THEGAYUK

Tag: Bullying

All the latest news about Bullying and anti-bullying campaigns.

  • 14 ways to beat bullying

    This month it’s been anti-bullying month here at THEGAYUK. Bullying takes many forms: Name-calling, making negative comments on your work, making someone feel worthless, physical abuse are just some examples.

    So we’ve put some tips together to help anyone out there who might be being bullied. It doesn’t matter if you’re being bullied at school, college, university, work or home.

    Remember if you are being bullied remember it’s not your fault.

    Write Everything Down
    Keep a log of every incident; write down the date, time, location, what happened, what they said and any witnesses that were around.

    Tell Someone
    Tell someone in authority and ask them what they intend to do about it. Tell them any fears you have about reprisals from the bully.

    Someone you trust, like a family member or a friend can also be useful. It means that you’re not dealing with the problem on your own; a problem shared is a problem halved.

    Get Support
    Don’t try to deal with it and your feelings about it all on your own. Get some support. Consider counselling for some additional support around your feelings.

    Know Your Rights
    All educational settings have anti-bullying policies. Some employers have these as well. Even if your employer doesn’t they will have Equality & Diversity Policies as well as other relevant policies. Read them.

    There will also be procedures for investigating and dealing with bullying – so have a look at these as well.

    Know your rights. Nobody has a right to bully another. Make authority figures aware that you know you’re rights.

    Don’t Let It Get To You
    Try to not let the things the bully says or does get to you. Bullies bully for a variety of reasons, but it’s always about their issues, not yours.

    Try Not To Show A Reaction or Smile
    Don’t let the bully see that they are getting to you. To do this, try to give them no reaction or smile. You know that phrase: Smile – it confuses people.

    Walk With Confidence
    Use your body language to make you look larger. Stand with your legs apart, your back straight and your chest pushed out slightly. Have your arms slightly away from your body and loose by your sides. Head up as you walk looking straight ahead. This does take a bit of practice but try practising in front of a full-length mirror. Believe it or not, this is how most bullies walk.

    When we see someone walk like this, especially a bully, we do the opposite with our body language. We make ourselves as small as possible including hunching our back, pulling our arms in close and looking down at the ground. Try to remember to keep this confident body language, even when you see the bully.

    The only time to avoid using body language to make you look larger is in the event of a physical assault. In that case, have your side to the perpetrator, as this will give them less of a target. In the event of a physical assault, get yourself out of the situation as soon as you can and to a place of safety.

    Remember nobody has the right to be violent towards you; likewise, you don’t have the right to be violent towards anyone else. All physical assaults should be reported to the Police.

    If It’s CyberBullying
    If the bully is sending you messages, texts, images and videos, keep them all. Don’t respond to any messages and make good use of privacy settings. Block/Ignore the bully and report them to the social media provider. If the messages get particularly abusive report them to the Police (this is why you need to keep all the messages as evidence).

    Take Sensible Steps To Keep Yourself Safe
    Keep yourself safe by carrying a mobile phone, personal attack alarm and being aware of your surroundings. Never walk home on your own and always try to stay with someone when travelling around the setting where you come into contact with the bully.

    Involve The Police
    Any violence or physical assault should be reported to the Police.

    If the bullying is homophobic or racist in nature you can report it to the Police as a hate crime. Hate crime also covers bullying that is related to disability religion, ethnicity or transgender identify. Find out more about hate crimes on the True Vision website.

    Come up with Good Coping Strategies
    We all have different coping strategies. Some good ones are: taking up sports or martial arts (these are particularly empowering and you learn to defend yourself as well), talking to people, expressing how you feel creatively (e.g. writing, music, drawing, making movies, etc.). All of these activities also raise your confidence and self-esteem – something that bullies try to damage or destroy.

    Avoid Drugs & Alcohol as a Coping Strategy
    There is research that links drugs and alcohol misuse to bullying as a coping strategy. Avoid using drugs or alcohol to cope with the bullying. It might make you forget or feel happier in the very short term (for the night), but the next day the bullying often seems a much bigger problem.

    Know that It Gets Better
    Bullying is a massive issue. Many people get bullied. Remember that the situation you’re in now won’t last forever. There will be a time that the bullying will stop.

