What we have to say
Getting over homophobia
Students, staff and carers in an urban secondary school community are prepared to speak out about homophobic behaviour and the damage it does to everyone.
Jess (Year 11 student): I'd never imagined that it was that bad, until talking to everyone … and then actually workshopping the ideas through forum theatre. That made me realise a lot and gave me a better understanding.
Kasey (Year 11 student): It made you angry that so many people were doing this yet we weren't actually realising it. Like people who pick on others just because the people doing the picking are homophobic.
Jess: In some ways some teachers condone homophobia in classrooms. An example I can think of is when students associate the word 'gay' with stupid or crap … 'this sucks' or 'this is gay' and the teacher does not say anything. That's condoning the negative stigma attached to it.
Gerowyn (teacher): So we're trying to change the culture in the school and that's just a small thing … It was something I wasn't aware of, how rampant that use of language was.
Courtney (Year 11 student): I always knew it was there because I've had it done to me. People said that I was gay because I'm nice to people.
Deb (teacher): I've been aware of kids being harassed and beaten up at school.
Susan (parent): It's not just gay students who suffer from homophobia. I have a son who was harassed for being gay. He wasn't gay but the connotations were that, because he liked certain subjects or did certain things, he had to be gay. Though I knew about homophobia, this was my first interest in the sense of bullying because it has had a really long-term effect on him as an adult. He's only coming to terms with it now and he's nearly in his mid-twenties.
Cam (Year 11 student): Kids are often too afraid to come out at school. Right now there's a particular boy in our grade who's threatening to ruin our lives, saying that's his job. You can't blame kids for staying in their little shells.
Tim (support staff): Yet the stats say that once kids come out, the suicide rate goes right down – such a big issue, being alone, and it's so hush-hush.
It's also not just the overt homophobia of violence. Same-sex-attracted students can go through their whole schooling and not hear one positive thing or learn anything about their identity or the relationships they are going to have. It's like you're being told you don't exist, or you don't deserve to exist. That silence combined with violence has a really strong impact.
Carolyn (support staff): So it's actually not enough just to do the theatre or to talk about homophobia. You also have to talk about love, about relationships and take a look at what the homophobia is getting in the way of. When you talk about what gay and lesbian relationships are like, you learn that here's this group whose relationships are pretty much the same as us. That's a much deeper challenge to the homophobia.
In terms of preparing young people for entering a multicultural society, education is really leaving them short. There will be gay and lesbian people they'll be working with.
Tunny (Year 11 student): Homophobia happens in primary schools and in high schools. If it doesn't get dealt with until the senior years, the attitudes are established. There's no change if it has to wait until kids are just about to leave school.
Susan: It's very much about stopping the silence, involving the whole school – parents and citizens, staff, students, administrators – talking about it on assembly, providing support, information, networks.
Gerowyn: This says the school sees it as an issue. If the school has taken it on, it really empowers teachers to take the issue on. It's about the structure of support for teachers, and for teachers to support each other. It's not enough just to have the policy. It has to be promoted right across the school so that it's not okay to have a homophobic person – teacher or otherwise – calling anyone gay. That way the kids would actually challenge homophobia, 'Excuse me, there's a policy in this school ...'
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