Speak Up

Posted on by

Welcome, visitors of the Hop Against Homophobia! This is my first time participating in a blog hop and if I’m going to lend my voice in support of any cause, this one would be my first choice. Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Phobias can stem from fear of or discomfort with something that doesn’t fit in to someone’s predefined worldview. Ignorance plays a big part as well. Lack of knowledge, unfamiliarity, or difference can provoke in us, flawed human beings that we are, that primal response in which those with power lash out at those that are relatively powerless. In the case of homophobia and transphobia, it boils down to bullying, pure and simple, and it’s not okay.

I’ve had personal experience with bullying, as a witness, the victim, and the victim’s mother. Just a few weeks ago, my son had his first experience with bullying and I got to see what it feels like as a parent, witnessing how impossible it is to completely protect your child from that big, scary world out there. It started with my son getting glasses for the first time. Days later on the playground, a trio of very young kids decided to play a game where they would take my son’s glasses and hide them from him. Only my son didn’t know about their game and once those kids had his glasses in their hands, they didn’t just hide them. They popped the lenses out, twisting the frames so hard they snapped into pieces. Then they hid the evidence and lied to teachers about what had happened. My son was left half blind, with no idea what had happened or what he did wrong.

So, as the parents, we spoke up. My husband and I found out what happened from other kids with the help of their parents. The kids who had done this were identified and the school was made aware of the incident. The kids wound up apologizing on their own to my son. It was quite clear that they didn’t realize the damage they did, so it was a learning experience for all of us. That’s the best outcome I could imagine. However, I was later told by a family member that I shouldn’t have gotten the school involved at all; that now those kids knew my son was a snitch and would attack him even more ruthlessly. They said I should have kept quiet and forgot it ever happened, lest the bullies find reason to strike again.

That’s not how you deal with bullying. You don’t shut up and take it, you find help. You speak out. You correct the source of the problem before it gets worse.

Fifth grade was when the bullying was at its worst for me, when some boys tried to push me down a stairwell. I was routinely ridiculed for being too quiet, too scared of other kids, especially large groups of them. It got so bad that I transferred schools twice before high school. Trouble is, bullies are everywhere, in every school, every town. The way I coped was to keep to myself and try not to be noticed. It never helped. It never made anything better. The isolation and loneliness tore my self-esteem to shreds.

At about the same time, my mother was working with a woman named Sara, who I liked a lot. Sara was very eccentric, very intriguing. She was outgoing, friendly, loved handmade earrings and had a wild haircut. When she gave me a pair of those crafty, crazy earrings, they were a treasure to me. But my mother didn’t like Sara, who set my mother on edge constantly and made her very uncomfortable. I could tell, sensing those shifts in my mother’s temperament. I didn’t understand why at first. Then I learned that Sara was gay. I’d never known anyone who was openly gay before and it fascinated me. The thing was, though, I could only see the situation one way, from the perspective of someone who was bullied, judged and criticized for acting in the way that came naturally to me, by being myself. My mother didn’t like Sara because Sara liked girls. That’s what it came down to. For the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would be mean to Sara just because she liked a certain group of people. She wasn’t hurting them. She liked them.

It was fear, misunderstanding, and ignorance. It was my first real experience with homophobia and even as young as I was then, I knew how wrong it was. I knew that Sara was an incredible person just the way she was. She didn’t deserve to be bullied either.

The best way I know how to combat this plague of bullying and discrimination is to let our voices be heard. Conversations need to happen, because silence lets the fear fester. Worldviews need to be challenged, because there are a lot of good people here, among us, who might not be understood at first meeting, but something as simple as the sharing of stories might open someone’s previously closed eyes and make the world a slightly less scary place for those of us who were born a little different. Our uniqueness makes up special. It should be celebrated, not hidden away or silenced.

In order to do my part and keep the conversation going I’m giving away a free ebook of the winner’s choosing, of any of my three M/M novels (Deliver Us, From Temptation or Whatever the Cost). For a chance to win, simply comment on this post. A random winner will be selected and contacted via the email address you include with your comment. The contest ends on May 27th and the winner will be announced Saturday, June 1.