    Avoid Becoming The Bully
    There’s some research that shows that some people who have been bullied, later become bullies. Don’t let it happen, you’re better than that! Remember how it felt to be bullied. If you’re in a position to safely stand up to a bully that’s bullying someone else – do.

    If you’re affected by bullying please check out our resources page for further help and support.

  • COLUMN | B Stands For Bullying

    This month is mostly brought to you by the letter B, for bullying…

    No, this is not the section of a game show where we shout out “lines you’d never hear in a…”. After reading some of the recent articles on bullying and people’s experiences it stirred up some memories inside me. I started to reflect on my experience of bullying and, while the memories were still fresh I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts and, to be perfectly frank, pains of my bullying experience.

    Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t always this funny (ha), intelligent (bigger ha) and well dressed (ha-ha) man you see before you. During my early school days, around the age of 13-15 I was very much the school loner. I had about 3 friends, one of whom was my beloved cat (so you can see what I mean by loner). I was angry all of the time and very quickly became what is known as an “easy target” for jibes and derogatory remarks.

    I saying “bullying” because bullies aren’t just people that you can spot in a crowd. They aren’t one group of people over another, you can’t say “ah yes, I can tell be the way that man walks that he’s a bully”. Especially at school ‘bullies’ are anyone and everyone; you could be sat next to one right now on the bus…

    At school, once you became known as the school geek or “harry potter” look-alike then that’s it, you were stuck with that label with everyone that was aware of it (which was pretty much everyone). It wasn’t helped by my avid determination to stick with the ‘Harry Potter’ look that I had adopted and the haircut that was described by my tormentors as a “mullet” (although it wasn’t – Google a mullet and it did not look that that).

    The jibes would range in nature and tone. Some would be from girls having their usual catty digs or some would come from the year idiot. Often it would be a case where that day he’d picked you as the target to mutter the only long word he could manage in a day without tiring out his one brain cell. All you’d get from him is “mullet” and then he’d laugh and walk away. Any come back you gave was met with a blank face like you’d shouted a foreign language at him and shrugged off. I don’t like to be unkind but the facts seem to speak for themselves…

    This went on all during the lower years of high school and into the 1st year of my GCSEs; never violent, only consistent tormenting from any and all angles. At the time, and even to this day, who do you turn to in that sort of situation? Teachers? Parents? The bullies themselves? In my mind none of these would have been of any real help. Teachers wouldn’t tell then entire year off for picking on 1 child. And besides, back in those days ‘bullying does not take place at our school’.

    My Parents then? But how do you tell your parents you are being bullied by the entire year? Most parents wouldn’t know what to do any more than you would. The rest would either tell you to stop being so ridiculous, not care or march you down to the school to complain to the teachers that won’t tell off an entire year anyway and fob you off with a “bullying does not take place at our school”. Have you tried telling your entire year that you want them to stop calling you names? If you have, and succeeded, not only do I take my hat off to you but I also think you should be working for an anti-bullying charity and be an inspiration to us all.

    This constant torment and digs meant that for many years I suffered with intense bouts of anger and frustration, often lashing out at those around me. Looking back now, I believe that I suffered all during those years from a very deep depression. My tormented mind took me places that I never wish to see again, nor wish on any living soul. The mind can be just as cruel as any bully.

    So I suffered in silence for many years. I quickly took to anticipating the blows that would come my way, and I thought that if I called myself such things that it would take the wind out of their sails and they would get bored of it. It didn’t really work; they just found other ways of slipping it in or getting at you. However that view is something that still stays with me today and I’m always the first one to crack a joke at my own expense.

    In my final year of GCSEs and going into a-levels I started to notice something in my behaviour, that, up until that point I hadn’t really noticed. Of my 3 friends (including the cat), the one who was the very opposite of who I was (not the cat) suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of my anger and frustration. Over a period of about 3 years I had repeatedly made jabs and comments about him, his views and his personality. I had become the very thing that I was so angry at. I think it came to a head when I noticed that my other friend had started to do it as well. I sat and watched as he made the exact same jibes that I had made and it hit me. I had become the very thing that I despised and I was utterly horrified. To this day it is my biggest shame and I only share it because such shames should be frowned upon. Bullying will only stop when society decides it is completely unacceptable just as it once did of Homosexuality. Isn’t it amazing how that can be stopped in public places and yet bullying of any kind can’t?

