Please watch this, and then take action…and responsibility, to change the lives of our young people.
So Inspiring…so strong
Posts Tagged ‘teen suicide’
26 May
Stand Up Against Bullying—Sitting By Is the Worst You Could Do
If you’re not actively waging war against bullying, you are letting this plague wash over the young people in your life. I have to admit, I have needed some education on this. Everyone gets or got bullied when growing up, right? Kids are cruel, childhood is tough. One kid is fat, one is queer, one is poor, one has something that doesn’t work the same way, one has a mom or dad with a bad reputation, one wears glasses, one has freckles, one is too smart, one not smart enough, one wore musty clothes to school one day and will never live it down…my learning curve started there. We all, in the Lord of the Flies environment of the playground and field, banded against one another, with a new target always presenting itself, to try and divert attention from each of us. It never worked, we received the sharp tongues and sometimes pummeling fists, and prayed for tomorrow when it would be someone else’s turn.
Well, bullying is different now. We could go home and shut the door and likely find solace in hot stinging tears and the radio or records that gave voice to our pain more eloquently than we knew how. We likely didn’t tell our parents, but maybe a sibling knew. Certainly a friend did, but the teachers were probably in the dark. We pushed our way through our resistance and readied for battle one day after the next at school, counting the minutes as that clock on the wall clicked backward and then forward at an agonizing pace. Maybe we ran home to beat the crowd, or stayed after with a thin excuse so the heaving mass that seemed pitted against us would go ahead and mercifully find distraction elsewhere. But we got home. And we exhaled.
Now, when a kid gets home, and looks for some tether, some connection to make him or her feel normal or OK, they wake up the computer, and the first instinct is to go to social networking sites–the very language of which is all about “friends” and has even turned “friending” into a verb…and there they find the harshest and cruelest onslaught of all. Then the cellphone pings a text notification, where an anonymous sender has posted a message more cruel than you or I remember kids could be. There is not the escape we once had. Bullies have 24-hour access and can publicly humiliate a victim from the comfort of their own room. There has never been any question that bullies are the most insecure of all, but in their weak and desperate grab for feeling some of their own power, the sky is the limit for the devastation they can bring upon a psyche, self-image, soul, life, and family. It is not just the 24-hour news cycle that makes us think bullying is a bigger issue than it ever was…it is the truth.
Marlo Thomas has just written about the vastness of the issue, and against the backdrop of her groundbreaking album from the 70s, Free to Be You and Me, she, as all of us must, mourns the loss of that freedom in today’s more oppressive climate. She says (in a longer entry on Huffington Post that you ought to read in its entirety here), “For all the walls we thought we’d broken down with Free to Be — and all the stereotypes we thought we’d shattered — children today are not free to be anything they want to be, nor anything they are, and they are dying for it. And no beautiful lyric can fix that.”
Marlo was inspired by a father who wrote on her facebook page of the loss of his son to suicide forced by bullying. That dad, Kevin Jacobsen, created Kindness Above Malice, an organization to help shed light on bullying. Visit the KAM website (Kam was Jacobsen’s son’s name—Kameron), and then visit the topic with the young people you know. Your children, nieces and nephews, scouts, neighbors, kids of friends, grandchildren…don’t let them suffer in silence. Talk about it. Talk the shame away. Pulling pigtails is one thing, but these kids are pulling knots…around their necks…and we are all responsible to them.
24 Sep
It Gets Better
Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist for so many regional papers and author of book “The Kid” (recently turned into a Broadway musical) has launched a YouTube channel I think you/we all need to know about and support, perhaps contribute.
Earlier this month, we had National Suicide Prevention Week (September 5-11), and September 10 was National Suicide Prevention Day. The day before, on September 9, 15-year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself in his parents’ barn. Fox59.com reported:
The 15-year-old never told anyone he was gay but students at Greensburg High School thought he was and so they picked on him.
“People would call him ‘fag’ and stuff like that, just make fun of him because he’s different basically,” said student Dillen Swango.
Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy’s mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself.
Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.”
In response to this sickening tragedy, Savage has launched a video called “It Gets Better“ wishing he could have just talked to this kid, any kid who doesn’t see a future and rather than endure unending pain and torture from those around them, seek any way out they can find. If only they had role models to tell them, It Gets Better. In just a few days since launching the channel, thousands have joined and hundreds are posting their own message of hope. From Savage’s column:
I just read about a gay teenager in Indiana—Billy Lucas—who killed himself after being taunted by his classmates. Now his Facebook memorial page is being defaced by people posting homophobic comments. It’s just heartbreaking and sickening. What the hell can we do? -Gay Bullying Victim Who Survived
Another gay teenager in another small town has killed himself—hope you’re pleased with yourselves, Tony Perkins and all the other “Christians” out there who oppose anti-bullying programs (and give actual Christians a bad name).
Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother’s property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body.
Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.
“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”
I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
So here’s what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.
I’ve launched a channel on YouTube—www .youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject—to host these videos. My normally camera-shy husband and I already posted one. We both went to Christian schools and we were both bullied—he had it a lot worse than I did—and we are living proof that it gets better. We don’t dwell too much on the past. Instead, we talk mostly about all the meaningful things in our lives now—our families, our friends (gay and straight), the places we’ve gone and things we’ve experienced—that we would’ve missed out on if we’d killed ourselves then.
“You gotta give ’em hope,” Harvey Milk said.
Today we have the power to give these kids hope. We have the tools to reach out to them and tell our stories and let them know that it does get better. Online support groups are great, GLSEN does amazing work, the Trevor Project is invaluable. But many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.
The video my husband and I made is up now—all by itself. I’d like to add submissions from other gay and lesbian adults—singles and couples, with kids or without, established in careers or just starting out, urban and rural, of all races and religious backgrounds. (Go to www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject to find instructions for submitting your video.) If you’re gay or lesbian or bi or trans and you’ve ever read about a kid like Billy Lucas and thought, “Fuck, I wish I could’ve told him that it gets better,” this is your chance. We can’t help Billy, but there are lots of other Billys out there—other despairing LGBT kids who are being bullied and harassed, kids who don’t think they have a future—and we can help them.
They need to know that it gets better. Submit a video. Give them hope.
Change by Doing 