Lately, we hear about kids and teens ending their lives due to bullying with a horrifying regularity. Last Thursday, 13-year-old Asher Brown of Cypress, Texas shot himself in the head with his father’s gun after reportedly enduring repeated bullying from classmates.
One of the reasons for these bullying-assisted suicides is often when the victim is perceived as being gay. According to the Houston Chronicle, Asher Brown allegedly told his father he was gay the morning of his suicide.
Members of the LGBT community who never experienced bullying as young people due to our sexual orientation are sadly rare.
In a message she recorded on the set of her talk show, Ellen DeGeneres says, “There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting and we have to make it stop. We can’t let intolerance and ignorance take another kid’s life.”
– J. Harvey
For the video, follow the JUMP:
Bravo Ellen! I’m a survivor…that was NOT easy, but i found strength and support in my incredible circle of friends…
I’m glad I didn’t go to public high school. I went to public school k-6. If how the kids acted then was a small example of how they would be as teenagers, it’s a good thing my parents pulled me out early. I still didn’t come out to them until I was almost 20 when I moved out. After coming out, they were heart broken, a little disappointed, but despite that, they made it extremely clear that they loved me no matter what. After coming out to them, I felt like I was free to act as myself rather than who I thought they wanted me to be. Our relationship became closer because of that, and I will be forever grateful.
We, as a community, have to stop being victims of the bullies’ aggressions, and take to them some aggressions of our own. Fight back. If these kids can find their daddy’s gun and use it on themselves, they can use it on the bullies. Killing in self-defense is not illegal. Take Mommy’s butcher knife to school. Take the baseball bat to the cafeteria and bash the bully’s head in while his back is turned to you. Reach around the bully’s neck in the desk in front of you and pull Mommy’s bread knife across his throat. It will all happen so fast, and all it would take is one or two dead bullies, well-publicized, to put a chill on bullying for a nice long time.
These kids need positive role models in the gay community. I wiah all the amazing gay and lesbian teachers in the world could me out at school and happy and show these kids that things will get better. The students need to know who they can talk to without fear of being “outed to family or friends.’ As a gay educator, this is breaking my heart!
to Patriot if they do what you are saying then they will be just like them and it would be just like ending their own life at the same time bullies just act tough to cover their own insucureitys and weaknesses and some are just bad to the bone kids that should have parents asses kicked for letting them get away with it in my own opinon what should be done is to just remove the kid that is beeing bullied to a diferent school or get involved with him or her and the police and have a good look at the problem on a day to day thing this is a problem that needs all of us to solve the loss is to great for us to ignore
I am also a gay educator. It breaks my heart daily to hear 2nd grade students calling each other gay and giving the “gay sign”. I teach them love and friendship, but outside my classroom I am fighting against all the hatred, lies, fears, and anti-gay thoughts given to them from their families and even their government. I don’t know the answer to solve bullying, but I do know that if it is not addressed by us as a nation, our children will never be able to feel safe and accepted.
Really, Patriot? That’s your solution? I can see how you’d form the opinion that violence in the face of violence solves problems.. it’s worked wonders for us in the middle east, hasn’t it?
What I do agree with is that kids need to learn how to cope with bullying behavior when it’s happening, not by clinging to a misguided notion that their job is to endure it until graduation. There will always be another bully around the corner, be it a boss, a family member, our government, etc. I think it a far more valuable lesson to steel these kids’ backbones now vs. telling them to wait until they’re old enough to move into a gay ghetto and insulate themselves from anyone and anything that challenges the differences that set them apart from others.
Yes, bullying does occur frequently towards kids who are labeled as gay, but let’s not forget that kids in general can be cruel no matter what or who they are. Teachers aren’t parents, and never should a school be held accountable for unruly children. As a parent, it is our responsibility on how we raise our kids. That has always and should always be the single point of success AND failure regarding a child’s development. Enforcing the safety of a child from the hands of another student is a sad commentary of today’s state of the nation’s youth. Parents, we are accountable for our child’s behavior, not the school. As for tolerance….zero for those who bully.