    For those that have read a previous article of mine about gay bullying you’ll note that this is around the time that I ‘verbally attacked’ the resident school “gay boy” after he verbally attacked a friend. It was that event that helped me open my eyes to what I had become and the behaviour I was breeding in others.

    It’s almost as if something changed within me. Not consciously or through any overnight miraculous transformation, slowly but surely things began to change. I cut and restyled my hair, learnt to control my temper and anger, became the “funny man” and someone less social awkward to be around. Now my problems didn’t change overnight but funnily enough the M word soon disappeared. As did the constant casual mocking. You could even say that I had a place other than rock bottom in the social ladder. The real relaxed me was starting to appear, not the bitter and twisted person that seemed to be taking hold. I was even invited to parties, invited out to the pub I had friends and people to talk to. All because I had made a change in my life to change what made me so different.

    Now this is very unique to my experiences and life and isn’t typical of all bullying scenarios. Some could even say that I succumbed to peer pressure by changing who I was. But to those people I say this; surely the person I have become is better than the angry mess I was becoming? You can either be bullied, and spend the rest of your life being a victim of bullying or you can engage and challenge it. Work out what the bullying is about and actively challenge it. Either through changes and confidence in yourself or through seeking help and guidance from others, including your family.

    Humans fear what they do not understand and this is especially true of children and those with troubled backgrounds. You’ll often find, as I did, that a bully is someone with a pain or secret of their own. Someone who is looking to deflect attention away from themselves, or to lash out the pain that they feel or have suffered. However there are those that just do it because social protocol allows them to. And these are the dangerous ones. These are the ones you don’t see coming and the ones that in all honesty, hurt the most. And it is these ones that we must challenge as a society so that eventually bullying truly is seen as socially unacceptable regardless of the social crowd it’s happening with. Why can’t we make bullying behaviour as unacceptable in public as 2 men kissing once was?

    My years of bullying have left their scars. I don’t let them define me or dictate my life, but they have given me my sense of humour and outlook on life. Bullying is a part of my background and to ignore it is, in my mind, foolish. I owe both my good points and my bad points to my bullying experience. And while I wouldn’t call myself a ‘victim’ of bullying, I would call myself someone who has experienced it, knows it, and has come out the other side.

    That is my demon, and I carry it gladly as a reminder to me and to others that throw away words leave lasting scars. I believe it was Oscar Wilde that once said that the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’… How true.

    For those that are interested, my cat was called Tilly and she remained a true and loyal friend in the good times and the bad for 14 years of my life. She was, at one point, my best friend in all the world.

  • COLUMN | It’s okay to be different, isn’t it?

    My school days are such a long time ago now that I barely remember them, or is it that I just blotted them out?

    They seem to belong to a different person who has absolutely nothing to do with the person I am now. I had no idea I would turn out to be gay, though anyone with half a brain could probably have figured it out. I was dancing (in my pram) before I could walk, singing perfectly in tune before I had the slightest idea what I was singing about (all lyrics reduced to lalala), and my favourite films were those involving plenty of song and dance, Fred and Ginger in particular. From an early age, all I wanted to do was dance.

    This always singled me out as being a little different, but my earliest days at primary school were surprisingly happy. It was a mixed school and the other boys didn’t seem to mind that I preferred hanging out with the girls and not playing football with them. Well, they probably reasoned, at least they were spared having to pick me to be in their team. My school was in the middle of a highly middle class part of my home town, and the other pupils all came from the same area. Our parents all knew each other. It was a safe and cosy environment. Even so, though I don’t ever remember feeling physically threatened at my primary school, I had to learn to toss off the occasional jibes about being a sissy and a big girl. However in my last year or two, when I was sitting my eleven plus and preparing to go either to an all-boys Grammar School if I passed, or an all-boys Public School if I didn’t, I started to be picked on that bit more. School was not the fun place it had been when I was younger.

