Harassment of Gay Students: Unveiling the Challenges and Progress Since 1999

Twenty years ago, the issue of bullying and harassment of students due to their sexual orientation or gender identity was often dismissed by educators. However, the reality was that LGBTQ students faced regular verbal and physical harassment. This article examines the challenges faced by LGBTQ students, the progress made since 1999, and the ongoing need for supportive school environments.

The Start of Understanding: GLSEN's National School Climate Survey

In 1999, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) launched the National School Climate Survey (NSCS) to investigate the experiences of LGBTQ students in schools nationwide. Before this survey, there was a lack of national data and information about LGBTQ youth experiences in schools.

Early Findings

The initial surveys revealed that the vast majority of LGBTQ students were hearing homophobic remarks in school, and many were experiencing verbal and physical harassment, especially concerning their sexual orientation and gender expression. Few students reported having supportive educators or Gender-Sexuality Alliances (GSAs). The negative indicators of school climate, such as bullying, harassment, and name-calling, were high, while resources for LGBTQ students were scarce.

Shifting Attitudes?

There has been a gradual shift in attitudes towards anti-gay harassment in schools. While the common wisdom that "kids will be kids" and name-calling is "just part of growing up" persists, there is now more attention being paid to the effects of bullying and harassment. Surveys have indicated that both teachers and students recognize LGBTQ students as being among the most at-risk for bullying and harassment.

The Evolving Landscape of Identity

Over the past two decades, the ways adolescents identify themselves regarding sexual orientation and gender identity have changed. More and more adolescents feel like they don't want to use terms or be boxed in, and they are describing themselves, their sexual orientations, and their gender identities in an expansive way. This expansion highlights the importance of understanding the differences within the LGBTQ community. Schools can be particularly unsafe for trans and nonbinary students.

Challenges in Meeting Changing Needs

Schools, often structured around a gender binary framework, face challenges in meeting the changing needs of LGBTQ students, particularly those who identify as nonbinary. While teachers may be equipped to support trans girls or trans boys, they may not know what to do with students who exist outside of that binary. This calls for changes in architecture and the building of new schools to create more expansive, inclusive facilities that aren't as gendered.

Intersectionality: LGBTQ Youth of Color

It's crucial to recognize that LGBTQ youth are not a monolith and that their experiences vary based on different factors, including race and ethnicity. Research has shown that a significant percentage of LGBTQ youth of color experience victimization in school because of both their sexual orientation and their race/ethnicity. Students who report high levels of both types of victimization are worse off and need the most support.

The Role of Educators and Supportive Measures

Teachers can play a crucial role in supporting LGBTQ students by looking for signs of struggle, such as isolation, declining grades, and frequent absences. However, preventative measures are even more important and need to happen early, especially in middle schools.

Practical Steps for Educators

Educators can support LGBTQ students by:

Putting up a safe space sticker to indicate their support.

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Becoming a Gender-Sexuality Alliance advisor or helping to start a GSA in their school.

Research has identified four major ways schools can cultivate a safe and supportive environment:

Curriculum inclusion: Featuring positive and accurate representations of LGBTQ people, history, and events.
Supportive teachers: Having a number of teachers who are supportive of LGBTQ students.
GSAs: Providing a safe space for LGBTQ students and allies.
LGBTQ-affirming school policies: Implementing policies that prevent negative behaviors like bullying, harassment, and assault.

These measures can significantly impact students' well-being, psychological attachment to school, academic performance, and educational aspirations.

Lingering Concerns and Discrimination

Despite progress, there are still concerns about the insidious ways in which anti-LGBTQ and racist attitudes can manifest themselves in schools. Discrimination can take the form of denying LGBTQ students full access to school life, such as preventing them from bringing a same-gender date to the prom or using the locker room or bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. It's crucial to ensure that LGBTQ students have the same access to education and school life as other students.

Human Rights Watch Findings

Human Rights Watch conducted research between 2015 and 2016 in five US states, revealing that many LGBT youth remain vulnerable to stigmatization and abuse.

