Today is Spirit Day and I hope you are wearing purple.
Started in 2010 today is a day that we stand against bullying against the
LGBTQ+ community, because by the numbers it is pretty bleak. Those of you
coming here from my Instagram know some of the numbers, but that is not the full
picture. According to www.glaad.org 55.5% of
LGBT students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, 38.7%
because of their gender expression. A student shouldn’t have to feel unsafe at
school just because they veer a little left of center. This doesn’t even
account for those who have experienced cyberbullying (49%) or reported bullying
and nothing was done about it (61.6%). Those numbers are just a small sampling
of the data reported by glaad.org. A student should feel safe going to school
be it elementary school or college
When you search the deaths of LGBT youth bullying is a
common theme that comes up usually followed by the word suicide, and I don’t
think we should live in a world where a 15-year-old child commits suicide. Leelah
Alcorn, Ash Haffner, Blake Brockington, Taylor Alesana, and Cameron Langrell
are just five of the teens who have committed suicide this year because of
bullying. I could have found more names but I think that five names in 10
months is more than an adequate representation of the horrors of bullying that
is happening right now. How many people have to die before we do something
about this?
If a student was being bullied because of the color of their
hair, or their nationality people would be jumping to stop this. We take up campaigns
against slut-shaming, and fat-shaming, but we don’t seem as passionate about
gay and trans bashing. So this Spirit Day let’s take a stand and start a
conversation about bullying. Bring it to your Principal, Dean, or other
Administrator that you want your school to stand up again bullying based on
sexual orientation or gender expression, and don’t forget to wear purple today.
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