For the in a stunning development file: a report from Human Rights Watch has found that harassment, violence, and bullying of gay adolescents in U.S. schools prevents millions of LGBT teenagers from receiving an adequate education. Many of the teens interviewed spend a significant amount of time just trying to figure out how to get to and from school without being harassed or assaulted; many others cut gym class to avoid being beaten up. When trying to get help from teachers or administrators they often were met with indifference or hostility; some even reported that faculty or administrators participated in the abuse.

This is not at all surprising, but it is atrocious. Not only are the direct effects of the abuse horrible, but it also leads to self-loathing and depression, which (among other things) impairs LGBT teens’ ability to learn, and leads to horrendous suicide rates amongst gay youth. Of the LGBT adolescents interviewed, about 36.1% had attempted suicide, versus 9.4% of str8 teens. Yet we know that we can easily reverse this: schools with gay-sensitive HIV training saw the rate of suicide attempts by LGBT students drop to 27.7% – still atrociously high, but a lot better. Schools where students organize Gay/Straight Alliances, where sex ed acknowledges queer sexualities and combats myths about them, and generally where queer youth and supporters of queer youth are visible and welcomed, can drastically change the horrendous environment that gay students go through today. Tragically, this kind of basic support is rarely seen, because school administrators and faculty are likely to be apathetic or hostile, and if they are supportive then they are likely to be bombarded by the Religious Right, which instantly sails in with its bullshit about the Gay Agenda and its neferious recruiting.

For further reading: GT 4/09/2001 anti-queer violence in Pennsylvania, GT 5/5/2001 the Religious Right’s attacks on gay students’ safety

Take Action! You can take action in support of LGBT youth right now at Human Rights Watch’s What You Can Do page and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network Action Center. For more on-the-ground organizing, Youth Resource and GLSEN provide information, resources, and support for organizing gay-supportive youth groups.

Sometimes things come together. Yesterday I read an excellent article on the blatant misogyny of much of the rhetoric about computers and the attitudes of men in cyberspace [Brillo], which equates computers and the Internet as feminine objects to be sexually used and controlled by men, and in which men use the technology as a high-tech way of harrassing anyone who identifies as female (particularly in chat rooms and by e-mail). And today I just read an article in the New York Times on a growing number of recent cases in which high school boys are using web sites to slag young women with sexual gossip, cruel personal details, and more. At one site set up by private school students in Manhattan, students voted on which of their classmates was the most promiscuous–and out of 150 names voted on, young women outnumbered boys 3 to 1. At another, a huge list of young women’s names, phone numbers, and comments on their looks, rumored sexual preferences, embarassing personal information, eating habits, and even their parents’ marital problems. The latter was so bad that the students were arrested on charges of aggravated harrassment. (Gruff sidebar: if the information posted on this website constitutes aggravated harassment–and I agree that it does–then why in God’s name is the Nuremberg Files counted as protected speech when it not only posts all kinds of personal information but also carries an overt threat of violence?)

I talk a lot about how great the Internet is for building new, democratic spaces, and I still believe that’s true. But, we’ve got to be aware that it also enables a lot of bullshit. I’ve talked to a lot of friends of mine who use nicks on IRC that identify as female, and they have gotten all kinds of unsolicited, harassing private messages over IRC, sexually harassing e-mails from strangers visiting to their web pages, etc., simply because they are female. As an experiment, I tried joining a large general chat channel (Dalnet #chatzone) with a female-identifying nick (AndreaGrl) and logged the private messages that I got. After 15 minutes, with no more prompting than having said hi on the public channel, I had received unsolicited messages from 38 different people, 18 of which were spammers sending porn site and sex channel ads that to everyone on the channel, but a full 20 of which were individual boys who all assumed that just because I was identifying as female, I wanted to give all kinds of personal details and help them jack off online.

One earnest young fellow decided to give the perfect summary of the Internet catcaller’s mentality:

^Mr-Sexybullet^^!who@user5533.vip-za.com: hi wanna cyber

AndreaGrl: right, i’m a female so i have nothing better to do with my time than have cybersex with every random, anonymous jackoff who msgs me.

^Mr-Sexybullet^^!who@user5533.vip-za.com: thats true

The Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition has come out in opposition to a proposed anti-bullying policy because it might–gasp–protect gay teenagers or children from being viciously harassed by classmates. God forbid. [Advocate.com]

Speaking of open and democratic schools, TECHNOS features an interview with Daniel Greenberg about his experiment in democratic schooling, the Sudbury Valley School, which is still running successfully after 33 years. All school governance is democratic (on the New England Town Meeting model), there aren’t any fixed curricula or pre-set courses (though students arrange for courses of study with instructors and do their own self-initiated independent study), and the only requirement for graduation is to adequately–in the judgment of the school community–defend in writing the thesis that they have taken responsibility for preparing themselves to be effective adults in the larger community.

I would like to see a couple more things before I really judge (simply judging from an interview of a school founder is not always the best way to go). Specifically, I’d like to see some experiences (and not just advertising brochure testimonials, but real experiences) from students. I’d also like to see some more comments about how these voluntary courses do end up being set up. Is it all one-on-one study, or do students usually get together and form study groups around a common list of reading (which I think is really beneficial for a lot of subjects, particularly in the humanities), or what? But on the face of it, it really sounds like an amazing opportunity for kids to learn in exactly kind of the environment that I was talking about–one which is open, democratic, respectful, and conducive to imaginative, critical, self-directed learning.

The sheer mass of letters in response to Camille Paglia’s Welcome to my world is hard to believe (13 pages worth of them), but even more amazing is their single-mindedness: nearly all the letters are on her shredding of the modern high school environment, and every single one of them, save one, emphatically agrees with some part of her comments. This came from everyone from disaffected shop teachers and craftspeople, to religious homeschoolers, to Lies My Teacher Told Me readers, to people advocating the destruction of standardized curricula. Now, most of the comments ranged from off-target to painfully reactionary, but I think this should really indicate something: high schools really suck. Nearly every single letter had the same theme of alienation, boredom, and stifling while in high school–whether from post-grad degree holders or dropouts.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot that’s good about high schools today. I had a great high school experience. I wouldn’t mind teaching at one of them myself. But there is a lot that is actively cutting against that good. And most of it has to do with the petty authoritarian structure of high schools. Students are forced into class, they sit and fill out forms, bells ring, and like good little rats they find their way through the maze to the next classroom. Guidance counselors track them into the course line-up that most befits their socio-economic background, goon squads of idle administrators patrol the hallways lest anyone consider spending their time outside of approved venues. Since I left my old high school, they’ve begun requiring student ID cards and greatly tightened up a once nearly unenforced closed campus policy.

The best parts of my high school career were the times when I was really free from this kind of micromanagement. My senior year I had a Early Release car tag that was supposed to only cover the last period of the day, but was effectively permission to leave campus whenever I pleased. Lax enforcement of attendence and tardy policies for seniors made it even better. I stuck with all my classes and learned a lot–and I really enjoyed it, because I was finally being treated like a responsible human being capable of making my own choices. I really look askance at the administrative response to school violence, which has been to tighten up and lock down their little bureaucratic fiefdoms as much as possible for the sake of security. That locking-down means even more locking-down of imagination, critical thinking, even more conversion of vital young girls and boys into boring docile bodies filling out forms. It’s taking what should be an academic community and turning it into a prison.