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Bullying and Harassment

Bullying, harassment, and exclusion remain serious problems for LGBT youth across the US. While 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws prohibiting bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity statewide, 31 states lack any specific, enumerated laws protecting against bullying.

Verbal Harassment

Almost all students interviewed for the report reported encountering verbal harassment in their school environment, even in the most LGBT-friendly schools. Derogatory phrases like "that's so gay" and slurs like "dyke" or "faggot" were used by students to belittle or taunt peers. Students also encountered anti-LGBT graffiti and slurs written on the school building, tests and papers, and personal property, and noted that their schools failed to investigate or rectify the vandalism. Experiencing targeted verbal harassment had negative effects on student mental health.

Exclusion and Lack of Information

LGBT students also reported difficulty accessing information about LGBT issues from teachers and counselors and found little information in school libraries and on school computers. In some districts, antiquated states laws restrict discussions of homosexuality in schools. Such restrictions make it difficult or impossible for LGBT youth to get information about health and well-being on the same terms as heterosexual peers.

Discrimination Against Transgender Students

Discrimination and bigotry against transgender students took various forms, including restricting bathroom and locker room access, limiting participation in extracurricular activities, and curtailing other forms of expression. LGBT students also described persistent patterns of isolation, exclusion, and marginalization that made them feel unsafe or unwelcome at school.

The Importance of GSAs

Many LGBT youth have organized gay-straight alliances (GSAs), which can serve as important resources for students and as supportive spaces to counteract bullying and institutional silence about issues of importance to them.

Addressing Teachers' Perceptions

One study designed to ascertain teachers’ perceptions of bullying of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth. In a sample of 200 educators (61.0% female; 96.5% White) from a county in southwestern Pennsylvania, there was a significant positive relationship between the teachers’ perceptions of the supportiveness of school staff towards students regardless of sexual orientation and those teachers’ reports of the frequency of bullying victimization experienced by LGBTQ students. Teachers’ perceptions of a higher level of staff and student support was associated with higher reported frequencies of students’ use of derogatory language about LGBTQ individuals and various types of bullying of LGBTQ students. Teachers with a lesbian, gay, or bisexual orientation were found to rate the school staff and students as significantly less supportive of students regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression in comparison to heterosexual teachers.

Teachers' Reluctance to Intervene

Studies have shown that teachers and educational support professionals feel the least comfortable intervening with bullying regarding sexual orientation in comparison to any other special population. Educators may not address bullying behavior of sexually-diverse children and adolescents because of fear of discrimination, fear of job loss, the possibility of receiving unfavorable reactions from parents, students, and other staff members, their own prejudices, or failure to recognize bullying based on sexual orientation as a serious problem.

The Protective Factor of Teacher Support

Support by teachers and school staff has frequently been cited as a protective factor for sexual-minority youth. Homophobic bullying is more prevalent in schools where educators remained uninvolved because of being unaware of bullying or unequipped with the appropriate training. Sexual minority youth who believed that there was no adult in the school to whom they could talk about a problem were more likely than others to have been threatened at school and to have made multiple suicide attempts in the previous year. Conversely, support from staff was a significant protective factor against suicide attempts, even when victimization was taken into account.

Limitations of Existing Interventions

Existing school interventions may not be sufficient to assuage the effects of being bullied. Many teachers report that their only bullying intervention includes “serious talks” with both parties of the incident, despite fewer than one in five educators perceiving that bullying was not a problem within their classrooms.

GLSEN's Continued Efforts

GLSEN continues to use the NSCS report to support LGBTQ youth in the United States and bolster international LGBTQ youth advocacy. They have advised international NGOs in 30+ countries on how to gather data about the needs and experiences of LGBTQ youth and how this data can be leveraged for advocacy.

Key Findings from the 2019 National School Climate Survey

The 2019 National School Climate Survey revealed that:

The vast majority of LGBTQ students (86.3%) experienced harassment or assault based on personal characteristics.
School staff don’t intervene enough to stop harassment.
School policies discriminate against LGBTQ students, especially transgender and nonbinary students.
Anti-LGBTQ language remains common in schools.

tags: #harassment #of #gay #students #1999 #statistics