Amen Ellen! I was bullied as a kid all through school too, not for being gay but for being fat. I knew I didn’t dare admit I was gay or even act the slightest bit like I was. I wouldn’t wear any type of clothing or jewerly that someone might percieve as gay, for the fear that it would escilate the treatment I was already going through. I acted as manly as I could, even staying away from anything that might attract attention to me. I figured if I stayed in the shadowes then I would be less likely to be treated anymore badly than I already was. I had no friends in school and the only friends I did have were my neighbors, who as we became adults, I figured they only hung out with me because I was convieniant because they no longer kept in touch after we all moved away. I never went to school games, I never went to any dances, I didn’t attend any after school activities. I hated school and I would spend long sessions crying by myself wishing I was skinny. I ate to feel better which only made me fatter. A couple times I could not take the verbal abuse one more second and exploded and attacted the person and beat the crap out of him, which strangely enough took some of the heat off and made me a little more popular with the other guys as well as the guy I attacked, but only temporaraly.
In retrospect, I think I became a stronger individual for this. Although sometimes I think this made me insecure. If I had been outed as a teen, I probably wouldn’t be writing this today because I too might have ended up as a statistic. Thanks Ellen I only wish what you said could wind up where it needs to be heard the most, in the schools. But I fear that bullies are always going to be with us and they will never care who they hurt because it boots their own egos.
Well done Ellen. The more high profile voices that speak out about it, the more it will be in the open and acted upon rather than ignored as it is now.
Even here in New Zealand it is a common problem which the school system does not do enough to stop. One hopes this will be the start of a nation campaign on bullying. How often do the bullies get away scot free from what they have done after an apology is forced out of them, then they just carry on more so than before.
I think we have done our gay youth a disservice by telling them that it is OK to go to school and behave any way they want to.
Here on the planet Earth in 2010, the reality is that kids who are different will be treated differently.
Does a gay boy have a right to wear goth makeup and faggy clothes? Yes.
And will other boys beat the shit out of him because of it? Yes.
Is it right or ok for them to beat him up? Of course not.
AND the reality is, they will still do it.
We are responsible for our own inclusion.
The gay role models our kids see are from Project Runway or Glee. So the brave ones, who have been told “go be yourself,” “it is your right to be any way you want to be,” go to school emulating those role models.
Does a kid have the right to carry his wallet in his back pocket on the subway? Sure.
Will some asshole steal it? Yep.
It is totally wrong for the asshole to steal the wallet. And steal it they will.
Saying, “just be who you are,” is great for a 32 yo fashion designer from NY.
But that is dangerous advice to a 10th grader in GA.
I just think that the children of today do need strong gay role models in schools. Being one of those picked on from the 6th grade thru graduation , if I had had someone who I could talk to back then I wouldn’t have to tried to kill myself at least a dozen times before I finally came out at age 30, which I am now 43, and after coming out , thanks to the 6 month stint at the looney bin, I know try to help others in the same situations as I was. A ear and a shoulder can go a long way
Just having the role models and teaching love as well as empathy and compassion does not seem to be enough. It will happen that one day the gun gets pointed at the attacker not the victim. So how does this problem get fixed.
And not to add weight to a boat with holes but, we also need to deal with the fact that sometimes there are people who truly believe that gays are the scum of the earth no matter what. Something people just learned for themselves by themselves.
So how do we deal with all of this before a broken down boat becomes an abandoned one.
Hey Russ,
I have the same story as you 🙂 Thought I would point that out. Peace
It’s a sad situation with no easy answers, I question whether peoples attitudes will change, or get worse. People will always think they are better than someone.
I am 38 years old and I was heavily bullied when I was a kid. I was very much like the Kurt character on Glee, someone who has a super high pitch voice and at times not very “straight acting” (whatever that means). Up until a recent chat with my partner did I finally realise the effects of bully is still very much with me. For one, I refuse to attend any high school reunions or have any contact with these people who bullied me. Yes, bullying is going to be there. But if we are not doing anything about it, that’s just wrong. Thank you Ellen for bringing this message out.
As for the people out there who said these kids were irresponsible for ending their own lives, you have to understand the pain and fear for these kids were so overwhelming that they weren’t able to see a way out, not with a 15 or 16 years old. And blaming the victims is indeed a form of bullying.
@Buddy, what gives other people the right to deny who we are? You don’t lock yourself in your house because you fear being hit by a car do you?
