Last August, Jonah Mowry, a 14 year old boy, uploaded a video of himself onto YouTube. In the video he doesn’t speak, rather, he holds up index cards telling a story of how he’s been bullied in school because he identifies as gay while tears run down his cheeks. Some of the cards read, “Im scared to go back,” “I don’t know why everyone hates me. Well I guess I do...cuz I hate me too.” But, the most heartbreaking card reads, “suicide has been an option many times.”
In the queer youth community, bullying, harassment, and suicide have always been major issues, and in recent years there has been a dramatic increase in stories revolving around harassment in the queer youth community. In Bullying, Harassment and Violence Among Students, Nan Stein states that, due to a study in the early 2000’s, gay, lesbian, and transgendered students “report daily harassment, sometimes rising to the magnitude of assault and/or grounds for federal civil rights lawsuits,” and that “one third of teens report that students are harassed due to perceived or actual sexual orientation” (Stein p. 32). Tey Meadow comments about the difficulty of being a member of the queer community today commenting that persistent bullying among LGBTQ youth leads to low levels of life satisfaction and higher rates of depression. Meadow goes on to explain that this harassment of the queer youth community does not only happen at the personal level, but it’s also present at an institutional level. He explains that members of the queer youth community are no more likely to engage in violent behavior than members of the heterosexual community, but they are more likely to get arrested, get convicted of crimes, and be expelled from school (Meadow). Institutionalized oppression is not a new phenomenon, as seen in Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex. In her essay she explains that throughout the 1950’s gays were being driven out of cities by police. Police would raid bars, conduct street sweeps, and patrolled “cruising areas,” intentionally looking for gay men and women to arrest (Rubin p. 6). Even though we have made progress in the right direction, Meadow’s comments show that prejudice among the queer youth community is still prevalent in both personal and institutional settings.
Tragic incidents like these have had a dominating presence in the media as we continually hear of suicides in the queer youth community. Meadow explains that when the queer youth community is featured on the news, it is usually a tragic story that ends in death. The media focuses too much on the negative stories about queer youth, and does not fully represent, if not at all, the positive instances that happen (Meadow). Meadow explains that research has shown that persistent news coverage of bullying and suicide can actually increase the likelihood of other vulnerable queer youth to attempt to commit suicide. Meadow calls this occurrence “suicide contagion,” and the constant reminder of suicides in the LGBTQ community makes it seem like death is “unavoidable” for children who are suffering from depression. It becomes clear that all of the negative stories in the media have a similarly negative effect on members of the queer youth community, and we need to realize that positive stories will have a positive effect on the community. Instead of messages of desperation in the news, we need to show kids who have overcame their bullying, and thrived into confident young children. Broadcasting positive stories of queer youth will create an atmosphere of support among kids struggling with these issues, and will help to instill them with pride in their identity and confidence in themselves (Meadow).
Jonah Mowry broke our hearts with his story, but at the end of his video he become a symbol of hope and inspiration. His final cards read, “ I’m not going anywhere, because I’m STRONGER than that...and...I have a million reasons to be here.” After posting the video on YouTube, hundreds of response videos were posted by kids who were going through the same issues and were showing their support for Jonah Mowry and what he stands for. Positive stories of overcoming oppression, like Jonah’s, create hope in the queer youth community, and should replace the stories of suicide in the news to create a better atmosphere of support in our society.
If you want to watch Jonah Mowry's video, just search his his name on YouTube and the video is called "Whats goin on"
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tey-meadow-jd-phd/gay-suicide_b_1218124.html
References
Meadow, Tey Ph.D. “Queer Children are Dying...But Many More Are Living.” Huffpost Gay Voices. 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 7 Feb. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tey-meadow-jd-phd/gay-suicide_b_1218124.html>
Rubin, Gayle S. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” Social Perspectives in Gay and Lesbian Studies ed. Peter M Nardi and Beth Schneider.
Stein, Rubin. “Bullying, Harassment and Violence among Students.” Radical Teacher, No. 80 Teaching Beyond Tolerance. Winter 2007, 30-35.
I completely agree with this post and that spreading positive messages will have a more positive effect on queer youth. Although it is hard to see it this way, Jonah Mowry’s video is actually considered a positive one because it sends the message that he, as well as other queer youths, are strong enough to make it through the bullying, teasing and misery that others bring them because of their sexuality. Not only does a positive message like this appeal to queer youths, but also to those that bully them, which will hopefully teach them what they are doing is wrong. In Nan Stein’s, Bullying, Harassment and Violence Among Students, she proposes ways in which schools can fix this type of bullying and says “I suggest that we call this ‘zero indifference,’ rather than ‘zero tolerance,’ which would mean that we plan to notice the behaviors, comment on them, intervene and make corrections accordingly” (Stein 32). She then goes on to list many reasons how to do this, such as training staff, hire staff with queer backgrounds, and develop classes and clubs. However, these are all very difficult and out of schools’ budgets to follow through with. Instead, we should do exactly what her initial statement says: intervene by presenting positive cases to students, such as Jonah’s, sit them down and present to them what kind of effect this type of behavior is creating, and show them that there is a way to fix these problems. In this way, we can encourage both the spread of positive messages to show queer youths that they are worthy of living, and show the youths that bully them how they can adjust their behavior.
ReplyDeleteStein, Nan. “Bullying, Harassment and Violence Among Students.” Radical Teacher, No. 80. Teaching Beyond Tolerance. Winter 2007, 30-35.