Racism and sexism are now taboo in schools. But rampant homophobic bullying is ruining many young people’s lives. Wendy Berliner reports on a new strategy to fight it
Tuesday October 2, 2001
The Guardian
This summer more than four million, mostly young, people voted for Brian Dowling, the gay air steward who won Big Brother – the hottest youth culture TV show. Last year a lesbian nun was a runner-up in the same show. Teens by the hundreds of thousands watch the camp Graham Norton Show. So why, with this apparent tolerance of gay lifestyles, is homophobic abuse so prevalent in our schools?
“Gay” is probably now the most common word of abuse in the playground, and beyond, among children and teenagers, and it is used to describe anything from the not very good to absolute rubbish. It is used to describe any kind of behaviour that could be remotely categorised as homosexual, even accidental touching in a crowded corridor, or a friendly smile in the changing room.
So it is unsurprising that few children dare to come out while still at school, and those that do can suffer terrible bullying, as in our case story.
Dr Debbie Epstein, professor of education at Goldsmiths College, London University, worked on a recent study that included an exploration of the extent of homophobia and schools’ response to it. She thinks homophobic abuse in schools is very widespread and a cause of playground violence.
“I think it is a form of abuse that is not prevented,” she says. “Schools tolerate it because they don’t know what to do about it. Homophobia is the real Cinderella of abusive behaviour. There is a consensus about what you do about racism. That’s perceived as bad and just not tolerated. Sexism isn’t tolerated either, but with homophobia, even schools who really want to do something don’t know what.”
Last week saw the launch of a best-practice guide, Safe for All, which showed how schools can successfully tackle homophobic bullying. Commissioned by Stonewall, it is written by Nicola Douglas and Ian Warwick of the Institute of Education in London.
But why has this problem not been considered in the same way as racism and sexism? The answer is partly historical and relates to section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. This was amended during the Thatcher era to prohibit the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities and the teaching in state schools of “pretended family relationships” (lesbian and gay) as equivalent to heterosexual ones. This left some teachers nervous about addressing homosexuality at all, and the ensuing vacuum allowed homophobia to flourish.
The government’s anti-bullying pack for schools – Bullying: Don’t Suffer in Silence, published last December – reminded schools of their legal duty to prepare a policy to prevent all forms of bullying among pupils and offered detailed advice on strategies. It referred explicitly to bullying because of perceived or actual sexual orientation, and recommended strategies. These include referring to this kind of bullying in the anti-bullying policy so that pupils know that it is wrong, covering it on teacher training days, offering confidentiality to pupils, challenging homophobic language and discussing issues linked to discrimination.
Sex and relationship guidelines introduced by David Blunkett while he was education secretary say that schools need to be sensitive to different sexual orientations.
Statistics of gay or lesbian schoolgoers are hard to find, but work done by Dr Ian Rivers, a senior lecturer in social psychology at York, St John College, suggests that there could be as many as 46,000 young people being bullied for their sexual orientation in secondary schools. Any child who does not conform to the norms current in their school can find themselves described as gay or lesbian, regardless of whether they are or not. So the boy who is not keen on football can be tarred, as can the girl who is not interested in make-up.
Rivers has looked at the effects of homophobic bullying on young gays and lesbians and found that more than half considered suicide because of aggression at school, and that 40% of this group had actually tried to kill themselves; three-quarters of these had tried to kill themselves more than once.
Hereward Harrison, policy research and development director for Childline UK, says that more than 20,000 children a year call about bullying; about 800 callers can be described as gay. “The form of bullying changes all the time, from verbal to physical to text messages. Gay is being used to mean silly or stupid – anything that is not the right thing. It is a put-down and it is based on homophobia.” He believes children in their early teens and during a rapid period of sexual development are at their most vulnerable to bullying. Calling someone gay, whether or not they are, targets this vulnerability.
“There is something about humans that gets them into scapegoating and picking off the weak,” he says. “If you are a young person and this is happening to you, tell someone about it.”
– Safe for All is free to schools. Contact Stonewall, tel: 020-7881 9440. Childline is holding a conference on bullying, chaired by Cherie Booth QC, at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on November 5.
The brutal consequences of coming out
– Ian was 15 when he came out at school. He is now at university.
I told my best friend, Sarah, and she was wonderful and got leaflets for me. I rang the Gay Switchboard and it was a revelation to be told I was normal. I started gaining confidence and told another two friends.
The next day one of them was bored in class, and turned round to someone and said “Guess what, Ian fancies Robert”. By the end of the day everyone in the school knew.
The following morning I was late to assembly and when I walked in there was a deathly silence. The rugby team in the rows behind me started throwing nails at me. Some of them hit me and I had several cuts, but the teachers did nothing. They all pretended to look at their registers. Then a nail hit one of them and he said “settle down” and they stopped. But the damage was done.
On my way to class people kept tripping me up and shouting “faggot”. I was really scared. At break I went up to the local shop with Sarah, and saw these guys from the year above. One of them punched me in the face and knocked me down. Then they were all kicking me in the legs, in the body, anywhere they could reach. Sarah tried to pull them off but she couldn’t. I started crying and they left me.
I had a split lip and was bruised all over. We reported it at school and the boy who punched me in the face was suspended, but I didn’t say what it was about – I was embarrassed and in denial.
For the next two weeks I was beaten regularly; two of my male friends were beaten, too. I didn’t tell my parents. I had told my mum I was gay and she had reacted very badly and told me never to tell anyone else.
The beatings eventually stopped but not the verbal abuse. Teachers would hear it; most of them ignored it. I felt they must all hate gays, too.
I started to feel suicidal. The only way to get through it was to stop going to my last class so that I would not have to walk home through all the others. Then I started missing other lessons to avoid trouble. I stopped going to PE because the other boys wouldn’t let me in the changing room. I would register and then go to pubs.
I forged notes from my parents to cover my absences and Sarah kept me up-to-date with the work. I went in for tests and did OK in them.
Sarah rang the Gay Switchboard and through that I went to a Stonewall youth project. It was three or four hours when I could be myself, but I stopped going because the contrast between that and my awful school life was so depressing.
Two weeks before I left school I told all the teachers who were there to offer guidance to pupils that I was gay. One said: “I was waiting for you to come to me.”
By then I was bumping into guys who had bullied me at school in pubs. I would ask them why they were talking to me, considering the way they had treated me. They were surprised. They said: “We were only having a laugh.”
It has affected my education. My brother and all my cousins went to Oxford. I didn’t get the grades. At school, I just wanted someone to say “You are not a freak, there are thousands of people like you and you are going to be fine.”
– All names have been changed.