OMGAY

[Cassiel]

Watch the most recent Lie to Me and tell me with a straight face that Lightman's shtick with the deaf girl wasn't genius.

[Herosbane]

I actually used applied microexpressions in my Advanced Characterization Techniques class.

[GraveI]

Actually Ravi in all likelihood isn't homophobic. That's the problem. He played the same prank on his shy, awkward gay roommate that he would've played on a shy, awkward straight roommate, with no appreciation for the (it turns out deadly) difference between the two.

Also, nobody ever disputed that as a whole our culture is seriously discriminatory toward LGBT folks. What we said is that it's possible to use words like "gay" and "faggot" without them having anything to do with that shit, and doing so doesn't make us homophobic.

If I have to grab your ass with both hands and full-on mouth kiss you to make this point, I will.

In that specific instance the two kids who streamed the vids are not the ultimate culprits, they're just extremely convenient scapegoats. I forget that some of the stuff I post on FB I don't post here. The only reason that prank (which was despicable but not because he was gay, just because that's an asshole thing to do) had such an outrageous reaction is because of the abuse that Tyler probably had been suffering his whole life.

And yeah, I know no one ever disputed that our society was homophobic, but I had a point that even if it were possible to use words like faggot and homosexual (which according to polling has more of a negative connotation than gay) and not be homophobic, it could still be harmful for the exact same reason Tyler's suicide wasn't solely motivated by an asshole room mate.

Also if you realllllllly want to prove your point you'd ass kiss me.

Bullying in general is currently a huge problem in general, and my biggest complaint with the sort of focus of this thread is that at times you make it seem that only the LGBT community is having these kinds of problem, when the issue is far more widespread than that. We had three teen suicides here this year, in a pretty small town (80k), and as far as I know, none of these kids were gay, nor was homophobia the driving force behind their torment.

I don`t know. I`m really bitter about it all. I was bullied also to the point of attempted suicide. It`s not fun whether you are gay or straight or like to get fucked by horses. I think the current focus on homophobia really detracts from other people who are suffering just as much.

[TheRaven7]

What really blows my mind is the number of parents that actually encourage bullying, regarding it as some sort of important stage of social development.

[GraveI]

Not only do many actively encourage it, but some are quite definitely the ones responsible. Anecdote time!

I went to school with a family of Mormons; there were four boys, two older than myself, one my age, and a younger one. The first three had all come out as being gay at various points. One day the youngest left for school, but instead of driving to school he drove out of town and then crossed lanes into the path of a semi going well over the speed limit. Turns out he had just had a fight with his parents about his sexuality; they did not want a fourth gay child...

[Zeuter]

On a lighter note, gay sex vs straight sex.

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/gay-s ... aight-sex/

Misleading title though. It's more of a "straight people's awful tastes vs gay people's horrible tastes".

[unwichtig]

As a gay person who doesn't consider himself homophobic (but sometimes can be), that article is kind of reassuring in some strange ways.

Also worth mentioning, in my short college experience I was kissed by a straight guy way before I did anything with a gay one. Though I think I was way more excited about it than he was

[Zeuter]

I've found the perfect word to describe Dutch homosexuals: Grotesque.

Holy anorexia batman.

[unwichtig]

Chubby chaserrrr

(I'm not so into the skinny/bony ones either)

[Zeuter]

This is representative.

[Dr.Mellifluous]

Bullying in general is currently a huge problem in general, and my biggest complaint with the sort of focus of this thread is that at times you make it seem that only the LGBT community is having these kinds of problem, when the issue is far more widespread than that. We had three teen suicides here this year, in a pretty small town (80k), and as far as I know, none of these kids were gay, nor was homophobia the driving force behind their torment.

I don`t know. I`m really bitter about it all. I was bullied also to the point of attempted suicide. It`s not fun whether you are gay or straight or like to get fucked by horses. I think the current focus on homophobia really detracts from other people who are suffering just as much.

This is true, but the fact is that anecdotal evidences doesn't override the fact that the most severe bullying in America tends to be virulently homophobic even when the target isn't gay. What's more other sorts of bullying are publicly decried, whereas we have tacit approval in America for homophobic attitudes. Yes bullying is terrible no matter the victim, and its damaging across a wide range from verbal to violently sadistic (check the gay bash gang-rape shit that went down in the Bronx not too long ago).

