UnoMondo, you are wanted here
First of all - my sincere, deepest sympathy to AndyGirl That’s truly tragic.
I’d like to kinda steer this back to the issue of education in public schools, though. I’m sixteen, female, bisexual. I’ve been bisexual my whole life, but didn’t realize it until the summer after freshman year. The reason was - I didn’t know bisexuality existed. I just assumed that I was weird, or there was something wrong with me, or everyone had feelings for both genders but just ignored them. Or something.
We started sex ed in fifth grade. We were taught that sex is a sacred act that should only be between two married people. There was a mention of AIDS, but no history of it, nothing about the stigma of it being a ‘gay disease’. Sex was a man and a women reproducing. Masturbation was mentioned. In sixth through eighth grade, we reviewed the basics of sex. No mention of alternate sexualities. Ninth grade - contraceptives, pregnancy, and so on. Nothing on alternate sexualities. Tenth grade health was drivers ed, with a brief reminder of ‘no sex til marriage.’ Nothing on alternate sexualities.
The summer after freshman year, I had a very long heart-to-heart with my cousin, who is openly gay. He explained a lot of stuff to me, some of it in graphic detail that probably would have given my 70-year-old fifth grade teacher a heart attack. After a lot of introspection, I finally put a name on my sexuality - I was bi. I was actually in the shower when I realized it, and it was completely shocking to me. A week later, a close friend of mine came out to a group of friends as gay. Two months later, I came out to him. Since then, I’ve willing come out to two other people. One of them decided to turn around and stab me in the back. I walked into school one day a few weeks ago, and somehow, the entire school knew that I was bi.
No one I know who’s gone through my school has ever heard a mention in health class of anything other than hetero sexuality. Of course, everyone knows there are other sexualities, because they have some exposure to reality outside of school. Therefore, they get extremely one-sided presentations of the facts. We recently formed a GSA at my school, with my above-mentioned friend and I being the only out students. Of the six other people, I know that two are also alternately oriented, but are essentially scared to come out.
The amount of ignorance-based hatred in a large suburban high school is pretty amazing. While I have endured blatent abuse (ie, someone writting ‘dyke’ in permanant marker on my locker), the amount of more subtle taunting is far greater.
One thing that really, really, really, REALLY bothers me, is the word ‘gay’. Go to a local high school. Go into a lunch period, or walk the halls between classes. Count the number of times you hear someone say, “That’s so gay,” “You’re so gay,” or some variation thereof. Count how many times you hear someone - a teacher, perhaps? - say anything when overhearing that: “Hey, don’t use that language,” “That’s not appropriate word use,” or some variation thereof. In my experience, the first happens a lot, the second - very rarely.
At a recent GSA meeting, we were talking about just that. One of our faculty advisors said that, in his opinion, a lot of teachers don’t speak out against homophobia for two reasons: fear of being assumed to be gay and thus putting their job/reputation in jeopordy, or fear of parents. Technically, our school has a zero-tolerance policy. This sure as all hell applies to religious/racial slurs. But if you were to stand in the hallway between classes and yell out ‘faggot’, nothing would happen. At all. I’ve seen it happen. If you were arguing with a black guy about something and call him a nigger, you’re going to be in deep trouble. I’ve seen it happen.
Personally, I don’t know how to ‘fix’ the problem. However, I know for a fact that there NEEDS to be more mention in sex ed of at least alternate sexualities. You DON’T want your kids getting their knowledge of race relations from Jerry Springer, right? So why let them learn about sexuality from there?
Speaking of using the word “gay” as in “That’s so gay,”, I would suggest what a friend said after someone wrote in her guestbook that her website was “gay”.
“Really? I wasn’t aware my website even had a gender!”
I count myself among those who are appalled by what I’ve read in this thread since andygirl’s announcement.
I’m afraid, however, that as a result, the thread is heading irretrievably toward Pit territory, and I think that’s a problem because the original point of the thread still needs further exploration and discussion. I realize that, on the whole, this thread has been quite resilient and hijack-resistant. But the current furore looks like the mother of all hijacks, and I wonder if it might not be wise to resume the conversation in a different thread.
If, on the other hand, most participants feel the thread can be returned to its intended purpose, may I respectfully suggest that further expressions of outrage be redirected to Poly’s thread?
