Katie Babs' "It Gets Better" Project
Courtesy of emmyjag, I found out about Katie Babs/KB, who is doing something about the recent rash of teen suicides due to bullying and cyberbullying. She's made a post about them and has pledged that for every comment she gets, up to five hundred, she'll donate a dollar to an organization dedicated to helping kids.
500 comments = $500.00.
To quote her:
$250 will go to The Trevor Project, "the leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth."
$250 will go to the Matthew Shepard Foundation, [which] was founded by Dennis and Judy Shepard in memory of their 21-year old son, Matthew, who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998. Their mission is to "educate and enlighten others on the importance of diversity, understanding, compassion, acceptance and respect."
I commented in support, and I hope that the rest of you will do so as well.
However, I'd like to add a couple of things:
Daily Kos asks: Where, in the media stories about these heartbreakingly young boys who've killed themselves, are the accounts of lesbian girls and transsexual teens who've done the same?
Personally, I suspect there are a lot of deaths that we're simply not hearing about because the parents were unaware of bullying or because the teachers and administrations of various schools refused to admit that it existed. (That, sadly, has been my experience--that administrations of schools are staffed by cowards who will not admit when bullying is going on and who will do everything in their power to blame the victim.)
Also, I suspect that the suffering of a lot of kids isn't being given publicity by the American media--which has been conservative since Reagan was president--because the victims are either girls or "too different." Do you remember hearing anything about Tesia Samara's death a couple of years back? A trans teen, driven to suicide. Yeah. The media didn't publicize that, did they?
And we also have to remember--it's not just the LGBT kids. Bullying is an epidemic. It is hitting kids across the board--kids of minority race, kids of currently unpopular religions or national origins, kids with disabilities, kids who are bright. I endured bullying due to the last three reasons: I wasn't Irish and had an English surname--both hideous offenses in the high school which I attended--I was disabled and I was an intelligent girl. The last two were unacceptable in any school which I attended.
Think about what this means in kid terms. If you are a kid in high school who has been bullied since first grade and you are finally getting out and going to college, hoping that this is the end of the bullying...
...you've served twelve years of hard time.
There are murderers who don't serve prison sentences that long.
I'm not really surprised that kids figure that death is better because then the pain will stop. I can't imagine how many kids don't die physically but who are so damaged that they never become the people they were intended to be.
Sadly, the current social climate emphasizes bullying. It's not just the kids. The kids are imitating what they're seeing--the Phelpsians who attack schoolchildren and who emotionally torture grieving people at funerals, and the Teabaggers who spread lies with impunity because they know that people will believe them and that the media won't contradict them. The religious zealots who drum up mad support for burning another religion's holy book because they are convinced that the book in question is an instruction manual for terrorism.
Fear, ignorance and hatred of all things nonconformist has reached lethal proportions.
It has to stop.
Let's do something about it. Start with the comments to Katie. Help her reach her goal of 500. And then tell me--what do you think we can do to help?
500 comments = $500.00.
To quote her:
$250 will go to The Trevor Project, "the leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth."
$250 will go to the Matthew Shepard Foundation, [which] was founded by Dennis and Judy Shepard in memory of their 21-year old son, Matthew, who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998. Their mission is to "educate and enlighten others on the importance of diversity, understanding, compassion, acceptance and respect."
I commented in support, and I hope that the rest of you will do so as well.
However, I'd like to add a couple of things:
Daily Kos asks: Where, in the media stories about these heartbreakingly young boys who've killed themselves, are the accounts of lesbian girls and transsexual teens who've done the same?
Personally, I suspect there are a lot of deaths that we're simply not hearing about because the parents were unaware of bullying or because the teachers and administrations of various schools refused to admit that it existed. (That, sadly, has been my experience--that administrations of schools are staffed by cowards who will not admit when bullying is going on and who will do everything in their power to blame the victim.)
Also, I suspect that the suffering of a lot of kids isn't being given publicity by the American media--which has been conservative since Reagan was president--because the victims are either girls or "too different." Do you remember hearing anything about Tesia Samara's death a couple of years back? A trans teen, driven to suicide. Yeah. The media didn't publicize that, did they?
And we also have to remember--it's not just the LGBT kids. Bullying is an epidemic. It is hitting kids across the board--kids of minority race, kids of currently unpopular religions or national origins, kids with disabilities, kids who are bright. I endured bullying due to the last three reasons: I wasn't Irish and had an English surname--both hideous offenses in the high school which I attended--I was disabled and I was an intelligent girl. The last two were unacceptable in any school which I attended.
Think about what this means in kid terms. If you are a kid in high school who has been bullied since first grade and you are finally getting out and going to college, hoping that this is the end of the bullying...
...you've served twelve years of hard time.
There are murderers who don't serve prison sentences that long.
I'm not really surprised that kids figure that death is better because then the pain will stop. I can't imagine how many kids don't die physically but who are so damaged that they never become the people they were intended to be.
Sadly, the current social climate emphasizes bullying. It's not just the kids. The kids are imitating what they're seeing--the Phelpsians who attack schoolchildren and who emotionally torture grieving people at funerals, and the Teabaggers who spread lies with impunity because they know that people will believe them and that the media won't contradict them. The religious zealots who drum up mad support for burning another religion's holy book because they are convinced that the book in question is an instruction manual for terrorism.
Fear, ignorance and hatred of all things nonconformist has reached lethal proportions.
It has to stop.
Let's do something about it. Start with the comments to Katie. Help her reach her goal of 500. And then tell me--what do you think we can do to help?