Bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) people, particularly LGBTQ youth, involves intentional actions toward the victim, repeated negative actions by one or more people against another person, and an imbalance of physical or psychological power.
LGBTQ youth are more likely to report bullying than non-LGBTQ youth. The bullying can look like being harassed, physical violence, or verbal abuse. Youth a part of the LGBTQ community face bullying more than other youth especially when it comes to school settings. In one study, boys who were bullied with taunts of being gay suffered more bullying and more negative effects compared with boys who were bullied with other categories of taunting. Some researchers suggest including youth questioning their sexuality in any research on LGBTQ bullying because they may be as susceptible to its effects as LGBTQ students.
Victims of LGBTQ bullying may feel unsafe, resulting in depression and anxiety, including increased rates of suicide and attempted suicide. LGBTQ students may try to pass as heterosexual and/or cisgender to escape the bullying, leading to further stress and isolation from available supports. Support organizations exist in many countries to prevent LGBTQ bullying and support victims. Some jurisdictions have passed legislation against LGBTQ bullying and harassment.
Homophobic and transphobic violence in schools can be categorized as explicit and implicit. Explicit homophobic and transphobic violence consists of overt acts that make subjects feel uncomfortable, hurt, humiliated or intimidated. Educational staff are unlikely to intervene when witnessing these incidents. This contributes to normalizing such acts that become accepted as either a routine disciplinary measure or a means to resolve conflicts among students. Homophobic and transphobic violence â as with all school-related gender-based violence â is acutely underreported due to subjects' fear of retribution, combined with inadequate or non-existent reporting, support and redress systems. The absence of effective policies, protection or remedies contributes to a vicious cycle where incidents become increasingly normal. Reporting any evidence of bullying is often not an option for LGBTQ students which is why it is not reported as much. Reporting instances of bullying can make situations worse and cause youth to be scared of what might happen if they do report. If the school does not have clear bullying policies or offer support systems for students to seek out, then bullying and other forms of harassment will keep on happening.
Having positive school environments is crucial because it can help to improve mental health numbers in students who are LGTBQ. Research has found that bullying incidents have lowered when schools put in place safety guidelines and antibullying policies on campuses. In the Trevor Project, it shows that there were lower bullying numbers in schools by 28% because of the LGBTQ policies that were instated, which then also helped the suicide numbers to go down as well about 10% when looked at with schools who did not have these installed. Some factors that also played a big role in these numbers were the Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs), mental health services, and trained staff.
In the documentary from PBS called The Whistle, it recognizes the impact that safe school environments have on LGBTQ youth. In the film, we see how LGTBQ youth created a way of communicating with one another and identifying others who are a part of the LGBTQ community when they were experiencing harassment and bullying, that helped them to build safe spaces. This way of communication was a secret form of communication that helped them build a connection and community within one that did not include them in it. In addition, this documentary highlighted the role adults played in school settings. By having supportive and understanding adults, like teachers and other school staff, LGBTQ students could feel more supported.
Implicit homophobic and transphobic violence, sometimes called 'symbolic violence' or 'institutional' violence, is subtler than explicit violence. It consists of pervasive representations or attitudes that sometimes feel harmless or natural to the school community, but that allow or encourage homophobia and transphobia, including perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Policies and guidelines can reinforce or embed these representations or attitudes, whether in an individual institution or across an entire education sector. This way, they can become part of everyday practices and rules guiding school behaviour. Examples of implicit homophobic and transphobic violence include:
Egale Canada, along with previous research, has found teachers and school administration may be complicit in LGBT bullying through their silence and/or inaction.
Graffiti found on school grounds and property, and its "relative permanence", is another form of LGBT bullying.
American sociologist Michael Kimmel and American psychologist Gregory Herek write that masculinity is a renunciation of the feminine and that males shore up their sense of their masculinity by denigrating the feminine and ultimately the homosexual. Building on the notion of masculinity defining itself by what it is not, some researchers suggest that in fact the renunciation of the feminine may be misogyny. These intertwining issues were examined in 2007, when American sociologist CJ Pascoe described what she calls the "fag discourse" at an American high school in her book, Dude, You're a Fag.
Victims of LGBT bullying may feel chronically depressed, anxious, and unsafe in the world. Bullying will affect a student's experience of school. Some victims might feel paralyzed and withdraw socially as a coping mechanism. Others may begin to live the effects of learned helplessness.
Research has revealed that a child's mental health is seriously impacted by bullying for LGBTQ children. When this bullying occurs, it can have many effects that lead to anxiety, depression, and even thoughts of suicide. LGBTQ students who experience bullying are more at risk of these effects compared to students who are heterosexual or cisgender. According to the Trevor Project, about 39% of LGBTQ youth had suicidal thoughts and 46% of youth who identified as transgender or nonbinary had these thoughts.