Lil’Tassie (I think that was her name), a returning troll, had roughly 10 posts when she started a thread in MPSIMS about how her son was in a coma. Four hours and quite a few condolences later (as well as an e-card many dopers signed), she posted “IT’S A MIRACLE HE CAME OUT OF IT!”
Some members were less than convinced by the whole thing, because IIRC it turned out that she did not have a four-year-old son, did not live in Australia (as she had purported), and … well, just about the only thing she said that was truthful is that she was female.
All due respect, that doesn’t come within a light-year of this situation. Let’s compare, shall we?
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andygirl. Known in person by many a doper, known on this board by more. Woman of integrity, compassion and honesty. I sure as hell know I am not alone in saying I’m glad to have met her. She’s been on this board more than two years, IIRC, and has a good number of posts to her credit. if she says something like she did about Daryl, I also know I am far from the only person who is going to believe it. She’s credible.
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Lil’Tassie. Brand-new (sort of, as she was a returning troll) doper, had no credibility whatsoever, and was exposed as a fraud. Known by a few dopers off the boards, as it turned out, and not in such a positive light as you might imagine from someone who lied about her non-existent son being in a coma and coming out four hours later.
Maybe it’s the water, JD, but I don’t see much of anything these two have in common except human DNA.
If UnoMondo is unaffected by someone committing suicide as mentioned in andygirl’s post, that says a good deal more about that person than perhaps they might want known about them.
Let’s us use an analogy. We’ve been talking about how we can get kids to be safer around fire. Many posters chime in, thread gets hijacked a few times with one or two posters saying it is unnatural/an abomination for kids to even be around fire. Then you come in saying “My friend killed himself because he was disowned by his parents because he was playing with fire”.
Then someome comes in asking for a cite. A cite that your friend died.
Do you see how that might not be taken as well as someone saying “where can I make a charitable contribution?” or “Could you share more about him with us?”?
Because in the wake of a tragedy is not the best time to be expressing doubt about it.
It is the expression of that doubt, the total package of its expression combined with the timing and method od delivery, that shocks so many of us.
The family? How about the reaction of the parents? It’s too bad they valued their book more than their son. It’s too bad they valued maybe fifteen Bible passages in their own interpretation more than the flesh of their flesh. It’s too bad they cared more for their religion than their son. It’s too bad their “honor” (if you want to call that honor) was more important to them than their son. It’s too bad they, the parents, were too weak to accept their son. He was plenty strong coming out to them. They were the ones who could not give him love. They were the ones who lacked strength, not him.
Sheesh, all those intervening posts. . .
Or Guin’s thread.
Jersey to clarify why asking for a ‘cite’ on that story is particularly egregious:
It is not at all likely, even if andygirl could (or would) link to an obit that said obit would include the fact that it was a suicide.
and I absolutely would be astonished if it also included that fact that the person committed suicide 'cause the fundementalist parents weren’t accepting of the sexual orientation of their child.
So, by asking for a cite, they were essentially asking for the impossible, while at the same time implying that they were lying.
and the bottom line to the whole thing is, that even if she’d been able to link to proof of the suicide, and even if said proof included the sexual orientation of the deceased and religious standing of the parents, and even if there was a complex, handwritten note from the deceased stating unequivocably that they were committing suicide based on the fundementalist parents reaction to their sexual orientation, and eve if there was empiracle evidence that not only was the note written by the deceased, but was an accurate reflexion of their suicidal ideation at the time of the suicide,
then:
the person requesting the cite could always rest back on the “Ok, there is one case, anecdotal information isn’t proof of anything on a larger scale”.
See?
Say you’re in a discussion group, face to face, about gay youth suicide, and someone says that she had had a friend that killed himself. Can you imagine asking her to her face for a cite?
I understand that the obituary may not have said anything about the person commiting suicide because his parents were not accepting of him being gay. I see how having an obituary to post may not have meant anything at all, but the point is that UnuMondo may not know Andygirl, along with thousands of others on this board. It’s not so wrong for someone to want to see an article.
Iampunha, UnuMondo probably knows andygirl as well as others knew Lil’Tassie.
Also, although I think there was a better way for the parents to deal with their son, (and who knows what really happened behind closed doors) they did not kill him. He Killed himself.