Do you somehow think that people are forgetting "regular" bullying? Because that's not what's going on at all, instead people are for the first time seeing what homophobic bullying has been existing for years. Lemme break it down:

Gay, lesbian & bisexual youth represent 30% of all teen suicides. (Thomas Marino, Counseling Today, May, 1995)

Gay, lesbian & bisexual youth are more likely to have attempted suicide than their straight peers. (U.S. government survey, 1995, and a report from Harvard Medical School, the Mass. Dept. of Education, and Wake Forest University, 1998)

Gay, lesbian & bisexual youth represent 25% of all homeless youth in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Health Services, 1989)

28% of gay/lesbian youth are forced to drop out of school because of their sexuality. (National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, 1998)

The average high school student in the U.S. hears anti-gay slurs 25 times per day. (Massachusetts Department of Education, 1994)

1 out of 6 gay teens has been beaten badly enough to require medical attention. (Center for Disease Control)

See how old those numbers are? That's when the problem first became identified, I mean homosexuality was a mental disorder until... 1973 apparently. Anyways these stats have not gotten better, in some cases they've gotten worse. The following is from a SafeSchoolCoalition pdf:

Overall, 61% of students said they knew someone who had been called gay or lesbian. That’s the biggest increase of any form of harassment students knew about, up from 51% in 1993. Most other experiences of sexual harassment have remained steady or decreased.

• When asked about their own experiences, 36% say they have “ever” been called lesbian or gay. That’s the biggest jump among all the types of harassment students experienced, up from 17% in 1993.
• 19% of boys said they had been called gay “occasionally” or “often,” double the rate in 1993 (9%).
• 13% of girls said they had been called lesbian “occasionally” or “often,” almost triple the rate in 1993 (5%).

HOW DOES BIAS-BASED HARASSMENT correlate with CARRYING A GUN TO SCHOOL?
• It is logical that students may feel compelled to carry weapons if they fear for their safety.
• Students who have been harassed or attacked at school because of their gender are more than twice as likely as non-harassed peers to report having carried a gun to school in the past month (3.9% vs. 1.4%).
• Students who have been harassed or attacked at school because of their race are more than four times as likely as their peers to report having carried a gun to school in the past month (4.6% vs. 1.1%).
• Students who have been harassed or attacked at school because someone perceived them to be gay or lesbian are more than six times as likely as their peers to report having carried a gun to school in the past month (10.4% vs. 1.7%).

HOW DOES BIAS-BASED HARASSMENT correlate with ATTEMPTING SUICIDE?
• Students who have been harassed or attacked at school because of their gender are more than twice as likely as non-harassed peers to report having attempted suicide in the past year (13.4% vs. 5.2%).
• Students who have been harassed or attacked at school because of their race are more than twice as likely as their peers to report having attempted suicide in the past year (12.4% vs. 5.9%).
• Almost a quarter of students who have been harassed or attacked at school because someone perceived them to be gay or lesbian report having attempted suicide in the past year – more than three times the rate their peers report (23.2% vs. 7.1%).


The current media outcry is focused on homophobic bullying for sure, and yes everyone is acting like it's a big deal because duh, it is. The LGBT community is raising such a fuss because NONE HAS BEEN RAISED BEFORE. The first time we as a community got to flip our lid and have the mainstream media on our side was Matthew Shepard, and shit has gotten worse since then. Bullied queer teens are the single most at risk group for drugs, suicide, violence etc. And do you honestly think that any focus on anti-bullying is going to somehow not benefit kids like you who got the shit bullied out of them? No one's forgetting about you, but this is the first time we've gotten a chance to speak up, so stop complaining.

[theboogleman]

How do you go about stopping homophobic bullying without stopping bullying in general? New marketing campaign: "Next time you want to call your friend gay to insult them, call them a douche. Douche is the new gay".

To me there are only two ways to stop homophobic bullying:

1)Stop bullying generally

2)Making any gay slur not offensive then people will just bully people with other words

I have no idea what's going on over there(Australian here) so can someone update me? Is there some sort of bullying campaign going on?

[Zeuter]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2010-10-11

I’ll also discuss more current work, including some thoughts about why I believe modern schools place vulnerable adolescents, such as gay teens, at heightened risk of suicide simply by creating an artificial social environment of exclusively same-age peers, one in which specific pressure-points of ancestral conflict are bizarrely exacerbated. “It gets better” for gay teens only because we eventually get out of that unnatural zoo that is high school.

[Herosbane]

tl;dr

I was a bully, but I didn't really focus on gays. I mostly made fun of fat kids. Easier to spot than homersexuals.

[Dr.Mellifluous]

tl;dr

I was a bully, but I didn't really focus on gays. I mostly made fun of fat kids. Easier to spot than homersexuals.

I think most people were a bit of a bully in high school, I was because I was lucky enough to be a "cool kid" even if everyone talked about whether or not I was gay behind my back. That and if anyone had fucked with me I would have straight up broke them in twain.

