All you gay people out there, especially you gay youth, get over it. That's the message that I saw expressed multiple times last night here on Daily Kos. So what if someone called someone else a "faggot." It's not a big deal. It's just words. It's not actually bullying, and even then, bullying's not a big deal. If you have a problem with being called a "faggot," then something is wrong with you.
It's depressing to see such comments here. But it's not surprising. There is a lot of homophobia here on Daily Kos, and there's a lot of homophobia in the Democratic party. We're told to sit down. We're told to shut up. We're told to wait. We're told that our inequality and the government, by law, actively discriminating against us is not as important as other things. So if big scale homophobia, like DADT, DOMA, as well as many other things, isn't really a big deal, then of course something on the small scale like someone calling someone else a "faggot" isn't a big deal either.
Unless one is truly lucky, every gay person growing up is called a "faggot," or a "dyke," or a "queer," or a "homo," or a "fairy," or a "pansy," or any other of dozens of words that have been used to attack and condemn GLBT people. And of course don't forget, "that's gay," used to condemn absolutely anything that one dislikes. And why is something that one dislikes "gay"? Why is it an insult? Because people think that being gay is a bad thing.
But calling someone a "faggot" is not a big deal.
There has been a bit more attention paid recently to gay youths committing suicide. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, recently said that gay youth have problems with depression, not because of being bullied, but because they know that it's wrong to be gay. He said that they commit suicide because they know that they're "abnormal." In an interview with NPR, Perkins said, "There's no correlation between inacceptance of homosexuality and depression and suicide."
Calling someone a "faggot" is not a big deal.
Except, of course, it is a big deal. There is, not just a correlation, but a causality. Bullying, pervasive homophobia and bigotry, and hatred of GLBT people leads GLBT youth to suicide in starkly higher numbers than heterosexual youth.
Here are some statistics and studies presented and cited by The Trevor Project.
•Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey 2007).
• More than 1/3 of LGB youth report having made a suicide attempt (D’Augelli AR - Clinical Child Psychiatry and Psychology 2002)
•Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt (Grossman AH, D’Augelli AR - Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior 2007)
•Questioning youth who are less certain of their sexual orientation report even higher levels of substance abuse and depressed thoughts than their heterosexual or openly LGBT-identified peers (Poteat VP, Aragon SR, et al – Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 2009)
•LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are more than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide than LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection (Ryan C, Huebner D, et al - Peds 2009;123(1):346-352)
Calling someone a "faggot" is not a big deal, except, of course, it is a big deal.
•Nine out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school; three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and about one-third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe (GLSEN National School Climate Survey 2009).
•LGBT students are three times as likely as non-LGBT students to say that they do not feel safe at school (22% vs. 7%) and 90% of LGBT students (vs. 62% of non-LGBT teens) have been harassed or assaulted during the past year. (GLSEN From Teasing to Torment 2006)
•Sexual minority youth, or teens that identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, are bullied two to three times more than heterosexuals. (Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH 2010)
•Almost all transgender students had been verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened in the past year at school because of their sexual orientation (89%) and gender expression (89%) (GLSEN: Harsh Realities, The Experiences of Transgender Youth In Our Nation’s Schools 2009).
•LGBT youth in rural communities and those with lower adult educational attainment face particularly hostile school climates (JG, Greytak EA, Diaz EM – Journal of Youth & Adolescence 2009)
•Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents are 190 percent more likely to use drugs and alcohol than are heterosexual teens (Marshal MP, Friedman MS, et al – Addiction 2008).
•It is estimated that between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (2006 National Gay & Lesbian Task Force: An Epidemic of Homelessness). 62% of homeless LGB youth will attempt suicide at least once—more than two times as many as their heterosexual peers (Van Leeuwen JMm et al – Child Welfare 2005)
I loved last week's episode of Glee when Kurt, in a moment of frankness, told Mr. Schuester that all the teachers at the school just let homophobia slide all the time. Because it's true. Kids calling each other "faggot" is treated as if it's not a big deal. It's what kids do, at least that's what several people here on Daily Kos said last night. How can adults be so dismissive like that? Is it because they believe that being gay is wrong, and thus don't see anything wrong with using words to attack and condemn gay people? Do they think, like Tony Perkins, that gay kids being bullied to death is some fantasy created by gay people to further the so-called gay agenda? The statistics are too stark; it is a big deal.
Gay-specific bullying comes from one's peers in school, one's parent's, one's church. Gay youth are told that they're abnormal, that they're evil, that God hates them, that they're "faggots", that they should die (like that school board member did a few weeks back). Hearing that again and again wears gay youth down. They know that there is a lot of hatred in this country, not to mention in this world, for them. And it leads to not just suicide, but also to other destructive behaviors. And fear of loss of a support structure is a major motivator to keep a gay kids silent about the emotional and sometimes physical abuse they endure. And it most definitely is abuse. Being called a "faggot" is abusive.
It's just one word, and not even a particularly long word. But it's a painful word because that word totally comes out of hatred. It's easy to say "just get over it." But the full force of an entire society's hatred toward gay people is within that word. Hearing it over and over, hearing "gay" be used as a condemnation of something one dislikes, it speaks directly to a gay person's core. When you're gay and you hear people eagerly using that word against you and against others, it tells you to hate yourself. It tells you that you deserve to experience pain and suffering. It tells you that God hates you. It tells you that you're alone. It tells you to die.
But calling someone a "faggot" is not a big deal.
EDIT: Upon request, here are links to the three diaries, some comment-replies of which I reference in my diary. I didn't include these links previously because I wanted my diary to be more about the word itself, its use, and the effects therefrom, and not about the Palin family.
Sarah Palin's daughter thinks using Gay Slur is ok
Palin's Sick and Hateful Family
Sarah Palin: Denounce your daughter's anti-gay slurs
EDIT #2: I want to recommend juliewolf's diary Pretending that Ann Coulter is transsexual to demean her actually demeans transsexuals.