I think it takes more strenghth to stay alive and deal, than to kill yourself. There are many people that don’t agree with me and possibly hate me, but there isn’t anything in this world that would make me kill myself. I am strong enough to deal with the bashing. It may suck, but sometime, unfortunately, it is a part of life.
matt_mcl, I think that one inncident proves that a message board isn’t always real life. Some people may not take this or any message board as everyday, face to face life. I think it’s a different situation.
Yeah, but are people telling you that you’re going to Hell constantly, that you’re an abomination?
Gee, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t have to treat Andygirl with human decency because a message board is different from real life; a message board is different from real life in that we don’t have to treat people with human decency.
No matter what they say to me, Guin, I would not kill myself. At the very most, I would ignore it.
matt_mcl, did I treat her with some kind of indecency?
And evidently it’s double-coupon day in GD, because it’s also circular reasoning.
As for this:
Nobody knew Lil’Tassie. She was a relatively unknown poster. She was a troll. Beside which, UnoMondo has shown his colors in other places on this board. You might want to check out the pit to see just how tactful he is.
In addition, nobody asked Lil’Tassie for a cite on her son’s coma. They just trusted that someone wouldn’t say that unless it were true. Eventually (not long after) we all found out the truth.
He physically ended his life. They gave him the reason.
I am still alive because when I was suicidal I lacked the strength to kill myself. FWIW. I think it was his parents’ lack of strength that contributed as much to his death as anything else.
So then do tell us how you dealt with people hurting you for your sexuality, or how your parents disowned you when they found out you were … er … oh, right. You think the things that have been said to you on this board compare at all to the shit some of us have been through? Feh. You go home every night and sleep with your husband. I went “home” to a bed that was at most a few feet away from my tormentors. andygirl goes home to parents who, IIRC, wanted to put her through conversion therapy.
Perhaps you are strong enough to deal with the occasions on here where people flame you. Try dealing with much worse than that in person and knowing you can neither escape it nor stop it.
That’s what I’ve gone through. It’s what matt went through, and it’s wnat andygirl went through.
And it’s what Daryl went through until he took matters under his own control and stopped letting his parents ruin his life.
JD, what is the most harassment of some sort you have ever had to deal with? I dealt with it for roughly 12 years. No matter how thick of a skin you think you have or how much mental cotton you have in your ears, at a certain point you can’t ignore it.
Especially if it’s from someone you love or care about. I don’t care much if some people on this board flame me, but if, say, matt or andy or poly were to do so I’d know I’d done something seriously wrong. If my own mother did so to the extent I imagine Daryl’s parents did it to him, and if it had been in high school, I really doubt I’d be alive now.
I think you might lack the perspective to understand this issue, unless there’s something you’re not sharing with us.
Well… mercifully, it’s not. It is what Hamish went through, though.
UnuMondo did, and you defended him.
really? you understood all that and still couldn’t grasp why asking for ‘cite’ was callous??
Ok, play it out then:
andygirls’ post of suicide of gay teen.
Unu’s “Cite?”
andygirl links to public obit of some teen somewhere.
Unu: (and we’ll have to guess here) “oh, I see, obviously I was incorrect and the story you posted was true, I’m sorry to have doubted you”
or “So? it doesn’t prove that the kid committed suicide, doesn’t prove that the parents were fundementalists, doesn’t prove that the kid killed himself 'cause of what they said”.
hmm. which do you think was more likely? I’d suggest that if some one wanted ‘proof’ of the story in the first place, a mere obit of some teen dying wouldn’t be accepted as proof.
Jersey, if you, in a thread about smoking and cancer, poured your heart out over a deeply personal issue and said that your grandmother had died of lung cancer from smoking, and someone said they didn’t trust statistics and wanted a cite to back your claim up, do you think you might possibly be offended and think that person had less tact than you normally credit people with?
You take the good with the bad. I don’t expect everyone to believe everything I say. Would I be appalled? No! It’s a message board.
or to more accurately reflect what happened here, asked for a cite to prove that your grandma died, but that she died from lung cancer and said lung cancer was from her smoking.
Anyone who knows anything about suicide would disagree with you because you’re just wrong. Anybody can be suicidal if he has enough pain in his life. It’s not about strength or weakness, it’s about the coping materials people have to deal with pain. You just happen to have many: a husband, a home, your religion, and past what I know, I’m assuming financial security, a loving family, a comfortable childhood that fostered trust and optimism, etc…