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April 16, 2009

Queerly Canadian #10: Teach them well, let them lead the way

Posted by Cate Simpson at 04:46 PM ET

Last week an 11 year-old from Massachusetts called Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover (right) hanged himself after enduring daily taunts at school, many of which were homophobic. This comes, as this press release from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network reminds us, just over a year after the murder of 15 year-old Lawrence King, who was shot by another student because of his perceived sexual identity.

In an age where queer people are protected by various anti-discrimination laws all over North America, why are we still failing to extend these freedoms and protections to our youth? Among queer teens in the US and in Canada, suicide is the number one cause of death. We can do better.

The article above lists some harrowing facts and figures about homophobic bullying in American schools, but Canada is generating some scary statistics of its own. Last year, a Statistics Canada study based on data from a 2004 survey reported (PDF link) that LGBTQ youth (and adults) were three times more likely to encounter violent victimization and discrimination. Sexual minorities account for 30 percent of teen suicides in Canada, which is particularly significant when you consider that they only account for around 10 percent of the teen population overall.

Why is it that we’ve come so far in making our cities safe and welcoming places for queer people, but we can’t do the same for our schools? It’s not enough to legislate against discrimination and hope that the growing acceptance of sexual minorities will trickle down to our youth. Because messages that say otherwise are still pervasive in our society, and we need to give young people the means to fight back. We need to make sure teachers are willing to step in and protect kids like Carl Walker-Hoover, and that they know what to say when they do. We need to start educating, and we need to start younger.

I would be remiss at this point if I didn’t mention the queer youth projects that exist in Toronto. Planned Parenthood’s Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia (TEACH) runs workshops in schools all over the GTA, and Supporting Our Youth has an ever-expanding roster of programs and drop-ins for queer and trans youth. But we don’t rely on third party organizations to teach the other basics of human interaction, so why should it fall to them to explain to teenagers why singling out gay kids is wrong?

Parents start instructing children in the differences between right and wrong before they start school. Schools teach traffic safety, ethics, healthy eating, even first aid. Why isn’t basic anti-oppression training on that list? Why can’t we educate our children about the full range of human relationships that exist when we explain to them what marriage is, what families are about, how babies are made? How many more teenagers have to die before we get over our fear of talking to young people about homosexuality, and realize that we can’t afford to be squeamish about these conversations?

We try to build better worlds for our younger generations. We try to protect them from the mistakes we made, and we try to teach them the lessons we had to learn for ourselves. But when it comes to homophobia, we are failing. Instead, we are loading our youth down with prejudice that ill equips them for the real world, and condemning them to start from scratch, to learn for themselves as teens and adults the respect for difference that has come to us slowly, if at all, and remains — even in 2009, even in the most urban and diverse of settings — so tenuous.

More entries on: Queerly Canadian

Previous: Eco Chamber #1: Past and future at the far end of the world
Next: Eco Chamber #2: Countdown to Copenhagen

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