Homophobia in my school

I'm going to try this at my school.

I think we should try to get as many people as possible to do this experiment and then write articles and try to get them published in as many places as possible.

This will make a good post for a blog thing I plan to do for a scholarship contests starting the 1st of October. It will be interesting to see what kind of comments and veiw counts a blog like that would get.

I wouldn't mind outing myself for a cause like this. It really does bother me when people discriminate against the LGBT community like that. I used to use words like those, but I think it was only in an attempt to convince myself that I wasn't bi.

 

I am so trying this when when I'm back at school! I bet i'd get high double figures if not triple figures. It's such a good idea for an experiment!

 

How does using gay as either stupid or dumb equate to homophobia?

 

Hm. What do you mean by "subconscious idea"?

 

I have to disagree, since most of the people that I know use gay as stupid, but are not homophobic. Nor do they connect gay people with weakness, failure, or negativity. That's kind of jumping the gun. The word has changed. Perhaps the first person who used it meant it to be so, but that's not how it is now.

Either way, if what you're saying were true (that people will subconsciously think gay = stupid) then back when gay was changed to mean homosexual from happy, everyone would have subconsciously thought that happy = gay.

Which would mean that now, people would go around saying, "hey hey! don't smile so much, you don't want to seem like a pole smoker." I don't see that happening. Do you?

 

I've kept track in my head before, but have never written it down... I think it would be interesting (though perhaps disheartening) if a few people from the site tallied and compared the results.

 

I don't hear it that much now, but I'm definitely going to count. I don't really talk to people that much in my classes so I guess I'll have to do some eavesdropping. I'll also do this at work, as I work at a junior high (but I work with the intellectually disabled so they don't do much talking at all).

During high school I wrote a blog on myspace about how I hated when people used gay and retarded as something other than gay or retarded. Even tho I used to use the word retarded not in the correct way, (I don't now because I work with intellectually disabled/mentally challenged/mentally retarded whatever word you prefer teenagers) I don't think I've ever used gay to mean anything other than homosexual. It way bothered me when I heard gay used to mean anything but gay even before I realized that I was bi.

 

Jesus, that is crazy. I've never though t of tallying the number of times people mistreated gays, and its a good idea. But I know where your coming from. I wouldn't be able to publish that in a news paper either. My mom would start me up on counseling again with her church's pastor. lol

 

I understand completely,dude.When I first came out I heard alot of shat,and even before that.People say that kinda shat because they're scared of what they don't understand.Straghts can be real ignorant towards us,and most of the time ignorance can come out transforming into Violence,Harasment and lots of other crap.Fighting against them is hard because if you're a gay guy they think you're a sissy,and if you're butchy they'll (Guys) still refuse to hit you.I'm not sayin you shouldn't notice it-but just not to get too hot over it.Speak out and help them see no matter how much you don't like them,and through this it can get better.
Do you have an ALLIANCE club?I suggest if you want a place to go and talk w/ other gays you could talk to your counselor or a member of student council/staff about a support group.

 

You have got to be kidding me.
This is ridiculous.

I'd forgotten about the experiment the whole day except for my Marine science class when this kid used homophobic terms 27 times in a five minute period. I mean, litterally every other word was gay, fag, ect, ect. REALLY?! I mean, REALLY?!

I was about to punch him in the face because my gay guy friend was sitting across the room and I was just about to scream "I LIKE GIRLS MOTHERFer! SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!" And kick him in the nuts. Thank god the bell rang or I seriously would have resorted to violence.

 

Today was a good day. I only heard 1 homophobic comment. Granted it came from some freshmen who thought they were being clever. He said something to the effect of "Rated G for GAY". I don't know what context it was being said, but either way it wasn't remotely clever.

 

Oh boy oh boy, I hope you werent expecting clever comments from 99% of high school students. =o

 

I only heard one comment today. We were talking about something to do with marching band, and my friend Amanda yelled "That's GAY!". Not at all like her.

I'll have to try again tomorrow.

 

I think it is usually worse. Still, I doubt the average would be more than 10 times a day here.

I've also been paying attention to how homophobic people act depending on the people they are around. For example, when Kris is around "the guys", he is always saying "faggot" or "queer" and just generally acts like an ass. But the other day, when "the guys" weren't there and it was just a few of us non-homophobic-comment-making people, he let another guy kiss him and he never once made a homophobic remark. I don't know why people think they have to say homophobic things to "prove" themselves, especially when they aren't even homophobic.

 

Wow, today I was thinking about this and I noticed it way more than usual. In PE, everything was in some way gay... even the broken golf ball was "lez". It almost made me laugh actually, how pathetically unoriginal people are in their insults.

 

Wow...I almost can't believe it. I didn't hear a single thing today.

Maybe its because Homecoming was last week and we had a 2-hour late start today, so everybody was in unnaturally good moods....

But I am impressed with my school

 

An update for today.

All was going well before lunch, with only one thing that could be considered even slightly homophobic; one person sarcastically saying "It's OK to be gay." Then at lunch, Phil walked past and randomly pointed out that our table was full, and Megan croaked that he was wierd, and Austin said he thought that Phil was in love with him. Then Blake says "Well, that just makes it worse." Somehow, that progressed into a conversation about the relationship between sexual preference and cookies (I have no idea how or why), and Austin makes some joke that I didn't hear.

Megan didn't hear either, so she asked him to say it again. Ricky leaned over and made a gesture towards Cody and said something about "Not with him here" and Austin whispered the joke again. I still didn't hear the whole thing, but I did hear the word "fag" somewhere in it. I really couldn't care less what Austin said, but you have to assume that Ricky said that because Cody is gay...which isn't that surprising. But I didn't know.

So, this far we are averaging about 1 per day....I'm pleasantly surprised.