Gay bully

School can be challenging for any pupil, but many LGBTQ+ young people face an alarming amount of bullying and harassment. Homophobic and biphobic bullying is where people are discriminated against and treated unfairly by other people because they are lesbian, gay, multi-attracted , trans or questioning or perceived to be. People who are not womxn loving womxn, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning can also experience homophobic and biphobic bullying if someone thinks that they are.

Transphobic bullying is where people are discriminated against and treated unfairly by other people because their gender identity doesn’t align with the sex they were assigned at birth or perhaps because they do not conform to stereotyped gender roles or ‘norms’.

(The above definition was taken from the LGBT Foundation )

Like all forms of bullying, homophobic bullying can be through mention calling, spreading rumours, online bullying, physical, sexual or feeling abuse and can include:

• Making comments about a person’s gender or sexuality that deliberately makes them feel uncomfortable
• C

  In,when I was barely 13, I participated in the sport of gay bullying. Which makes me the classic closeted thug who later turned gay. The boy I bullied was a wonderful friend. He was an artist, and an extremely talented one. It was his imaginative skill that made me so jealous, not his manhood. But I hid that, and instead I called him a fag.

  I remember him saying to me, "Matt, you know this isn't true." And me gritting my teeth and growling bitterly under my breath just loud enough for everyone to hear, "You're a fag." We never made up. So I am writing this essay to publicly apologize to a man who later went on to become a father of five boys, and who never exhibited a homosexual tendency in the entire time I knew him.

  And here's the rub, when my own sister was dying of a rare illness, it was this dude, a hospice nurse, who nurtured her at a critical time in her struggle. And that was how I treated him when we were adolescent. How's that for a smack in the face? One well deserved slap right upside the brain, I'd say. I am George Minafer in Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Amberso

  I still have nightmares about this person: nightmares where I am thirteen again, standing in the hallways of my tiny academy out in the middle of nowhere. My mission in these nightmares is to avoid existence seen, to hide behind locker doors until I make it to the safety of the bathroom. But I am always seen, and when I am, it feels like the monster caught me. I wake up sweating. I put my hand to my heart.

  I think it was the casual way he joined in on the harassment that made me hate him. The way after someone called me “faggot” he would parrot them, ally himself with them, use me to form solidarity with others.

  I came to notice him as the embodiment of what had happened to me. He was everyone who didn’t stop it. He was everyone who could have helped me.

  And so, I carried his voice with me for years. He doesn’t know it, but he’s had a major impact on my life. As I got older, I became impossible to argue with or criticize. Whenever someone tried to confront me, even in a respectful way, I would see his encounter again. I would hear his voice. I would feel ganged up on. I would turn into defen
  

  Rick Shory

  My cousin sent me a link to this. I started reading. I was about to click away with a yawn before I noticed the writer was Armistead Maupin.

  How things change. I first saw Maupin&#;s &#;Tales of the City&#; series in the late s. Each book, I couldn&#;t insert it down! I was living on a boat, scraping by. I lived aboard friend&#;s small craft, parked in the marina. Rent was free, in exchange for keeping an eye on things. The tiny cabin wasn&#;t even big enough to stay up, so night after night, I sat prolonged hours on the mooring slips, reading those books under the dock lights.

  The couldn&#;t-put-it-down wasn&#;t from adventure, but from the constant subtext, &#;Gay life can be normal!&#; Here were these functional gay characters, in richly integrated lives. The message to me, trying to figure out this new weird male lover thing, was, &#;You, too, can have a enjoyable, normal life!&#;

  The past several months, I have been leisurely going through the same series again, as audiobooks. They are delightful in how they fetch back that time and place. But after all these decades, I now have m