Was I Bullied in High School?

Was I Bullied in High School?

Last week I went with a friend to her local school board, where they anticipated pushback from parents who were upset about an anti-bullying assembly at the middle school. 

My friend had posted on IG requesting data about anti-gay bullying, and I sent her a link to data from Trevor Project, a group that works to prevent teen suicide. 

My friend made this very detailed one-pager below with statistics from many sources. She shared it with the school board when she stood up in defense of the middle school teachers and administrators who had organized the assembly. 

I felt proud of her at a cellular level for speaking out in support of queer students, teachers and administrators creating a safe space for students to explore their desires and identities free from harassment, physical and emotional harm. 


Created by Jordan Best

The facts my friend shared are staggering:

  • 83% of LGBTQ+ students report having experienced harassment or assault in school environments. 

  • Suicide is the second leading cause of death among children ages 10-14, and LGBTQ+ youth are 4X more likely to attempt suicide. 

  • Supportive school environments reduce risk of harm by 30% with students reporting increased feelings of self-esteem, mental health, and positive learning outcomes. 

It is not just LGBTQ+ youth who are at risk from anti-queer bullying. Studies show that there is increased anxiety and loss of learning among bystanders as well as victims of in-school harassment. To witness violence against others causes similar negative consequences as being the victim directly. 

This video from Colorado College Sociology Professor C.J. Pascoe describes how straight boys, in particular, suffer from this culture of bullying. Bullying is a taught behavior; children learn it from parents and other role models in their lives. So to unlearn bullying — to shift from a culture where harassment is sanctioned to one where it is faced and mitigated — we need first to face it as a system that lives both in us and around us, to see that when anyone is bullied in school that school is not safe for anyone. 

After my friend shared this data, there was a stream of parents who spoke – almost entirely anecdotally – in opposition to the assembly. They were angry, they said, because 

  • They hadn’t been told about the assembly in advance. (Not true; they were told by email.) 

  • They should have been allowed to opt their children out of the assembly. (Since the assembly was part of the school’s curricular day, this would be like asking to opt them out of Geometry, so clearly what they were asking for was overreach. Nevertheless, any parents who asked to pick up their students early, rather than attend the assembly, had been enabled to do so.)

  • They were particularly angry that two of the speakers — part of a state-approved program about what to do if you are bullied or if you witness bullying — introduced themselves as gay. 

Several of the opposing parents threatened to send their children to private school if the school continued to offer anti-bullying programming. They had to be asked, multiple times, to not interrupt other speakers. And, clearly violating district policy, the opponents of the assembly brought in a speaker, who did not live in the district and who described himself as “formerly gay,” to speak against all types of diversity programming. 

Several more parents stood up to defend the school against these attacks. One woman, in tears, described how her queer daughter in sixth grade dreaded going to school because she was frequently bullied; others spoke about anti-Semitic and anti-Asian bullying in the middle school and high school. 

It felt to me like the “Parents’ Rights” parents were bullying both the school system and other parents with yelling, name-calling, and becoming increasingly loud and physically aggressive in ways that did not let other points of view be heard. The chairwoman of the school board had to pound her gavel and fight to maintain order; the student representative walked out. 

*

I thought back to middle school and high school, where I often found it hard to express myself. I was a person who spoke out, but very rarely for myself; it was always for abstract ideas and other people’s rights. “Was I bullied,” I wondered, “did I witness bullying and not speak out?”

One time stands out quite clearly: two of my friends wanted a homeroom that was free from the Pledge of Allegiance – because they were atheists, and felt the words “under God” should not be required in public school. I agreed with them in principle, but wasn’t sure I wanted to take a stand with them. I went to our AP History teacher to ask her what I should do, and she suggested that we send a petition to the school board with as many students’ signatures as possible. The result – nearly a year later – was not only a homeroom where students didn’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance, but also a student representative to the school board. 

I’m wondering if I would have had the courage to speak up in eleventh grade if I felt that lots of other students – and their parents – were hostile not just to something I believed in, but to something I physically and emotionally thought I might be? I don’t think so; I don’t think I could even have talked to my mother about something so personal. 

I was silenced and I silenced myself, but I was not bullied, and I did not see others bullied. At least not that I can remember. Growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, I participated in — was a leader in — a culture that was outwardly, officially straight, white and Christian. I participated in and enforced those norms, occasionally noticing how different our narrow, white college town felt to the very few BIPOC students in our school. This way of participating — and not speaking out — enables and perpetuates bullying. Gabor Mate, in The Myth of Normal, describes how cultural norms constrain us all, individually and collectively.  

*

My curiosity and commitment to expanding freedom for all people was nurtured both by my parents and my high school. In that school board meeting last week, I felt my curious, creative parts under attack. I reconstructed the ways I had silenced myself and others, and allowed others to suffer under the constraints of straight, white normality in the days before Black people in the U.S. created a shared language where we could see and speak about diversity, inequality, and exclusion. I remembered the times I imagined my life was not worth living and wanted to end it and had silenced those thoughts as well. 

My friend Nancy, who wanted the god-optional home room, was gay (though I didn’t see it at the time), the daughter of two survivors: one from the Nazi genocide of Jewish people during World War 2, and one whose parents survived the Ottoman genocide of over a million Armenians in World War 1. The word “genocide” was created in international law after WW1 to describe this mass murder of Armenians. 

I’ve spent the past week with my memory back in high school. When I started using they/them pronouns publicly — a few years ago, in my early 60s — it was as if I was taking on the mantle of queerness that I had not fully seen or understood then. To acknowledge things in myself that had always been ambiguous and multiple, and to show young people who were exploring their gender and sexual identities – and maybe were afraid to talk to their parents – that they had an ally, someone they could talk to and stay alive. 


If you are reading this and contemplating suicide, you can call or text 988. You are loved, and you are not alone.

Thank you to Jordan Best for the one-pager and for your courage standing up for queer students in your community and all students’ right to go to school free from harassment and bullying; to Roxanna Azari for sharing the video from Professor C.J. Pascoe and for asking questions that guide me deeper into my own default stories; to Rev angel’s Transformative Change community for helping me stay steady; and to Resmaa Menakem, Nadine Bent-Russell and Anissia West who tell me where I’m hiding in piles of white supremacist sh*t. 


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