Study Sadly Concludes Anti-Gay Bullying In Canadian Schools Common Occurrence

A study completed by gay rights advocacy group Egale Canada and researchers from the University of Winnipeg that surveyed 3,600 students found that nearly half of the respondents – both gay and straight – reported incidents of anti-gay bullying on a daily basis. The survey also concluded that bullying against students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, 14-percent of those students surveyed, said they do not feel safe or supported in their school environment, and 51-percent said they had been verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation. More than one-fifth of the GLBT respondents said that they had been physically bullied. Lead researcher Catherine Taylor tells the Winnipeg Free Press that students often felt victimised by the language used around them, the phrase “That’s so gay” (which 70-percent of all students reported hearing daily) does damage to a population that already feels marginalised. “How would you like a word that goes to the core of your being used a synonym for stupid every day at school? Because that’s what’s happening,” said Taylor. “We can think of this as a form of symbolic violence.” The study also found that the children of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender parents to be particularly prone to physical and/or verbal harassment, Taylor saying that 45-percent of those students received unwanted sexual attention from classmates, and that many of those students faced anti-gay bullying despite being straight. “A lot of students with LGBTQ parents don't disclose the status of their parents, and that means they don't get to be like all the other kids who get to talk about their parents, say how great they are or complain about how rotten they are," Taylor said. "None of that is open to them because they get the very clear message that `If you have queer parents, you're in trouble in school culture."