LGBT and questioning youth who experience bullying have a higher incidence of substance abuse and sexually transmitted infections. LGBT bullying may also be seen as a manifestation of what American academic Ilan Meyer calls minority stress, which may affect sexual and ethno-racial minorities attempting to exist within a challenging broader society.
Gay and lesbian youth can develop severe forms of depression and anxiety as they grow up. Around 70% of LGBT people experience major depressive disorder (MDD) sometime in their lives. For LGBT individuals, MDD can be caused by any of the following: self-esteem, pressure to conform, minority stress, coming out, family rejection, parenting, relationship formation, and violence. A person can be harassed to the point where their depression becomes too much and they no longer experience any happiness. These factors all work together and make it extremely hard to avoid MDD.
The rate of suicide is higher among LGBT people:
LGBT or questioning students may try to pass as heterosexual in order to avoid LGBT bullying. Passing isolates the student from other LGBT or questioning students, potential allies, and support. Adults who try to pass also may feel the effects emotionally and psychologically, of this effort to conceal their true identities. In addition, research showed that LGBTQ adolescents are at higher risk of suicide when it comes to being in school settings that are negative or hostile. Whereas when the school setting is inclusive and supportive of their students, students are shown to have more positive mental health, which helps reduce the number of suicides within this age group.
For LGBTQ youth in school, bullying has a huge impact on their academic performance as well. If a student is being bullied, it can lead to them removing themselves from their peers and activities, struggling emotionally, as well as struggling with their mental health for a longer duration of time. When students begin to step back socially in school, to them it is a safe strategy for them in order to keep themselves safe and prevent anything from getting the chance to occur like bullying
Egale Canada conducted a survey of more than 3,700 high school students in Canada between December 2007 and June 2009. The final report of the survey, "Every Class in Every School", published in 2011, found that 70% of all students participating heard "that's so gay" daily at school, and 48% of respondents heard "faggot", "lezbo" and "dyke" daily. 58% or about 1,400 of the 2,400 heterosexual students participating in EGALE's survey found homophobic comments upsetting. Further, EGALE found that students not directly affected by homophobia, biphobia or transphobia were less aware of it. This finding relates to research done in the area of empathy gaps for social pain which suggests that those not directly experiencing social pain (in this case, bullying) consistently underestimate its effects and thus may not adequately respond to the needs of one experiencing social pain.
About two-thirds of gay and lesbian students in British schools have suffered from gay bullying in 2007, according to a study done by the Schools Education Unit for LGBT activist group Stonewall. Almost all that had been bullied had experienced verbal attacks, 41 percent had been physically attacked, and 17 percent had received death threats. It also showed that over 50% of teachers did not respond to homophobic language which they had explicitly heard in the classroom, and only 25% of schools had told their students that homophobic bullying was wrong, showing "a shocking picture of the extent of homophobic bullying undertaken by fellow pupils and, alarmingly, school staff", with further studies conducted by the same charity in 2012 stated that 90% of teachers had had no training on the prevention of homophobic bullying. However, Ofsted's new 2012 framework did ask schools what they would be doing in order to combat the issue.
A research study of 78 eleven to fourteen-year-old boys conducted in twelve schools in London, England between 1998 and 1999 revealed that respondents who used the word "gay" to label another boy in a derogatory manner intended the word as "just a joke", "just a cuss" and not as a statement of one's perceived sexual orientation.
A 1998 study in the US by Mental Health America found that students heard anti-gay slurs such as "homo", "faggot" and "sissy" about 26 times a day on average, or once every 14 minutes. In a study conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a union for UK professionals, the pejorative use of the word "gay" was reported to be the most popular term of abuse heard by teachers on a regular basis.
In 2000, the state of California enacted the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act (AB 537), a bill that prohibits harassment and discrimination on the basis of perceived or actual gender identity or sexual orientation.
The state of Illinois passed a law (SB3266) in June 2010 that prohibits gay bullying and other forms of bullying in schools.
In the Philippines, legislators implemented Republic Act No. 10627, otherwise known as the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013, in schools. According to the said law, gender-based bullying is defined as îany act that humiliates or excludes a person on the basis of perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)î.
When looking deeper into anti-bullying policies, there are not many policies that specifically tie into gender identity or sexuality. These policies should have more guidelines put into place that adhere to LGBTQ youth specifically as it can decrease suicide numbers and bullying rates. Anti-bullying rules and policies within schools have started to be put into place in many other regions. Those placements are important because it shows that LGBTQ youth are finally being highlighted and supported in school settings.