    I had been taking tap dancing lessons since I was five and would constantly sail through my various exams. Dancing was not a boy’s pursuit though. The penny dropped when I looked around at one of the annual dance school displays and realised I was the only boy on stage. That was probably behind my decision to give up dancing lessons. l My dancing teacher, a friend of the family whom I knew as Auntie Joy, was pressing my mother and father to get me to start ballet. She had been a professional ballet dancer herself and an Honours Associate of the Royal Academy of Dance. She thought that, physically, I had the perfect proportions to be a ballet dancer. However, no amount of cajoling on the part of my parents was to make me change my mind. I had decided that there was no way I was going to be going to ballet class when I got to my next school, and, it has to be admitted, my parents didn’t try that hard to persuade me otherwise. It had been bad enough been singled out for going to tap dancing lessons. I was hardly going to make things worse for myself by doing ballet.

    Secondary school (the local grammar) was to prove a terrible culture shock. It was my first exposure to boys from the other side of town, boys who were bright enough to pass their eleven plus, some of whom lived on council estates, and who had built up their own set of tools to deal with the harsher environment they came from. Grammar School was pretty egalitarian in that respect. Boys attending came from all over the town, not one single catchment area. No doubt to many of them, it appeared I had a privileged existence, and in some ways I had. We holidayed in Greece (staying with my grandparents there) when air travel was only for the rich; my father ran his own business and drove a Jaguar. This was enough to single me out, but it probably didn’t help that, though I no longer went to dance classes, I maintained a keen interest in theatre and dance, and would often participate in local operatic society productions, for which my father was musical director. No doubt, all this would have been forgotten if I’d been a keen football player or rugby player, but I had absolutely no interest in sport.

    At primary school I had made friends with all the girls. Here there were no girls. I found it hard to make friends and I became an easy target. Nobody actually called me gay (well the word didn’t exist back then), but I was called a sissy and a poof, without any of us really understanding what that meant. You have to remember homosexuality was illegal in those days. There was no way I was going to admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that I was gay, and I still assumed that I would meet a girl, get married and have children. I knew virtually nothing about sex. Children were much more innocent in those days. Still the other boys sensed I was different, and this is what separated me from them.

    I wasn’t the only boy to be bullied and ostracised though. There were others, who found it harder to get on than me, and I briefly befriended some of them, though ignominiously dumped them when I realised that being friends with them was doing me no good whatsoever. I remember one boy committed suicide while I was there. He was an odd, skinny, intellectual boy, with National Health glasses held together with Elastoplast, evidently from a poor family. Nobody would have anything to do with him, and even the teachers teased him. When he died, there was an announcement in assembly, but the whole sorry business was glossed over. There was never any attempt to tackle bullying in the school, and, truth to tell, the teachers often colluded in it, the idea being that a certain amount of bullying was good for the softer kids, that it was character building.

    My elder brother had gone to the same school 4 years before me, and, though we fought like cat and dog at home, he was to prove to be my protector in my early years at Grammar school. He couldn’t be there all the time of course, but at least I had his protection on the walk home from school, and more than once he turned on boys who were calling me names. I don’t know how I’d have coped without him. I wouldn’t have known how to fight back and, other than my brother, my only defence was speed. I could outrun most of the boys in my year, a fact that was first brought home to me on the day we had some athletics tests. To the amazement of all the other boys, who had assumed all sissy boys were useless at sport, I came first in my year in the 100 and 220 (yards, not metres in those days) and also tested well in the long jump. My games master encouraged me to join the athletics team, but I flatly refused, not because I didn’t enjoy running and jumping, but because I didn’t want to spend any more time than I had to with boys who bullied and threatened me. So, for the second time, I didn’t do something I was good at out of fear, out of fear for what the other boys would do to me. I had earned a somewhat grudging respect because I could run, so the physical bullying stopped, but the verbal jibes continued. I was a sensitive child and it hurt. It’s taken me a long time to learn to ignore people who seek to hurt with words. Indeed the scars can take a lifetime to heal.

    The only place I felt safe was in music classes, and my viola teacher, who knew how horrific games lessons were for me, ended up programming my viola lessons at the same time as the games periods, telling the headmaster there were no other slots available. I was eternally grateful to him. A kind, gentle, quietly spoken man, with weirdly wax like hands and fingers, I have no doubt that, though married, he was gay, not that I knew or guessed that at the time, but looking back, it seems plausible enough. I’m sure he recognised a kindred spirit. Still, in a more accepting environment, maybe I would not have accepted his offer of programming my viola classes so I could skip games. I admit I rather regret not participating in sport at school now. To this day, I feel a mild sense of panic when someone throws a ball at me, or puts a bat in my hand. I feel I’ve missed out.

