Suicide is often considered a result of deep psychological issues, or general depression; in short, most people view suicide as a personal act. What about when someone commits suicide because they can’t take the ridicule or oppression they feel on a daily basis? In my opinion, then, suicide is more a result of societal issues and social injustice. No one should feel hated or ridiculed to the point that they feel death is the only way out. Recently, however, many in the gay community have felt this way--Five gay teens across the country have committed suicide in the past three weeks alone.
Rutgers University student Tyler Clemente committed suicide last Tuesday after his roommate posted a video online of Clemente engaging in homosexual acts. The same day in California, thirteen year old Seth Walsh died after being in a coma for nine days. He had hanged himself after being bullied about his sexuality. On Wednesday, openly gay Johnson and Wales University student Raymond Chase also hanged himself. In Houston, thirteen year old Asher Brown shot himself due to harassment at his middle school, and in Indiana, fifteen year old Billy Lucas hanged himself after being teased by classmates who assumed he was gay.
The loss of these teens has inspired celebrities such as Lance Bass and Ellen DeGeneres to speak out about the intolerance and bullying of gay teenagers. DeGeneres said, “There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting, and we have to make it stop. We can’t let intolerance and ignorance take another kid’s life.”
In light of these recent suicides, I think it’s clear that bullying as a result of homophobia has an extremely detrimental, and in certain cases, deadly effect. Intolerance is a serious issue that needs to be addressed before more teenagers feel the need to resort to taking their own lives as an escape. We need to stop making people who are different feel inferior. Even what may seem to be harmless sayings, such as “That’s so gay” only further the idea that being gay is something negative. Abolishing sayings like this from daily conversation is one easy step we can take here on our own campus. What else can we do on our small scale to make a difference and what needs to be done on a larger scale to teach acceptance and reduce needless deaths?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B-hVWQnjjM
Rutgers University student Tyler Clemente committed suicide last Tuesday after his roommate posted a video online of Clemente engaging in homosexual acts. The same day in California, thirteen year old Seth Walsh died after being in a coma for nine days. He had hanged himself after being bullied about his sexuality. On Wednesday, openly gay Johnson and Wales University student Raymond Chase also hanged himself. In Houston, thirteen year old Asher Brown shot himself due to harassment at his middle school, and in Indiana, fifteen year old Billy Lucas hanged himself after being teased by classmates who assumed he was gay.
The loss of these teens has inspired celebrities such as Lance Bass and Ellen DeGeneres to speak out about the intolerance and bullying of gay teenagers. DeGeneres said, “There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting, and we have to make it stop. We can’t let intolerance and ignorance take another kid’s life.”
In light of these recent suicides, I think it’s clear that bullying as a result of homophobia has an extremely detrimental, and in certain cases, deadly effect. Intolerance is a serious issue that needs to be addressed before more teenagers feel the need to resort to taking their own lives as an escape. We need to stop making people who are different feel inferior. Even what may seem to be harmless sayings, such as “That’s so gay” only further the idea that being gay is something negative. Abolishing sayings like this from daily conversation is one easy step we can take here on our own campus. What else can we do on our small scale to make a difference and what needs to be done on a larger scale to teach acceptance and reduce needless deaths?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B-hVWQnjjM
It is devastating that many people are unbelievably ignorant towards anyone who is not strictly a heterosexual. I have friends who are bisexual and they get a number of hateful remarks and resentment towards them. I could not imagine if any of them took their life because of things people said. Banning phrases like “that’s so gay” is an idea I would like to see happen, but I do not think it would put an end to their use. I am in a class right now where we have talked about gender, sexuality, etcetera, and there have been many times when people, both males and females, have said the phrase “I never thought of it like that.” I believe that even in early schooling students should somehow be taught that females and males are not the only people who can love each other. Ideally, acceptance needs to exist on a larger scale. We live in a country where being heterosexual is the norm, but is having a norm worth teenagers shooting themselves? Is it worth middle school students, high school students, and college students hanging themselves or jumping off bridges? Is it worth such a vast majority of people feeling like they need to commit suicide? Absolutely not. Lastly, by reading the comments on the YouTube link, it is obvious that some people will always stay ignorant to this issue. Hopefully that group of people becomes the minority on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI agree no one should feel that way because it does make you depressed and you feel like nobody likes you and you do things that aren't rational. I feel bad this happens because it doesn't just happen to people because of their sexual orientation, but sometimes just because they just feel like demoralizing someone to make them feel better which is wrong and does tie in with social justice.
ReplyDeleteSchools really need to be more proactive with dealing with bullying situations. With bullies, there is always one main bully that causes others to also pick on the person. With a way to fix bullies, it will drastically cut down on suicides because it will result in a more tolerant society. Bullies cause many people to commit suicide each year for being different, whether that difference is sexuality, race, or what interests a person has. Bullies are the root of the suicide issue, and fixing the bullies would be a huge step forward toward the acceptance of all people.
ReplyDeleteMost of the sucides that happen on a dialy basis are due to the isolation that society ties on those individuals being bullied. It kind of makes them feel like they're the outcasts of the world.If someone feels like they don't belong, then it makes them want to just take the easy way out by committing sucide. If everyone in the society treats each person next or around them eqaully, the way he/she wants to be treated, then we can reduce or overcome these devasting sucides, that are heartbreaking if you think about it.
ReplyDeleteI came from a high school that graduated just over 350 students this past year. Out of all those students, there was only one classmate of mine who was openly gay. My hometown is quite conservative and took his coming out as a shock. He was tormented for so long until the school district finally stepped in. Even after being told to be accepting, the tormenting did not stop, it was simply done on a quieter level. I don’t know how he was able to endure the abuse he faced for four years. Though the ones who bullied him were few in number, the rest of my class and me added to the problem by never standing up for or supporting him because no one wanted to be associated with him.
