Recently there has been a surge in suicides by youths as a result of being bullied for being gay, or for the appearance of being gay. This is both heart breaking, tragic, unnecessary and something that is very preventable, making these deaths even more senseless.

Bullying, regardless of what kind it is, who it targets, and who is committing it, is something plaguing the education system, and a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of children who are, for the most part, defenseless against this type of pupil-persecution.

In my five years as an educator in the primary levels, I have tried to do my best to disarm bullies, empower victims, and highlight that there is a problem in our schools. While I could write a ‘doomsday piece’, hoping to scare parents, fellow teachers, and policy-makers into action, I would rather try to keep this positive, pointing out the advancement being made by senior educators to eliminate this plight on the very children we cherish.

Since beginning in Korea, working at public elementary schools, often when I asked teachers here about this very problem, they would confidently respond, “bullying doesn’t happen here, it doesn’t happen in my school”, but that is as wrong as it is - ignorant!

It appears that some of those that I asked are blissfully unaware that there students outside the classroom, on the that there students outside the classroom, on the playground, at home, on the streets, after hours are being threatened, ridiculed, and selectively targeted, isolated, and harassed.

With the increase of media coverage, better training, a general awareness, and a keen eye, teachers around me are becoming aware and acknowledging that their is a problem.

While I was teaching at Gyeongin National University of Education (a teachers’ college in South Korea) in the Foreign Language Department, I would make it a mandatory requirement for all of my second-year students to go through a bullying lecture and workshop. While it was only threehours long, once a semester, it focused their attention for that brief time, and seemed to improve their general awareness on the problem at hand. I tried to show my future educators the psyche of a bully, the character traits a bully looks for in a potential victim, the damage it causes, how to deal with both the bully and victim, and we even acted out role-plays.

I have no way of knowing how this will effect these young minds in their role as a teacher, but I favor that it will add to their understanding and they now have tools to treat the problem when they have a class of their own. Now, the second part of this story, the victims being targeted for either being gay or the appearance of being gay is what I would like to talk about next.

When I was young, not that long ago I might add, it was common place to throw around the word “gay” as pejorative, “man you’re so gay!”, etc. And certainly, that was a serious indictment at the time. There was a level of societal-ostracism if you were found to be indeed gay. Oh, but how the times have changed. While it is obvious that being homosexual is still in the minority, some countries have made great strides to ensure, being gay or not, everyone has the same rights to everything (including marriage, hello America, wake up!).

These young adults, children really, who have killed themselves for being labelled “gay” have really shown the world how, while on some levels we have advanced, their is still a stigma to being ‘gay’.

I would like to tell the world, there isn’t! I would like to tell the victims, alive out there, gay children still holding their feelings within, bullies, parents, politicians, everyone that it isn’t “gay” to be gay.

I don’t think that being gay gives me any more rights than a anyone else. Just like the fact that being a straight white Christian married man entitles me to have rights over others that are not like me, by choice or otherwise. I don’t think being gay gives me the right to walk around in barely-there underwear on main street downtown. Just like being straight doesn’t give that same entitlement to them.

Being gay is a good or bad thing. It’s just a ‘thing’ for lack of a better word. Children need not to be afraid of this. Bullies need to be stopped. And people need to start loving more than being cruel.

Society, as a whole, is just as much to be blamed for these recent deaths as those bullies who uttered those vile insults. And I would like to make it clear that calling someone “gay”, a “faggot”, or “queer” is both vile and abusive, not because gay is a evil, a sin, or immoral, but because of the intended harm it was meant to project and inflict. A context all provided by the parents of the bullies, and society in general.Let’s create a society where everyone is equally valued, where children aren’t dying needlessly, and where I can be gay, and you can be my  best (straight) friend!

By Sabrina Constance Hill — Seoul, South Korea, November 01st, 2010