    When my brother went to university, I had to find a way to survive without him. I did so by if not actually mixing with the bad boys in school, by allying myself with them.I started smoking, let it be believed that I had a string of girlfriends. I’d buy girlie magazines like Mayfair, and make sure the other boys got to see them, though, in all honesty, nothing in their pages really did much for me. Still, they had the desired effect. I started bunking off school too. Suddenly I was cool and the bullying stopped.

    But of course I wasn’t cool. My schoolwork started to suffer. Much to the mortification of my parents, I was hauled up in front of the headmaster on more than one occasion. Though I managed to pass 6 out of 7 of my ‘O’ levels (we took a maximum of 7 in those days), I didn’t get the grades I should have done. I went from being one of the top three boys in my class to one of the bottom few. My ‘A’ level results were even worse, and I ended up having to go to a college to re-study and re-sit my English and French, in an attempt to improve my grades.

    I suppose I was luckier than many. I never actually got beaten up (because I could runs so fast), and most of what I had to deal with was just words. Just words? I remember shouting back at my tormentors, “Sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words can never hurt me.” But it wasn’t true. Words can and do hurt. They hurt me; both emotionally at the time and also in stopping me doing things I was good at and should have enjoyed. I don’t know if I’d ever have been a great ballet dancer or a great sprinter, but the point is I never got to find out, nor did I find my true academic potential. Hell-bent on survival, education was all but forgotten. How many other young people are not doing well at school because of bullying and peer pressure? I have no doubt it is thousands. We hear of the tragic cases, of those , like that young boy at my school, who are driven to take their own lives, and that one young person should feel death is the only way out is reason enough to ensure we, as adults, do everything in our power to stop another child taking their own life. We should also be considering the wider implications of children not reaching their full potential because of the way they are treated by their peers at school. Children feel that they need to fit in, and respond easily to peer pressure. What we need to do is celebrate diversity. We still live in a culture where the boy who is good at football is going to be feted and revered, whilst the boy who is good at ballet is more likely to be ridiculed and called names. We need to tell children that you can be different and still fit in, but until we can celebrate diversity in the adult world, how can we hope to make things better for children?

    Today is Stand Up day. Make sure you stand up against bullying.

  • COLUMN | Bully Boy

    Secondary school was a pretty grim time for me.

    In spite of being bright, having lots of friends and attending a pretty good school, it was a hideous time in my life and one that I shudder to recall. Markedly effeminate and obviously gay, I was a sure fire target for the homophobic bullies and there’s nothing like a touch of bullying to make life a living hell. I still recall evenings at home sitting and crying in my room, the lurching nausea of a Sunday night with the prospect of school the next day and the soul-destroying erosion of my confidence.

    30 years later, I wondered what advice I might give my 12-year-old self, should I discover that elusive time machine. Here are my top five tips to mini Chris. I’m sure that they won’t apply to everyone and I know that facing up to a bully is a complex issue but here’s what I’d tell myself. Hopefully it might have some advice transferable to others too.

    1) Tell people about it

    The worst bullying of all came from a sport’s teacher (clichéd, I know but people often do behave in a way so tediously true to the expected norm). The belittling comments and name calling during sports lessons set a precedent. If it was acceptable for a teacher to call me ‘the poofter’ in front of the class then it was acceptable for everyone, surely? The resolution came when he blacked my eye (accidentally) by throwing an icy cold football at my face with velocity whilst shouting some retro homophobic name at me. Cue a minor inquiry and a partial resolution of his nasty behaviour (it was the ‘80s, people could get away with more bad stuff than now). It’s easy to see, in retrospect, that I could have made it end a lot quicker had I spoken out sooner to maybe my parents or a sympathetic teacher. At the time this felt terrifying and impossible but I realise now that I didn’t deserve this and that whatever I did to speak out then the moron couldn’t hurt me any more than he already was doing.

    2) There’s safety in numbers

    Take comfort in your allies and if possible, befriend the like minded. I’d tell 12-year-old Chris that he has a great bunch of friends who actually seem to like him and will stand up for him. I made friends with two other gay teenagers and that was an incredibly lucky thing for me. I was lucky that they existed and we got on. We’d hang out together and to our surprise, it was harder to bully three people than one. My loyal female friends were a support too. There was a memorable incident when a boy tripped me over on the way home and my female friend punched him squarely on the jaw. He didn’t cross me again for fear of her firm left-hook. Naturally, I wouldn’t ever advocate violence but I really wish I’d known before that my group of friends were so willing to take no nonsense whilst I was prepared to take so much.

    3) What they’re saying is rubbish

    Just because you have a crush on the singer from Duran Duran and like a good show tune doesn’t make you inferior. Whatever names they might call you are utterly irrelevant. The opinion of someone who terrorises someone due to his or her sexuality really doesn’t count at all. It’s worth less than zero. In fact it’s worth less than that even. It needs a whole scale of its own; it’s so beneath contempt.

    4) Look for positive role models

    Not so easy in the 1980s but this is a bit easier now, hopefully. Even back in the bad old days of leg warmers and The Kids from Fame, there were strong positive people to look up to. It was a revelation to me, at the age of 14, to discover gay literature. I devoured books by Edmund White and Felice Picano and took a keen interest in historical figures like Harvey Milk who had fought so strongly for the cause. Pop music gave me idols too and Andy Bell and Jimmy Somerville were strong and unashamedly gay figures. These people taught me more about humanity and strength than any meathead sports teacher or vile acting teenager with an axe to grind.

    I also found comfort from a local gay youth group and the local gay switchboard. I was amazed that other people understood what the strife I was going through and that I wasn’t alone.

    5) Remember: You really are a lot more fierce and fabulous then they’ll ever be

    Nothing to say about this on except: fact!

    This is just my advice to myself and doesn’t apply to everyone. Bullying is a hard thing to stand up to and to get through alone. If you are being bullied because of your sexuality or any other reason, whatever age you are, then please get some professional help and advice.

    Here’s some useful links:

    http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Bullying/Pages/Homophobicbullying.aspx

    http://www.standupfoundation.com/

    http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/advice/children-young-people.aspx

    http://www.eachaction.org.uk/about-each/

    And for more contacts visit: http://www.thegayuk.com/Bullying

  • COMMENT | Bullying: My Experience

    Bullying is a bit of a sore subject for me. At the age of 29 I sometimes still find myself haunted by past experiences. I have been on numerous medications, had therapy, and even a stint in a rehab facility in an attempt to ‘get over’ the bullying I endured in my youth. It’s been a long and rocky road, and I still haven’t reached the end.

    My experience of bullying began when I was at primary school. I was five years old when a boy in my street started to pick on me. I was quite a weedy child so guess I was an easy target. The bullying began as name calling but as the years went by it became more physical.

    I was hit, kicked, and spat at. My mother would try to talk to his about what was happening but only came up against shouting and swearing. The bullying took a turn for the worse when I was ten years old. One day the boy picked up a pair of hedge scissors and tried to cut my head off. I almost laugh when I recall that because it seems ridiculous, but I was terrified at the time. He may not have succeeded in cutting my head off, but he could have easily caused serious injury had I not ran away.

    On another occasion, the same boy, along with a group of his friends, managed to pin me up against a fence in a corn field and tie me to it. They then urinated on me and tried to set fire to me. Luckily my sister came along at just the right time and distracted the gang. They chased after her and I managed to free myself. By the age of ten, I was experiencing serious mental trauma. By then the bullying wasn’t just occurring at home.

    From around the age of eight, the bullying had also begun at school. What started as general name calling became racist bullying when the other kids realised that my Dad is white and my Mum is black (or half-caste as some people call it). I was called a mongrel and the other kids would say that I don’t know if I am black or white. Just before leaving primary school the bullying changed focus again. Some of the kids in my class had noticed that all of my friends were girls and that I did not hang around with the boys. A word started to get thrown at me; a word that I had not really heard before. That word was ‘gay’.

    Moving up to secondary school should have been an exciting time. However, I was dreading it. I was aware that most of the kids from my primary school were going to the same school. I was scared that the bullying would continue. That fear became a reality when rumours began to spread that I was gay. This was based purely on the fact I hung around with girls and none of the boys. Of course their assumption that I am homosexual turned out to be correct, but for five years I was persecuted for it. Taunts during classes and at break times were frequent. The mental abuse became a daily occurrence. I was called all of the usual homophobic slurs and sometimes I would be physically attacked. Appealing to the teachers never achieved anything and I was often told to be quiet and stop making a drama. As time went on I became more introverted and eventually fell into a depression. At the age of fifteen that depression deteriorated into bulimia.