ReplyDeleteBeing in such a sheltered town these types of tragedies were unheard of, or at least unspoken of. That is no excuse however, small town or not there needs to be acceptance of the people of the gay and lesbian communities. Knowledge needs to be spread in order for acceptance to follow. The world needs to be educated on how discrimination affects these people in order to put a stop to it. There is no reason why a person needs to feel inferior based on what gender or genders they are attracted to.
It really is unfortunate, that after all the progress this country has made with civil rights that the term "that is so gay" is still a commonly used and acceptable term for people of all ages. It not so much that the term is "acceptable", but honestly how often does anyone (besides a teacher) stand up for the injustice of the phrase. I understand that some people do not agree with homosexual relationships because of religious beliefs or personal morals, but in reality the personal decisions that one makes does not interfear with the beliefs and morals of others. Therefore people who choose to engage in homosexual relationships should not be ridiculed, harassed, or even recognized beyond their own identity, because being gay is a personal decision of theirs. This blog is an excellent example of social injustice, as it tells the stories of people who are denied the right of happiness due to the bullying of their sexual orientation. Homosexuals are in no way physically or even emotionally harmful to others, and therefore should be left alone (as far as bullying and harrassment go). The fact that homosexual teens have actually been driven to suicide because they were ridiculed beyond what they could emotionally handle is heart wrenching. People should not even be faced with ridicule because of their sexual orientation in the first place and no one person in this world should ever get to the point where they feel taking their life is the only way to escape the harrassment. Everyone should feel comfortable and entirely safe with expressly entirely who they really are because if we can not be ourselves we are not essentially "free". The last time I knew this was a free country and the word "free" is not limited to politics, and therefore SHOULD and NEEDS to be expanded to all aspects of life including sexual orientation because again, one person's personal decisions does not effect another's life.
ReplyDeleteIn don't think people realize how serious it can be to bully someone or harass them because of their sexuality. People are mean, but they don't intend to be harmful. A lot of the time, they see it as being funny, not mean. Either way I think that people should not have to feel afraid of being true to themselves and revealing their sexuality. Unfortunately, our society has a problem with diversity like this. Not only that, but I have also noticed that a lot of the negative commentary is directed towards gay males, not females. I don't know why this is, but I think it may have something to do with the stereotype that we have for men in our minds...that they are very masculine in as many ways as they can think to be. So when a guy fails to show his interest in women it conflicts with the image that we generally have of men in our minds, and it may cause us to discriminate against these people. Either way, nobody should be afraid of being themselves or being treated differently because of it.
ReplyDeleteI feel that it is wrong to bully someone based on their sexual orientation. Although I do not neccissarily agree with that lifestyle I would not bully someone on that basis. I feel that sometimes fear of the unknown tends to send people into a defensive mindset that many times manifests itself as bullying. I have never been exposed to the gay population in my life but I feel that soon I will be. I would agree with the author on the fact that bullying is wrong in this situation as well as any other situation that could arise.
ReplyDeleteIt is appalling that this is going on in our society. People need to become more tolerant of homosexuality because is it very present in our society and is likely to become even more present in our future. Bullying is a growing problem among teenagers for any number of reasons and it needs to be stopped because it is becoming worse and worse, and more detrimental to those being bullied. The problem at hand is real. The use of “that’s gay,” is an offensive phrase used in a negative way extremely frequently by teens. We need to do our best to not use that phrase because it hurts people, there are a million other words or phrases we can use to describe something we don’t like with out offending anyone. There is nothing positive about making people feel bad about anything especially their sexuality, something that is predisposed. To stop this problem we all need a new choice of words and some tolerance.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do not support the homosexual lifestyle, I still do not ridicule because they are homosexual. Just because I am not a fan of this sexuality doesn't mean that I have to bully the people who are supporters and who are homosexual. I think it is inhumane of people to take such actions, against people who have a different sexuality, and make these actions lead to their death. Personally I have not witnessed any of this type of bullying, even in my high school we some gay students that were open about it, but there was never any bullying involved. Recently there was a facebook event invitation that was about these boys and about a day that they will be celebrating in memory of them. Here it is.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=122462384475928
I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness in your responses here and with the timeliness of this post. There's a great video short series that is being disseminated though Youtube and Facebook called "It Gets Better." Here's one that is especially worth watching. It's my sense that it can be useful to develop a common vocabulary in our work toward creating a more socially just world. This video does just that by speaking to our individual and collective humanity. Take a few minutes to watch, listen, and share. Prof. ND
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94hMwu8BA8A
i have always believed that people should not be judged by their sexual preferences. Although i have always felt this way i have to admit i have never done anything to help stop this type of discrimination either. Growing up the phrase " that's so gay" was always very common among my peers and i have to admit that i have used it. I used it because i didn't think that i was offending and everyone else said so why couldn't I? In the back of my head I always knew it was wrong but i never cared enough. Admitting this is embarrassing but it is true. Discussion these teen suicides and other examples of discrimination have made me realize that I can't just say that this is wrong, i have to show it in my actions as well. i saw a video of Sarah Silverman where she was discussing gay marriage. She said that she couldn't believe that people who believed in gay marriage where getting married. She also said that she wold not get married until homosexuals were also allowed to get married. Would I do the same? Im not sure, but i do know that i cant just say i discrimination i have to do something about it. I am not sure what i can do yet, but i will start with eliminating phrases like " thats so gay" from my vocabulary. It is never enough to just say you don't believe in something, you have to show it and let your opinion be known to everyone!
ReplyDelete