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

CG: Yeah it’s a well used…
AM: {I’ve not come across that before}
CG: …you’ll find that within social care, it’s used a lot. Um, and um and a lot of those
young people will be NEET because they’ve not performed well at school because
they’ve not felt supported at school. Cos they may have been homophobically bullied at
school. Um so we know that in terms of their life chances, it does, you know it can have a
detrimental effect, just like any form of bullying. And if you look at the, you know the
Governments Every Child Matters agenda, you know staying safe um you know
achieving academic well-being, um enjoying and achieving, there’s lots, I cant think of
the five of them now, but if you look at those five Every Child Matters outcomes, we
know that young people cannot achieve those young people cannot achieve those
outcomes if they are being homophobic bullying. And they cant then go on to you know
contribute to, be positive contributors to society, or at least it hinders that and makes it
more difficult for them. Um so ur, I’ve lost the thread of my question now!
AM: The short and long term effects.
CG: Oh yes. Yes so you’ve got the short term which is very much how they feel at the
time and start skipping school and start under performing and then of course how it
affects their life chances.
AM: On the opposite side, you said earlier that in your job you try and focus on the
positives rather than the negatives. Have you in the past or recently anybody that’s
experienced this kind of bullying but actually has managed to have a really positive
outcome out of it.
CG: Yeah, well one of the young people who came to our gay youth event last year. He’d
experienced quite horrible homophobic bullying at his school and had since left the
school. But after the even he started to realise that you know being gay is ok you know in
the 21 st century it won’t stop you from doing what you want to do in life.
AM: Yep.
CG: Um and ur he went back to his school and helped them re-devise their anti-bullying
policy to make specific reference to homophobic bullying. Um we had a young person we
worked with quite closely who had a really rough time at school and once he sort of he
got over that with then, when he finally got support he helped set up his local LGBT
youth group and we successfully nominated him last year for a Dianna award, so he’s,
there are very positive examples of people who’ve managed to turn it on it’s head. We are
just launching a youth volunteering programme at the moment where we, whereby we
give young people the opportunity to try and tackle homophobic bullying in their local
areas. And a lot of those young people will be those who have directly experienced
homophobic bullying and now want to do something about it so that no-body else
experiences it. So yeah there is a lot of positive examples out there.