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6916357n&tag=related;photovideo
Another sad story.
Disgusting that this lesbian is representing the gay community. After all her girl friend changed her name to match her. Bad for the gay community. They should have no identity.
@Buddy: Yup, I can see where you’re coming from, but when that bullying is couched in an anti-gay culture which, although not legally, quietly condones the beatings, you have to be able to see what a big problem it really is. Every “That’s gay!”, “Don’t talk to him, he’s a fag!” etc reinforces to all kids that being gay is at the least not a *good* thing.
Bullying in schools in general is the problem, anti-gay bullying is just easier for them since it’s culturally condoned. And it’s probably harder to tackle since the home life is that much more important in forming the underlying opinion.
It’s not the kids who dare to be different that have the problem – they’re making a stand and they know it will be tough. It’s the kids who don’t know how to be anything else… They aren’t making conscious decisions about this, and may not even be out to themselves. At best, you’re blaming the victim here when they already have enough to deal with.
@Gay and Proud:
Oh dear! Lesbians speaking for the community at large who are busily modelling healthy relationships and showing the world that the gays are normal too!
I personally think that Ellen is a positive speaker for the LGBTI community at large – certainly she’s raised our visibility significantly!
I’m usually unaffected by things in the news, but this whole thing with Tyler really bothers me. It’s disgusting what his roommate did to him. What I’ve been reading, it sounds as if his friends thought he was going to be ok and the suicide was sudden even to them. It breaks my heart and I feel so bad for his family.
I went to a high school where every day I was called gay or a faggot. Luckily I’m fairly masculine and enough people thought I was really straight. If I had been more flamboyant or didn’t have a deep voice I would completely understand why these kids end up killing themselves. It’s really hard and if their school is like mine was, they pretend gays don’t even exist. It was a nightmare growing up gay in my area.
I can honestly say that I would have killed myself if I hadn’t had the internet to meet people. I wasn’t even hooking up or anything, just TALKING to people helped me a lot. Reading about others in my situation and making some good friends that I’m still good friends with today. (I’m 23, I graduated high school in 2006)
I was fairly fortunate. I was never bullied or, so far as I know, talked about, in high school. There was a little homophobia at my high school, but unless you were one of the two guys it was directed it, it was almost non-existent. I just kept my head down and people thought I was weird, so I got a pass. But it’s sad that my experience counts as lucky.
Bullying occurs for those who are older too. Don’t believe it? Just look at some of the posts on this very board! Heck! Some days I think about ending it cause I don’t fit in. Be who we are? I try to be! But then I get trashed even by the gays! It doesn’t end at the high school level!
What makes all of this even more sadder is that HATRED seems 2 becoming more & more acceptable from right wing groups 2 politicians and that’s what really scares me . I hope that someday we will all realize that every person comes into this world the same way and every person has 2 leave it NOBODY WILL BE SPARED ! I know that what about 2 say only happens N fairy tales but just imagine what life would be like if the time spent between our birth & death did not have 2 be WASTED on such HATEFULL things . One can DREAM can’t we !
Even within our own gay community we perpetuate hate. Cut the chatter. How can we expect ignorant and obviously uneducated youths to behave in a respectful manner if we ourselves continue to separate into groups and shout hatred at each other. Bears, Twinks, Goth, Fem, Butch, Queen… there is not enough glitter and sequence in the world to cover up the fact that we ourselves as the LGBT community need to practice what we preach.
Oh for gods sake, who hasnt been bullied at some point, and its not just gay kids who get picked on. The 13 year old who killed himself is a awful story but the most important point is how in the hell did he get his hands on a gun? The bullying bothers you..the fact that a loaded gun was just laying around the house, dosen’t??? WTF
It absolutely is an epidemic. I attempted suicide at age 11 because I was bullied so much in school and just could not take it anymore. All the teachers and the principal knew what was going on and were powerless to stop it; they cannot have their eyes everywhere at every second of the day to prevent bullying from happening. More importantly, it is the fault of the bullies’ parents for raising their children to believe this type of behavior is acceptable. There is no parent in the world that cannot control a 7, 8, 19, 10, 11, 12, 13, year old child; it is just laziness if they choose not to.