Gay bullying?

If anything, coming out has helped me like myself a little more and be a bit more confident. Being in the closet, you pretty much stop yourself from being who you are/who you want to be, so that tends to lower your perception of yourself. I focus more on positive sides of my body as well now, whereas I'd previously only focus on the negative (some of which people used to make fun of), and working a little on other areas to improve my image. I want to gain a bit more muscle, but not too much, I don't need a 6-pack.

 

I'm mainly a good target because I am just a generally eccentric person, and don't function well in social situations, but I suppose my short hair and love of plaid might come into play. Small towns usually mean small mindedness, and my town is no exception. While I get thrown into lockers and stuffed in garbage bins for being weird, the punishment for looking dykey is verbal abuse and isolation. It's very interesting how different social offenses are dealt with.

How did it make me feel? No different. I'll get teased either way, so why should I care what it's about. However, my pal goes to a fancy pants private school which is pretty much run by homos I accompanied her to her Winter Formal, and there were dudes all over each other, completely surrounded by what I would assume to be "popular folk".

 

Yup, they said I was a mutant freak (and some things to nasty to post here). I was infuriated and I broke their nose (accedentaly). I payed their doctor's bill and everything. It wasn't pretty.

 

I was constantly bullied at school. I was called all the names one could call someone who other suspect is gay. I had things done to me like being spit on, gum put in hair, being pushed, having things taken from me. I also faced the same type of bullying at home from siblings and my father. So I spent a lot of time in my room, where I felt safe. I faced this all through elementary, junior high, and high school by both boys and girls. I remember crying at the end of the graduation ceremony at my high school. One girl, who had bullied me since kindergarten turned to me and said something like, "Why are you crying?" I just turned to her and replied that I am finally free from dealing with you.

Looking back I still don't know how I survived all of those years. I have severed all ties with anyone that I grew up with. I really didn't have any friends, so it was quite easy. I am not that close to anyone in my family, but my mom. She was the silent type who knew what was happening to me, but didn't do anything about it at the time. She has since apologized to me. Otherwise I only see my dad on Christmas, and my siblings a handful of times per year.

 

I've been bullied, but not because I'm gay. I'm a nerd, and a few tough guys from school always picked up on that and ran with it.

I'm very careful about who knows I'm gay. I never tell anyone unless I have some way of knowing it won't slap me in the face. I always ask their opinion on gay rights, or make up a story about a friend who is gay and run with it and see their reaction. Its worked so far, because no one has ever confronted me about it.

 

I suspect the primary reason for my being bullied (actually I'd be apt to call it 'psychological torture' ) on a daily basis was due to my being perceived as a "weirdo." Barely talked, kept to my own mind, had absolutely no interest in communicating with those I did not find interesting (the exception here being the group of equally eccentric friends I eventually found).

There wasn't a day of my school life I wasn't verbally berated simply for being "different." Some attempts at physical bullying too, but I made it clear I wouldn't hesitate to use lethal weapons as self-defense if they ever threatened to harm me.


There were occasional times they seemed to suggest I was a gay in this bullying, but it's hard to tell what they meant of it.




And that turned into a long rambling....needless to say by the end of my stay in this hellish little Eastern Montana town I had developed a rather hostile and spiteful attitude toward a majority of people living there...

 

When I was young, around 11 or 12, my Mexican stepfather called me a "maricon" roughly translated as "fairy", pretty regularly until my mother left him when I was 12.

At the time, I had no idea why. I don't know, even today, what gave away my inclinations as I have no memory of any attractions to anyone at that age. A few years later, when I visited my own biological father for the first time in 15 years (for about 2 weeks). He called my mother afterwards to complain that she had raised a homosexual...

The glass closet?

 

Gay bullying seems to be far worse in the South than the rest of the USA.

As a suspected homosexual, I have been bullied because people thought that I am gay countless times in my life. I have lived in several different regions of America, and it seems to me that homophobia/gay bullying is worse in the American South than the rest of the country. I attended grades 5-12 in Alabama. I have several family members who are gay. I was surprised and disturbed by the homophobic remarks that I often heard from male classmates at school. Females did not seem to be prejudiced against gays. Several times I heard guys make remarks which indicated that they thought that gays deserved to die. One time a guy at school was talking about Adolf Hitler, and he said that Hitler went "a little bit too far" in his persecution of the Jews by murdering the Jews in the Holocaust, but he was glad that Hitler murdered homosexuals. Another time I was watching tv with a friend of mine and some mutual friends of his were present. There was a talk show on tv which was about bullying of gay people. The gay guy on the show said that he is not accepted anywhere he goes and anywhere that he works because he is gay. The gay guy on the talk show said "How can I function in society? I am not accepted wherever I work. What do you want me to do?" This guy who was watching tv with us said [to the guy on the talk show]: Die.

When I lived in Maine, there were a lot of openly gay people that I knew. I barely ever witnessed any homophobia. Several times I heard different straight guys say "Gay guys are okay as long as they don't hit on you." I never heard a straight guy say anything like that when I lived in Alabama.

I think that gays are perhaps the most stigmatized group in America. :icon_sad:

 

Ive been bullied in high school alot my classmates call me gay and names for being different from them (they didnt know im gay), i almost stopped school that time.

 

Another thing about homophobia in schools in Alabama. Several times I heard male teachers openly make homophobic statements to the class. If a teacher at the schools I went to made an openly racist remark in class, he or she would probably get fired for it. A teacher at another high school in my hometown actually did get fired one time for telling a student not to act like a "N-word". It was in the newspapers.

Homophobia is so bad in Alabama that a teacher can openly make homophobic comments in class with impunity.

 

I have a theory about Straight Acting Gay guys in Clubs/Pubs who have been drinking, it has been in these situations that someone has asked if I am Gay, I think we must let our guard down a little bit whilst drinking alcohol, we must act slightly Camp, without knowing we are doing it & checking out other Guys, without realizing we are doing it & that is why, we come across as Gay, that & the fact that the Guy who challenges us, is a closet Gay himself Lol :badgrin:

 

That's awful! You shouldn't have to pay for provoked retaliation from hate speech.

 

I've been bullied in some way shape of form since middle school. At first it was because I was a band nerd and then because people suspected that I was a lesbian which led to me being with a guy that I couldn't wait to get away from. Last year I started coming out to my friends and one of them told the cheerleading team and that lead to the entire school knowing by the next morning. I go to a really small high school with about 150 kids per class so news spreads pretty quickly. First off it was people in my first period calling me names and asking specific, inappropriate questions that the teacher claimed not to hear. Then I got notes put into my locker or stuck to it with chewing gum that contained the usual insults. There was also a time after school that some of the guys from the soccer team surrounded me in the corner by my locker and made some threats and hit me around some. I would have gone to the principle over this but considering that he hates all of the gay kids at school and looks for reasons to send them to alternative school or expel them......since then things have gotten better I occasionally get a rude comment or gum put in my locker but nothing really bothers me any more so..