22 thoughts on “Speak Up”

  1. I agree that ignorance is a huge part of the issue, if parents were more involved and informed they could raise their children with less bias against those that are different. Children can be cruel and if that can be changed before they grow up to be adolescents and adults things will start to get better. People tend to fear and put down what they don’t understand and as much as we’ve made headway in understanding we still have far to go. We need to teach understanding and compassion instead of passing along fear and ignorance…

    Reply ↓

  6. Incredible post – it actually made me tear up. I despise bullying with everything in me, and I applaud you for going in to fight for your child. It wrecks lives, and far too many people are comfortable with just laughing it off as a fact of growing up.

    I survived years of horrific bullying for being too tall, for being too “fat”, too smart, for actually liking school, for who I dated. And one of the worst memories I have is of kissing a girl at a party on a Saturday night and turning up at school on Monday and being completely ridiculed by the “popular” girls and anyone else who wanted to look cool to them. Thankfully my real friends didn’t mind one bit, but with how badly I was verbally attacked I ended up denying a part of myself until well after highschool ended (and even today I am still very private about my sexuality with people who aren’t close to me). Several years after highschool ened I met up with a teacher who was brave enough to apologise to me and who admitted that they never knew how I survived.

    I guess you survive because you have to hope that one day you can live a life that is better than the bullies ever wanted for you.

    Thanks for taking part in this bog hop Lynn and for your support of LGBT issues.

    Reply ↓

  8. Lovely, well-written post.

    The worst thing about bullying, to me, is that when you’ve been bullied yourself you often end up seeing it as “ok” to bully someone else. I know I was bullied in school and I also know I participated in passive bullying of someone else, which I deeply regret as an adult. And I firmly believe that you’re correct–if more people SPOKE UP and said this type of behaviour was not ok, it would make it happen less, not more.

    Reply ↓

  9. Thank you for your great post, and for your work to counteract bullying. Thanks for participating in the blog hop!

    Reply ↓

  11. I agree that ignorance is a big problem in the younger generations of our society. We, as adults, have a responsibility to make sure that children know that their actions have consequences. Maybe if we could teach all children that then we would no longer need to fight prejudices.

    Thank you for participating in the hop and I would love to enter the contest.

    Reply ↓

  14. “Just ignore them and they’ll stop.”

    Except not so much. I came from a family with a father who had a very noticable mood disorder, and living with someone with such a mercurial temperment definitely had an effect on my brothers and me. We were all quiet and smart and unable to interact normally with kids at school, so we were easy targets for constant teasing, especially my youngest brother, who, I think, has Asperger’s, though of course we didn’t know that back in the 60s.
    I’m really pleased that people are paying attention to bullying. Maybe fewer kids will ride to school on the bus everyday, feeling nauseated, waiting for what would come next.

    Reply ↓

  15. I am amazed at how many different stories are told on all the particiapants blogs (I’m probably over half way now) and its interesting to hear individual stories or view, learn of new resources. Thanks

    Reply ↓

  16. Bullying as you said has always been an issue. I believe if everyone would just take more time and put more thought and effort into the things they do, everything would be better. When a child gets bullied usually the people who supervise them let it go as kids being kids, it doesn’t matter how heinous the so called “game”. If they don’t want to be bothered by it they just put it off and ignore it until confrontation occurs. That’s when they take action, but that isn’t enough, more needs to be done and hopefully more voices will join against the fight of bullying. Thank you for joining in on the hop and for sharing your story.

    humhumbum AT yahoo DOT com

    Reply ↓

  21. One of the worst things about bullying is the way victims get blamed. If a victim fights back they’re more likely to be punished than the original bully, teaching the bullies that they’re in ‘the right’, but if the victim doesn’t fight back the bullies learn they can keep on getting away with it. It’s lose-lose, and it’s why people who say things like your son should have stayed quiet need to be put right before they spread their damaging beliefs further.

    Thanks for taking part in the hop!

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *