Is “not stopping rape” if a teenaged girl wears sexually provocative clothing a good thing because it will teach her “appropriate boundaries” and “appropriate attire”?

chilling.

I know because I was one of those kids. For three years during middle school, I faced they daily psychological warfare of my classmates taunts because I didn’t live up to the masculine ideal for boys at the time, and because I finally (inevitably) came out as gay. Unfortunately, that was in a time and place where there wasn’t any support for gay students.

I was in the south, during the Reagan era, for crying out loud. No one was on my side, or made it clear they wouldn’t be if I actually was gay. My own parents, in response to my telling them the names I got called every day, merely asked “Well, you’re not. Are you?” And it was clear that my answer had better be “no” and that I’d get even worse at home if I answered “yes.”

I started getting sick just thinking about going to school, and I would make up excuses not to go whenever I could. I flunked phys. ed. because I refused to go into the locker room, because the verbal harrassment turned physical there once the gym teacher retired to his office. I same home angry every day, and eventually developed depression.

I was suicidal. Finally my mom overheard me say that I wanted to take a gun to school, blow my classmates away, and then use it on myself. I don’t know if I’d have done it, but I knew where my Dad kept his gun. I didn’t have a chance to find out, because that remark landed me in a therapists office. That got my folks’ attention.

My therapist — once he got over the shock of having a 13 year old sit down in the first session and tell him “If we’re going to work togther, you need to know that I’m gay and that I’m not here to change that” — took a deep breath and answered “Well, let’s just work on the whole person, and lest that part fall into place where ever it will.”

He was the first person I met who indicated to me that it was OK to be gay, or at least that it wasn’t the of the world. That, and changing schools, saved my life.

But I was lucky. Plenty of other kids weren’t. Plenty still aren’t. NARTH’s Dr. Berger would almost certainly push some kids over the edge that I narrowly avoided, if his recommendation were to be applied.

Kids shouldn’t be bullied in school because of who they are. Period. School officials and administrators have a responsibility to make sure that all students have a safe, non-hostile learning environment. Period.

Recommending “not stopping bullying” is the same as advocating bullying itself. Change the verb. Is recommending “not stoppging murder” the same as advocating murder? Does it produce the same results? Is advocating not stopping harm the same as actually advocating harm? Or even doing harm?

Once the dialogue has degenerated to that level, as far as I’m concerned the dialogue is over. Anyone who would support or even downlplay the kind of harassmentn I experience and that other gay kids still experience today, isn’t someone I care to engage in a dialogue with.

I’m not a political blogger, but if I were, I would find out what they are saying by visit their sites, then my site would offer the counter (actual facts) and then the number 2′s will probably visit both, right?

If a number 1 and a number 3 endlesslly debate on a blog, I would imagine the number 2′s won’t stick around.

I’m not qualified to offer a professional opinion on this, just my own personal one.

As for bullying, I have no remembered anecdotes. I just realized somewhere along the way that people mock what they are afraid of so they do not look afraid. My life in school was built on looking non-intimidating.

It’s your blog to do with as you will, but I think I will have to avoid expanding the posts if I see his name attached from now on (which is probably a major intent going on here). I can understand debating with a number 2, I do not understand debating with a number 3. My comments to/about him, I do not consider debating.

I get confrontational to the number 3′s precisely because they cannot be convinced. So there are two options, walking away or venting. Venting is better for my psyche, and since nothing else can be gained, I choose to release my anger to the recipient who deserves it and not carry the anger into my household. That’s why I speak the way I do to a number 3. But I think it would be far better if there were no number 3′s at all.

I’m getting older, I’m getting to the point where I’m tired of asking/begging for what I am unjustly denied.

Let me explain it this way. When I first came to D.C. to work in politics, and to work specifically on gay rights issues, I was told and came to understand that people fall into three categories when you’re working for social change:

1. The people who are on your side.
2. The people who aren’t on your side, but could be if they’re persuaded.
3. The people who are not on your side and never will be.

The first group you need to talk to in order to keep them informed and motivated. The second group you need to talk to in order to make your case and move them to your side. Talking to the third group is a waste of time and energy better spent shoring up support in the first group and winning support in the second group.

Then the people in the third group come and comment on your blog. For the most part they drop by for one comment and then leave. But some of them keep coming back and keep commenting, which leads me to believe that they know talking to them is a waste of time because they know they’re never going to change their point of view. Sometimes they monopolize the discussion. Sometimes they’re even abusive to some of the regulars. (I banned at least one person from commenting for exactly that reason last summer.)

So I start to wonder, given all the above, why they’d want to waste their time in a dialogue where both parties are immovable. It’s then that I wonder if, for the third group, engaging in dialogue or at least pretending to is a tactic because if you’re talking to them you’re not talking to the people in the first and second group. And if you’re not talking to the people in the first and second group, spending your energy arguing with the third, then you aren’t making any progress on your goals.

And I begin to wonder if I haven’t been to indulgent. A while back, I had a commenter who defended the anti-gay religious death squads in Iraq. That person doesn’t comment here anymore.

NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee member Joseph Berger said “let the other children ridicule the child”

to this:

NARTH was not, from the report, calling for bullying.

And of course, in order to do that, we would pull Veggie Tales, which has NOTHING to do with the situation, into the mix to try to confuse and ‘soften’ the blow. Whatever. Terrance is talking about apples, so let’s bring up oranges and remind everybody how sweet they are.

Geesh.

I do believe you are marking a path more radical than your claims on NARTH. It would be hypocrisy, but only if the NARTH blog commenter actually was condoning bullying.

I mean, after pointing out the actions of the Massachusetts gay community to bully, harrass and otherwise intimidate through the Know your Neighbor site, I didn’t hear any distancing from yourself. The NARTH folks seem to have at least forwarded that courtesy. Or the recent pogrom on a church where ex-gays were having a convention?

Not hypocrisy, but I fear, and correct me if I’m wrong, that there is asynchonous messages being reported here. A sort of bias that violence and intimidation are okay if you can convince people the enemy is evil enough.

NARTH was not, from the report, calling for bullying. For instance, check out the Veggie Tales (a widely circulated christian cartoon) on bullying: Minnisota Cuke. Most of the time when you are bullied the advice is to head for a teacher to fix the problem for you. In that cartoon the advice for a child being bullied is to stand up for themselves, and not pursecuit someone back. While NARTH and Veggie Tales are seperate ventures, it seems reasonable that they are only asking for people to do for them what they want for themselves. In other words, if their children are (and believe me they are) being bullied at school do they want the teachers to stop them from being ridiculed? Or do they want them to turn the other cheek?

I hope, Terrance, that you can show more responsibility here on your site to be objective and fair. Lest the pursuit of your goals turn into a witch hunt, or even a white-whale hunt. Like it did for those pursecuting the Catholic Church (who are now not allowed to do adoptive serviced due to political bullying) and the afore mentioned others in Massachusetts.

It didn’t scare me straight, it drove me as a preteen to attempt suicide. NARTH needs to be shut down.

But overt bigots aren’t the only people who need to take responsibility for their opinions. As I point out in my article, which I’ve linked to here, gay people are just as prone to attack the sissy, the bulldyke, the gender non-compliant, the STEREOTYPE, as NARTH is. Yes, I know we have all internalized our oppression, but at some point we need to think about what we’re saying. We can’t really fight back if we share the bigotry of our enemies.