Non-Normative Gender and Sexual Identities in Schools: - Schools Out

B: Um there was rules put in place in St James but um basically if anyone tried to do
anything they were saying it was my fault and they would take their side and when I told
my religion teacher that some of the guys in the class were attempting to bully me and
that if I get into a fight its her fault for not stopping it, um she started um she started
crying cos I told her I was gay and she was just like [//]
AM: Wow, so did you feel that your teachers didn’t understand how to deal with the fact
that you were gay? Was that was that seen as the problem rather than the bullying?
B: They were unable to, because they’d always take the other peoples side…
T: {we’ve got posters up in our school of um the group that me and Nicky and Wolfy go
to in Bolton LGBT um…
AM: {right}
T: …yeah, and its well mad cos like everybody just looks at it and goes urrr urrr. I’m
like yeah I go to that and I’ve got a float in gay pride oh yeah!
AM: {Were you made to feel by your teachers that the problem was actually your
sexuality not, not the bullying? No?
V: I used to have a mentor.
AM: {right}
V: Um and I had I was going through a bit of a crap time with my uncle, my uncle was a
drug addict and like alcoholic and they all assumed that everything was just around the
uncle cos he used to live with us…
T: {yeah that happens to me}
V: …um [//] but it wasn’t and it was like so how’s your uncle today, how’s your mum
today and um like I ran away, I went to my well went to my best friends and she’s like
how’s your mum, how your uncle and it was just like no matter, I I did tell them that it
wasn’t that [//] but um I don’t know it was hard because I’d been outed but it was never
how are you it was just how’s your uncle, how’s that making you feel, not how’s the
people putting posters up in the toilets [//] and shit…
T: {I went to my head um head teacher and told her I as gay and cos she she were asking
me a load of questions and the day after um she put me in counselling in school.
V: For being gay?
T: Yeah. That’s what happens in high school, especially in the college, you go, if you
come out to somebody and the teachers hear about it they put you in for counselling
saying like its wrong, you’ve gonna be fixed, God will save you…