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Church Failing On School Bullying.
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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Why do they need a policy on specifically homophobic bullying? Bullying is bullying regardless of whether you're calling the victim fattie or fag.
Indeed. An unsurprising story given recent anti-Catholic hysteria.
Ah shut the fuck up.
Schools in general have a failing in dealing with bullying and it's more to do with keeping reputations in tact than Catholics hating gays.
I'm quite aware that schools are complete piles of shit when it comes to dealing with bullying.
I now another guy who went to a Catholic school too (the same one) who is gay and he had trouble too.
It doesn't help at all if a school teaches about the evils of homosexality does it, they should be educating kids on understanding the issue, not marginalising a group of people at the most vulnerable point in their lives.
Of course there needs to be measures to protect LGBT bullying. Section 28 was repealed only a few years ago and schools still need to chip in so sexual minorities can get enough support.
Indeed.
What does the T in LGBT mean?
Kermit is right - bullying is still bullying and I think it should be treated in the same way as any other.
Indeed.
One of the schools my brother went to, they said that they have no such thing as bullying there. When he was getting bullied, they did nothing. Same with me at secondary school. Got bullied loads of times and nothing was ever done. I remember one time the teacher I told, just stood there and laughed at me and said that the person who was bullying me, was just messing about.:yeees: :rolleyes:
Transgender.
There are higher incidents of self-harming and suicide attempts amongst gay people because of homophobic bullying and abuse so the system is failing them even more than most other groups.
Always wondered why transgendered is lumped with homosexuality.
Remember that there is a diference between 'transgender' and 'transexual' ... LGBT does not include transexuals as such.
Isn't transexual an extension of transgendered? Transgendered, as far as I'm aware, is someone who doesn't identify with the gender they have been assigned at birth. How this manifests itself is irrelevant. I still don't get how this relates to sexuality. Not that I'm campaigning for them to be kicked out of the group or anything.
Lol - I am sure you are not.
Hmmmm .... I would say that a transexualism is more of a fetish. Many transexuals are straight but just like dressing up in women's clothing.
Is LGBT strictly about 'sexuality' - or does it encompass more than that? Perhaps it origonated as a support for transgendered people at a time when there wasn't any support elsewhere. Interesting point though ...
Oh, just read this on Wikipedia :-
"The term LGBT is controversial. For example, some transgender and transsexual people do not like the term because they do not believe their cause is the same as that of LGB people; they may also object when an organization adds a T to their initialism or acronym when the level of service they actually offer to trans people is questionable. There are also LGB people who don't like the T for the same or similar reasons.
Many people also believe that a sharp distinction should be drawn between sexual orientation and gender identity. GLB concerns the former; TTI concerns the latter.
Similarly, some intersex people want to be included into LGBT groups and would prefer LGBTI; others insist that they are not a part of the LGBT community and would rather not be included in the term."
So your question seems very valid ...
:yes:
I think that the effects of being bullied because of the colour of your skin would differ to being bullied for your sexuality.
I think it's a hard one for teachers to deal with. I mean calling a black kid the n-word is black and white (no pun intended). Calling someone gay has be used by teenage boys as an insult for as long as I can remember. I think that has to be made socially unacceptable before you can seperate genuine cases of homophobic bullying, from kids just using a term to tease someone. Equally, education into sexuality needs to be far better (though trying to get proper straight sex education into schools seems to be a big enough struggle without trying to get the idea of sexuality into the mix as well). I can't ever remember being taught about homosexuality in school, or having to sit through one of those God-awful amateur dramatics plays about homosexuality.
I don't believe that is what we are referring to though. Yes, people do get called 'gay' as a harmless, throw-away insult but for those children who ARE different, life seems almost not worth living. And the bullying that they get, is relentless and usually physical. And then other children avoid you because they don't want to be tarred with the same brush. The loneliness can be awful ...
Yeah but what I'm saying is that it can be hard to distiguish between bullying using the word gay, and bullying because the person is gay.
But I know what you are getting at ...
Why was he going to a catholic church then?
Oh, bollocks to that. I was bullied to the point of serious psychiatric harm (suicide attempts, serious self-harming, and the rest) because of my build, and my Catholic school didn't have a policy on that either. They're incompetent about bullying generally, like all schools are, because teachers and governors care more about reputation than protecting pupils.
Homophobic bullying is awful, but it is no worse than the bullying because of colour, build, acne, or a thousand other things. Schools need policies on bullying, and need to work on actually sticking to them, but singling out homophobic bullying is ludicrous.
Kermit, you can be so dismissive sometimes. Sometimes you astound me with your insight - at other times, like this, I find you frankly boorish. Do a search on homophobic bullying and suicide attempts amongst gay children. And anyway, your lone experience does not alter the general facts - as horrible as it was for you.
The suicide rate amongst gay teens is shockingly high - the rate of suicide attempts amongst young gay people is thought (from recent surveys) to be somewhere between 20% and 55%. Young gay and lesbian people are perceived to be one of the groups most at risk from suicide.
And, p.s., this isn't some attack on the RCC, by the way ...
That is what the news story was about - but my all comments have been on homophobic bullying in general. I don't have a inside view on the Catholic allegations.
I'm aware of the stats, and I think its an awful tragedy, but I don't think the statistics are very fair, to be honest. They hide more than they show, especially as "fat kids" or "spotty kids" or "nerdy kids" are not an easily-defined demographic. I'm not being dismissive or denigrating homophobic bullying- like all bullying, it disgusts me- but my belief is that it is no better or worse than other forms of bullying.
Homosexual children are more likely to be bullied than straight children, and I understand that struggling with your sexual identity is hard and does exacerbate bullying issues. But my experience is that fat kids are more likely to be bullied than thin kids, spotty kids more than not-spotty kids, and bullying causes serious issues with most victims, not just gay victims. Its just that nobody can define what a fat kid is and so nobody can measure the damage in that demographic.
Lea, the NASUWT were intending to imply that the Church does nothing about homophobic bullying, but that's not what was said. They "don't have a policy" for specifically homophobic bullying- I suppose it depends on whether you regard a bullying policy for every demographic to be "doing something". My exp[erience is that you may as well wipe your arse with a school's bullying policy because when push comes to shove they do fuck all- they care more about their reputation than they do about their pupils.
Well that's bollocks.
Of course they have a policy against homophobic bullying. No school tolerates bullying of any kind which includes homophobic bullying. But like every school, the allegations never tend to get outside the school because reputations are at stake, this includes homophobic bullying in Catholic schools, just like racist bullying in mainly white schools is. This report is adding 2 and 2 and getting 5.
Now that's a much more gentle and persuasive argument ... thank you.
In my experience, gay children at school were the bottom of the bullying hierarchy. Heaven forbid you were ever a GAY spotty, nerdy, fat kid - life would just not be worth living.
The other thing is, though, that many fat kids grow out of their puppy fat, spotty kids get Clearasil and their skin clears up in their late teens and nerdy kids grow up to be uni grads etc. Gay children stay gay ...
Sorry, I meant school... he went to a catholic school.