Today marks the fourteenth annual National Day of Silence. Founded in 1996, the Day of Silence has become one of the largest grassroots movements for students of all sexual orientations to speak out against LGBT bulling and discrimination. In a country where 64.3% of youth feel unsafe about there sexual orientation and four and a half times more likely then their non-gay peers because they feel unsafe, something has to be done.
Here are just some of the horrifying statistics when it comes to LGBT youth.
• 77.9% heard remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke"
frequently or often at school (similar studies have
shown that the average high school student hears
such epithets 25 times a day)
-18.8% heard similar remarks from faculty or
school staff at least some of the time
-82.9% reported that faculty or staff never or
only sometimes intervened when they were
present when such remarks were made.
• 84% personally had been verbally harassed at
school (that is, called names or threatened) because
of their sexual orientation
• 65.3% had been sexually harassed (e.g., inappropriately
touched or subjected to sexual comments)
• 39.1% had been physically harassed (by being
shoved or pushed) and 17% had been assaulted (by being punched, kicked or injured with a weapon)at school because of their sexual orientation
• 27.1% had been physically harassed because of
their gender expression; 11.5% had been assaulted
on that basis
I graduated from high school three years ago. I remember what it was like in the hallways. There were few openly gay people. My friend Nick and I and a few other gay guys were some of the only openly gay people. I was the only openly lesbian person to the best of my knowledge. There was a few openly bisexual girls though. But I remember how it was a usual everyday occurrence to hear someone being called faggot in the hallways. It doesn't matter if the person was as straight as they come but they were still getting called a fag. You would also hear the words, "That's so gay" om a regular basis. Never did you hear a teacher stop the language. Well, I take that back. Once my speech teacher had a talking to the class about homophobic rhetoric and how it needed to stop. But I believe that was the only time in all four years when it happened.
Also from my experience, gay guys got most of the abuse in high school. If you were a lesbian or you were a bisexual girl, you had a few comments here and there made about you but you never received the physical harassment that the gay guys got.
But the abuse still adds up. Couple a bad school environment with the pressures of being in the closet, or being afraid your parents are going to disown you and you can really hit rock bottom as a GLBT teen. When I was a junior, after I came out of the closet and finding that my mother wasn't accepting of me and that she believed I was going to hell, I started down my long path of self-hatred. I was a loser who didn't deserve to be loved by my parents. I was never going to be good enough. I deserved to suffer. To be honest, there was times I did think of suicide. But I could never do anything about it. I was too chicken, But I did start to cut during my junior year and it continued on and off up until last year till I finally stopped self-harming myself.
But these are the realities that glbt teens face everyday. It is bad enough to have society tell you that you are a second-class citizen, to go to school and hear that your peers use who you are as a derogatory term, to get dragged to a religious institution to hear how sick you are and that you going to burn in hell, but to also learn that your parents do not accept you can be too much.
Gay youth are 41/2 times more likely than non-gay
peers to skip school because they feel unsafe
Nearly one-third of LGBT students drop out of
high school to escape the violence, harassment,
and isolation they face there — a dropout rate
nearly three times the national average
Gay youth are 4 times as likely than their non-gay
counterparts to have attempted suicide
I'm lucky.. I pulled my self out of my downward spiral before it was too late. But there are countless teens across the country who every day wake up who aren't so lucky.. They struggle to face the day because they get bullied for who they are. That is why the Day of Silence is important. It can change perspectives.
Three years ago, I was a senior in high school. It was a usual suburban school and like most schools it had it's usual LGBT intolerance. My Nick and I wanted to do something about it so one day after class we approached one of our teachers and asked about starting up a GSA. He agreed to be one of our sponsors and we also got one of our other teachers to be one as well. Over the next coming months we had an average of seven people attend meetings. We didn't do much because we didn't really know what to do. But as one of the defacto leaders I wanted to do something more and so we all decided to do the Day of Silence.
The day came. In a last burst of inspiration I woke up early that morning and worked on a homemade t-shirt. My parents had some white duct tape floating around and I put strips across the front and back of a green t-shirt I had on hand. On the front I wrote across the tape, "I am taking part in the Day of Silence." And on the back I wrote a few statistics about gay bullying across the back. In a flash of decision I decided I was going to take the tape with me and I was going to put a strip across my mouth for the remainder of the day. I knew that a band of eight silent teenagers weren't going to get much publicity in the school and that we needed something more to spark a discussion.
When I arrived at school, one of our sponsors informed us that we had permission to take part in the event from the principal but that he had also said if any teachers wanted us to speak in class we had to do so or we would face punishment. We all decided that we were going to take the punishment if we were forced to talk.
So with the duct tape on my mouth I headed in to the halls with my slips of paper informing people with what the Day of Silence was. The reaction was almost instant. People stared, they asked their friends what was going on and I handed out the slips. A teacher tried to say I was disrupting school and told me to take the tape off my mouth. I obliged his wishes :( but immediately put it back on when I was out of his range. ;) I walked around like that all day and by the end of the school day all everyone could talk about was the "crazy lesbian with duct tape over her mouth" and the Day of Silence. I had accomplished what I wanted, a discussion. Actually I accomplished more then I had hoped I would because the discussion about GLBT rights and bullying continued throughout the rest of the year till graduation.
But the real results have come after I have graduated. People have emailed me telling me that that is the one major thing that stands out for them about their high school experience. People have thanked me saying that my bravery helped them come out of the closet eventually. I have even gotten messages from people saying that they didn't really know about how bad it was for GLBT youth and it caused them to reevaluate themselves and how they interact with people.
It is these messages that I am most proud of. Even if I have helped change one mind, it was all worth it. And that is why the Day of Silence is important.
It helps create discussion.
It helps change minds.
And it stops a 17 year-old girl from feeling worthless and gives her hope for the future.