Via Pam's House Blend, I learn that the Washington Post's remarkably poor decision to post Tony Perkins's falsehood laden, anti-gay screed on their On Faith blog (on National Coming Out Day nonetheless) was because they felt they needed to "cover both sides" of "bullying and gay suicide." No, really, they're serious. Apparently they hosted a Live Q & A chat with Dan Savage to discuss "bullying and gay suicide" and his "It Gets Better Project," which is a You Tube channel Savage created in order to reach out to gay youths to prevent suicide. So, to balance Savage, the Post turned to Perkins to respond. Apparently to the Post, gay suicide is a two-sided issue.

GLAAD and the Washington Post had an exchange over Twitter, in which the Post responded to criticism over publishing Perkins' column, by saying, "[W]e're working to cover both sides. Earlier, we hosted Dan Savage of It Gets Better in a live chat." GLAAD rightly replied, "There are not 'both sides' to this issue. Teen suicide isn't a debate-it's a tragedy."

Need I remind you that Perkins's argument was that gay suicide, which often is prefaced by homophobic bullying, was caused not by the bullying, but because "homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression," and that the "homosexual movement and their allies" teach kids "that they are 'born gay' and can never change. This--and not society's disapproval--may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide." To back up this insanity, Perkins linked to studies that showed exactly the opposite of what he claimed. While Perkins is right, "Several studies suggest that gay men, lesbians and bisexuals appear to have higher rates of some mental disorders compared with heterosexuals," he's just wrong that this is pathological, and he's equally wrong that there's no link between this and discrimination. Indeed, the article to which Perkins himself linked immediately goes on to report that "[d]iscrimination may help fuel these higher rates." The article further reported: "In a study that examines possible root causes of mental disorders in LGB people, [Susan] Cochran [PhD] and psychologist Vickie M. Mays, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, explored whether ongoing discrimination fuels anxiety, depression and other stress-related mental health problems among LGB people. The authors found strong evidence of a relationship between the two."

The article also reported that the researcher who conducted several of these studies was "concerned that these findings may give ammunition to people who want to falsely promulgate the argument that gay people are by nature mentally ill." The article added:

For one thing, she says, "these are certainly not levels of morbidity consistent with models that say homosexuality is inherently pathological." For another, the data simply don't prove either pro- or anti-gay arguments on the subject, whether it's that the inherent biology of homosexuality causes mental illness or that social stigma provokes mental illness in LGB people, she says.

It seems that Perkins counted on the fact that people wouldn't click through his links, and apparently the On Faith blog editors obliged.

Joseph Stiglitz once wrote of the 2004 elections:

Most of the media not controlled by the right wing tried to play the role of honest broker, giving equal weight to each interpretation. If one side said the sky was blue and the other said it was orange, journalists would work hard, for the sake of appearing balanced, to find some academic, even a color blind one, willing to say that the sky was indeed orange.

Unfortunately, the same still holds true today, and the Post feeling the need to balance a conversation with a gay man about how to prevent gay suicide with a homophobic rant from a crazy man who blames the gays for the suicides, is just the latest sad example of this fallacy.

[theboogleman]

Has anyone here read Malcolm Gladwells book Tipping Point? There's an interesting section on suicides which was done with reference to a case in some tropical island. The basic premise is there were no suicides until one day a kid killed himself for being made fun of, nothing too major but obviouslly to them it was, which then triggered a whole string of suicides.

What they found was all the suicides were very similar to the first. After the first an environment was created where suicides were okay under certain circumstances which then made suicides sky rocket. It wasn't a consious thing, it just seemed like a plausable option to dealing with the situation where as before it didn't even occur to them.

What I'm trying to say here is I think this related to gay suicides. Somewhere long ago a gay person killed themselves for being made fun of which has then created an environment where this can happen. I think if you can break the connection between being made fun of for being gay an suicide being an option it will go a long way to fixing the problem.

That is all.

[Cassiel]

Has anyone here read Malcolm Gladwells book Tipping Point?

That was the first thing that popped into my head too. The psychology of the Micronesian suicides was a lot different though.

[TheRaven7]

As a kid I would pull out my hair to deal with stress. Then someone mentioned nailbiting and my habit shifted.

[Turkey_Slayer]

Have you been a meth addict your entire life?

[TheRaven7]

Never had a cavity.

Edit: I've never used an illegal substance.

[Zeuter]

That wasn't the question.

[GraveI]

Never had a cavity.

Edit: I've never used an illegal substance.

how is life not boring?

[Herosbane]

Different strokes, Grav. I mean, from what you project on here you make most of us look like teetotalers. Besides, self-destruction is masturbation. Now self-improvement...

[gandalf37]

I've only tried weed a couple times but I didn't like it. I abuse alcohol and that's good enough for me.

[GraveI]

the only thing that seperates liquor from any other drug is legality, and you're just fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

edit
Liquor is far harder on your body than most if not all of the things I take at this point in my life. Except for smoking cigs probably. And maybe coffee.