Recent Posts
- Are You Ready for Spirit Week 2024?!?! BY ISABELLA CAROLOW
- Extra Schoolwork During Advisory??? Perspectives from Students and Teachers on SAT Prep BY SAMUEL HIERS
- Embracing Perspective: Finding Beauty in the Ordinary and Extraordinary BY SAMANTHA MIGNANELLI
- The Taylor Swift “Thing” BY KEELY SULLIVAN
- CHS Renovations BY HAZEL DUROSS
Recent Comments
- Maureen Couture on Quality Education Comes in Many Forms BY Justin Curran
- Gwen Schumacher on Quality Education Comes in Many Forms BY Justin Curran
- chakal on How to Prepare for Final Exams BY Mrs. Murgida (from CHS Guidance)
- MAJ P. on The Healthy Benefits of Music that is Surely “Pop” for the Soul! BY Samuel Hiers
- MAJ P. on Planning for a Life in the U.S. Military BY Matthew Capwell
Archives
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- June 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- May 2021
- March 2021
- May 2020
- February 2020
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- December 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- May 2017
- March 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
Lack of inclusion for LGBTQ+ Youth By Sophia Smerkar
LGBTQ+ students are often denied a privilege to common sex education that many of their straight peers experience. This often enforces heteronormativity and homophobia in public schooling.
LGBTQ+ students are often denied a privilege to common sex education that many of their straight peers experience. This often enforces heteronormativity and homophobia in public schooling.
LGBTQ+ people have a dense history of being left out. Now it seems that things are getting better with overall acceptance, but that doesn’t mean the problem goes away. LGBTQ+ students are still immensely left out in public education. They have to sit through countless lectures about life and how to be safe, but much of it doesn’t apply to them.
Mat, who is 16 and from Pennsylvania, talked about sex ed and said “The [teacher] refused to recognize that [LGBTQ+ topics] would affect any of us, he automatically assumed most of us were heterosexual. We were told that we would only be covering heterosexual relationships, and that we wouldn’t and shouldn’t talk about LGBTQ+ at all because it doesn’t affect the majority if any”.
It’s evident that most of education, let alone sex education, is extremely heterocentric. Sure it’s easy to assume that all students are straight until you’re told otherwise, but that doesn’t reverse the harm done when a LGBTQ+ kid is excluded from such an important discussion.
Emma, who’s 14 and from Rhode Island, discussed her public school education and said, “By completely leaving out all LBGTQ+ topics, my school was constantly invalidating me and feeding into the mindset that LBGTQ+ is somehow wrong”.
According to The GLSEN 2013 National School Climate Survey, “fewer than five percent of LGBT students had health classes that included positive representations of LGBT-related topics”. And, according to the Human Rights Campaign, only 12 percent of Millennials said their sex education classes covered same-sex relationships. So many kids are missing out on a vital experience that their heterosexual peers are getting, and many schools do nothing to change that. According to HRC’s 2014 State Equality Index, “Only four states — California, Colorado, Iowa and Washington — and the District of Columbia have state laws or regulatory guidance requiring sex education provided to students to be specifically inclusive of LGBTQ youth. Only 12 states require that sexual orientation be discussed in sex education at all”. In fact, Rhode Island is actually one of the states that requires sexuality be discussed but doesn’t require that it be positive.
Sex ed programs can tend to focus solely on heterosexual related topics, like traditional sex, pregnancy prevention, and marriage. This leaves out most LGBTQ+ students, resulting in a huge gap of knowledge when it comes to sexual health. According to American Progress, a female senior in high school wrote, “Because my school’s health program ignores the gay students, I have been pretty clueless about safe sex. I had to find information on my own on the internet because non-straight students are ignored”. It is the same for many kids who don’t fit into the majority, who aren’t straight and cisgender. Cisgender means one associates with the same gender that they were assigned at birth.
Anna, a 14 year old teen from Wisconsin explained where she learned sex ed, saying “Mostly just through websites like Twitter or Instagram. I had to figure most of it out myself, though”.
LGBTQ+ kids have a higher chance of contracting an STD or STI or being in an abusive relationship, and it’s no wonder. They don’t receive the proper education to know how to properly prevent and handle certain situations.
Emma was asked how she would benefit from inclusive sex ed and said, “I would know more about sex and how to handle sex in the real world. I’d know a lot more about prevention, instead of just abstinence. I would have felt a lot more comfortable about LGBTQ+ issues if they were more openly discussed in schools”.
This lack of discussion doesn’t just deny them knowledge, but it instills an idea in kids that being anything other than straight and cisgender is somehow wrong and not to be talked about.
The GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey showed that LGBTQ+ students who received an abstinence-only sex education curriculum were less likely to feel safe at school, more likely to miss school because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable and less likely to feel comfortable talking about LGBTQ+ issues. LGBTQ+ kids already feel isolated and left out, and then are constantly excluded from common education. Why should classes, a safe place for growing and learning, add to the stress and isolation. They have enough surrounding the rest of their lives anyways, which is known as the minority stress effect.
The minority stress effect is the everyday stress of someone who belongs to a marginalized social group. The stress is caused by general prejudices that they encounter in everyday life. It is a huge reason that LGBTQ+ youth have reported lower self-esteem, higher substance abuse rates and have a higher chance of being depressed or having anxiety. They are four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts. Why would educators, the people who are supposed to teach and protect these kids, not want to lower these statistics? Why won’t they recognize that there is a clear problem that needs to be fixed?
This affects so many kids all across the country, since there’s hardly any laws regulating the sex education the kids of this nation are getting.
Libby, a 15 year old Coloradan, stressed the importance of sex education when she said, “I kind of had to Google or ask others when it came to queer sex and dating. I would have been able to know a lot more and would have been way more prepared in that aspect of my life. Also, with the rising number of openly LGBTQ+ youths, it could be useful to many”.
Notably, it’s clear that it’s just as prominent in Rhode Island as anywhere else, Emma from Exeter gave a glimpse of that. In fact, according to the Williams Institute Rhode Island has the 6th highest percentage of LGBTQ+ identifying citizens. Rhode Island is, more often than not, LGBTQ+ friendly and supportive. In fact they are on the way to banning conversion therapy all together in Rhode Island, which is a huge step. But, there needs to be more protection for the queer youth in this state, in all states.