Bullying and Homophobia in Schools

A response to “TV Bullies: How Glee and Anti-bullying Programs Miss the Mark“

 

I was actually very pleased with both articles from this week and felt like I really connected with and understood both of them. When I read that this week was going to focus on “Queering Education” I was really excited. In the article about Glee, I actually learned quite a bit especially about the distinction that needs to be made between homophobic bullying and sexual harassment, the business of anti-bullying products, and what we could be doing better.

I had never considered that bullying based on sexual diversity could be better described as an act of sexual harassment and how the failure to make this distinction leads to various consequences. Those who are the subject of such types of sexual harassment then feel as though what is happening to them is just an average case of bullying rather than a human rights violation. While bullying itself is not okay and needs to come to an end, this mislabeling of sexual harassment as bullying is also making the violence students are subject to go unnoticed in a certain way.  

I was also shocked to find out that anti-bullying has become a business on its own. Because there has been so much research done on the topic it has also grown into a huge marketplace where companies make hundreds of dollars by selling anti-bullying starter kits to schools. I think that this has contributed to the problem not only through the commodification of bullying but also by making it seem like an easy problem to solve. I can imagine that some schools believe that they will by this starter kit and do whatever it says and then their problem is solved and they never have to talk about bullying again. This pushes the actual solving even farther back by deluding those involved into believing that it no longer exists.

Included in the article were suggestions on what can be done, prevention strategies, and a bunch of resources that can be used as something educational for myself and also for the classroom as well. I very much enjoyed the fact that this article was not only critiquing the current state of the bullying dilemma that we sadly face in schools across the world but that it also provided us as future educators with enough to go those couple steps further. Just reading this article would have been great but the added ideas for solutions and resources really make it easy to imagine bring these solutions into the classroom.

One thing that I found problematic was not with the article itself but the situation that is surrounding the profit of bullying. We now understand that anti-bullying is not the only thing we should be focusing on but that we should look to educate students and school community members about the institutional backing that homophobia has. Now that we know where the problem is and how to move forward though, I am worried that this will bring about another opening for profit. Will companies/organizations begin making “How To Start A GSA In Your School” starter kits too?