Coming out in Middle School

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Coming out in Middle School

by: williamyouthresource

Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 11:37:00 AM EDT

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So I was checking my twitter this morning and I stumbled across an amazing link to a video of Joy Behar talking to Christian Siriano and young people about being gay. It s a 7 minute clip talking about coming out and other things that effect us. I was SHOCKED and I mean SHOCKED by the courage and pride these young kids had. There was one boy who came out at the age of 11!!! I mean I'm 23 and I can not even imagine coming out at 11 years of age, and for that I give him A LOT of respect and positive energy.

In the video Joy mentioned a stat from GLSEN that stated 91% of GLBT middle school students reported that they faced harassment based on their sexual orientation and that 39% of GLBT middle school students were physcially assaulted which is nearly twice as many as GLBT students in highschool at 20%. Why is it so much harder to come out in middle school? Would you ever come out in middle school? Do you think you would have the support coming out so young? These are some questions that I was thinking about. Also how do we effectively facilitate conversations on the middle school level about acceptance?

Also, the students talking shared some of their personal stories about coming out to family and to friends in middle school. Over all I think it was a nice video and hope you all enjoy it!!!

Cheers!!!

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This is why the arguments of "If gay people can marry, then gay marriage will be taught in schools" is so frustrating. The reality is that gay kids are in schools and straight kids with gay parents are in schools, and the longer we ignore that reality, the more kids are going to suffer.

# Posted By AFY_Samantha | 10/8/09 03:30 PM | Reply

I agree with you mahayana, something has to be done to address this issue. I cant imagine what these young people are going through at their age. The future is in our hands, we need to do something, say something and achieve something.

# Posted By kiki | 10/9/09 12:14 PM | Reply

This news is really fantastic. I'm really happy that things seem to be getting better and better for queer youth. When I was in middle school back in the early part of this decade, you would have been teased mercilessly for merely being a straight ally, much more so if actually gay/lesbian/bisexual. (Granted, my school was slightly conservative and had a lot of fundamentalist-Christian students that kind of set the tone for the school environment, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some places; we had a fair amount of religious diversity, even if the Christians ruled the roost.) A few years later, when my sister was there, things had improved a little, in that her anime club was able to watch some of the tamer shonen-ai shows, but they still would never have been able to establish a GSA or anything. In fact, having a GSA in high school at the time was still fairly controversial. Now, the fact that students are coming out and even starting GSAs at the middle school level makes me really happy - especially when you consider how cruel middle school kids can be to each other over pretty much anything. This makes me feel like realy progress is being made in the fight for gay rights and acceptance of different sexual orientations.

# Posted By valkyrie | 10/12/09 06:39 PM | Reply

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