dutch TV series where children’s songs are used to raise money for good causes. This one is called “Two Fathers”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qf0puHJ-KM
I think this one was probably written *for* Ophelia….