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.

It just had to happen: weblogs have become trendy enough that they have gotten their own critical review, deftly titled The Weblog Review. I’ve been monkeying around with my site lately and I think I’ll get some more new stuff done before I work up the courage to submit Geekery Today for review. But we’ll see.

Next time you are in a public restroom, be sure to take some of these fine stickers from the Guerilla Girls.

The Women’s Guerilla History Project is a fascinating-looking ongoing feminist guerilla media project in the San Fransisco Bay Area, focused on using posters for raising awareness of women’s achievements throughout history. Give it a look see. Found a chapter in your own hometown.

Yet another reason to hate DynCorp’s guts: the United States-based multinational mercenary contractor has now been working to cover up its officers role in international sex trafficking. DynCorp holds a contract to provide UN police forces for Bosnia-Hercegovina. When DynCorp hired Kathryn Bolkovac to combat sexual abuse and sex trafficking of women from Eastern Europe to NATO and UN outposts in Bosnia, legalized brothels in Western Europe, etc., she began finding evidence that DynCorp officers were involved in this sexual slave trade. When she brought this evidence to the attention of DynCorp and the UN, DynCorp fired her. And, surprise surprise, it turns out that there was a prior suit filed by an air mechanic who says he was fired after he uncovered evidence of DynCorp’s officers being involved in trafficking in women and gun-running.

The thing about mercenary corporations like DynCorp is that they are pretty much totally unaccountable to anybody, since they are not directly affiliated with any national government. This is why the Feds love sending them in to situations like Colombia, because even though the troops are American and paid for by US tax money and almost always discharged US armed forces troops, when horrendous human rights violations come up or they are killed in firefights the government can still say that no American servicepeople are getting involved in Colombia’s Civil War. This is the same outsourcing strategy that companies like Nike use to artificially distance themselves from the brutal practices of the sweatshop bosses they contract with.

And this is holding true in the sex trafficking case as well: despite clear participation of US and British troops in the sexual enslavement and slave trade in women’s bodies, DynCorp is moving to cover up, and nobody from DynCorp has ever been prosecuted for these crimes. Even though the suit is exposing DynCorp, you can be sure that the governments of the US and UK, or the UN administration in Bosnia, will catch no serious flak for it. But this kind of government involvement is now the rule rather than the exception: organized traffickers and pimps in the Russian mafia and other criminal organizations have either bought off the government or become the government in many of the primary sources for trafficking such as the Ukraine, Russia, and Southeast Asia. Official complicity with traffickers is nothing new; this UN case is merely exposing it at new levels.