    Controlling my food intake and having the power to make myself sick afterwards seemed to be the only thing that I had control over at that time. The situation became worse, the bullying more intense, and the self-harm continued. At sixteen I had my first experience of antidepressant medication and mental health services after a friend realised my mental stability was crumbling and took me to see my GP. Something else also happened when I was sixteen; something surprising. The bullying came to an end.

    The day came when I could no longer handle the bullying. It was a case of fight or flight, the flight being to end my life. In a moment of pure anger I chose to fight. Someone who had previously been relatively nice to me started calling me homophobic names so I decided to confront him. When I did that, the boy kicked me and called me a f**king poof. That was the moment that I lost it. I punched the boy and knocked him off his chair. I ended up getting suspended as a consequence of my actions. When called into a meeting with my head of year I explained that I was being homophobically bullied. The year head brushed it off and said he was “not interested in that kind of thing”. I was then suspended. The boy who kicked me and was homophobic received no punishment.

    Upon returning to school after my suspension I noticed that people were leaving me alone. The name calling and violence suddenly stopped. At break time a group of lads came up to me, but instead of being abused I had my hand shook and they said that I’m “actually not that bad”. I thought it was completely bizarre that it took me being violent and sticking up for myself for the bullying to stop, but at the same time wished I had done it years previously.

    I wasn’t bullied at school again after that. I was left to it and my educational experience became easier. The damage had been done though. For years after I was haunted by the experiences and used mental health services extensively. Now as a mental health professional I am turning my experiences into something positive. With Push Projects, the LGBTQ youth support charity I founded in 2011, I provide a source of support to young people that didn’t exist when I was younger. I have also since returned to my old secondary school to discuss my experiences and work with them on anti-homophobic bullying strategies. I’m absolutely on a crusade and want to save all LGBTQ youth from persecution, but even if just one person is helped then I’ve done what I set out to do.

     

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  • Stonewall raises £65,000 to tackle anti-gay bullying

    Stonewall, Britain’s largest lesbian, gay and bisexual charity, raised £65,000 in 10k Equality Walk through Brighton.

    Over 800 Stonewall supporters took to the streets of Brighton for the charity’s tenth annual Equality Walk on Sunday. The annual fundraiser – supported by American Express and Square Peg Media – made over £65,000. Stonewall will use the funds to support its new DVD film for primary schools, FREE, which will help strengthen the charity’s campaign against homophobic bullying.

    Zoe Lyons hosted this year’s walk and was joined for a picnic in the Royal Pavilion Gardens by hundreds of families and fundraising teams. MPs John Bercow, Caroline Lucas and Simon Kirby, and the Mayor of Brighton & Hove Bill Randall, also attended the 10k walk, which ended at sea-front bar Coalition. There Zoe congratulated the top fundraising team (PwC, who made nearly £2,700) and the best individual fundraiser, Jason Sloan, who made over £1,000 and won a weekend in Paris courtesy of American Express.

    Stonewall Head of Education Wes Streeting said:

    ‘We’re truly bowled over by how hard our 800 walkers worked to raise such a huge sum for our anti-bullying work. While we all enjoyed the sunshine, we always keep in mind the fact that over half of gay young people in Britain face a gloomy nightmare of homophobic bullying at school. Every penny raised this weekend will help us make sure those young people can look forward to better days.’

    Stonewall’s new DVD for primary schools, FREE, will help teachers tackle homophobia, which is one of the most common causes of bullying in primary schools. The film follows the success of the charity’s popular secondary school film FIT, which was distributed to every secondary school in Britain. Playwright Rikki Beadle-Blair produced FIT and has returned to work on Free, which is currently in production and will be released later this year. For more information about FREE visit www.stonewall.org.uk/free

  • COLUMN: Bully For You

    This month we’ve been looking at mental health issues. Gay , bi and transgender men and women are statistically more prone to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. Is it any wonder when there’s still so much hostility and homophobic bullying in the world? (more…)