Stop bullying: it’s not brain surgery, people

In yesterday’s New York Times, Erik Eckholm shed some important light on a community in Wisconsin struggling with bullying and homosexuality.  Here’s the article.  The Anoka-Hennepin School District has faced eight student deaths attributed to suicides over the past two years, and it’s believed that four of those students who killed themselves were struggling with issues of sexual identity.  District policy states that teachers must remain neutral on issues of sexual orientation, which means that teachers cannot discuss or mention sexual orientation in any way.  Many teachers and administrators contest that this is preventing them from stopping the bullying in their classrooms and schools.

The district’s neutrality policy ties the hands of the teachers, people who spend more time with young people than a parent actually does, at least on a typical school day.  Last fall when a rash of student suicides gained national attention, I thought about the responsibility that a teacher in a classroom has to prevent students from being bullied or feeling unsafe because of anything other than the learning that needs to happen.  This school district, which sits mostly in Michele Bachmann’s congressional district, has silenced the leaders and the facilitators; therefore, there’s no way to model acceptable, humane behavior around difference as it pertains to sexual identity and gender expression.

As a middle school and high school student, I can honestly say that I did not really understand my sexuality, but many boys around me certainly thought I was different and used words like “gay,” “fag,” and “homo” to describe me.  One guy in particular, who I think is a minister now (lovely), used to constantly ask me if I believed in gay rights.  I would say I did because I was trying to be accepting of others, and then that just made things worse for me.  I was naive and pretty stupid when it came to protecting myself.  I had been taught not to fight, and I was terrified of getting into trouble at school.  The “derogatory” words and the questions were painful and difficult to get out from under.  When I tried to talk to people about this, I was most often told to just “let the comments roll off my back.  Be the bigger person.  They’re just jealous.”  These pieces of passive advice did not help me in the least, and ultimately just magnified how badly I felt about myself.  I know that the people offering these pieces of advice meant well.  I also now recognize that I must have been a confusing young adult to offer counsel to.

Thankfully, I had a couple of teachers who would help me and tell me that these guys who were giving me a problem were jerks.  Side note: the irony of so much of this is that now some of these guys want to be friends with me on Facebook.  I wonder if they actually think that I forget the names that they used to call me.  Or if they even remember using those words to describe me.  Double the irony when I see that that they now have kids of their own.  I wonder if their kids are being bullied or are bullies.   But I digress.  The point here is that I had a COUPLE of teachers who helped me.  In large part, these teachers were female.  The male teachers, particularly where the harassment was the worst, like gym class, were unhelpful, and I felt sometimes were even contributing to the bullying.  And this didn’t stop with teachers.  I played on a local soccer team for a number of years, and the verbal harassment was often the worst at those practices, where a coach was someone’s parent and did nothing to stop the verbal bullying.  I remember one moment in particular.  I was in the 7th grade, and we were having a team scrimmage.  I played right wing on that team.  I was dribbling the ball, and across the field, the left winger yelled something like, “Pass, the ball, Fag!”  Nothing happened to that left winger, but I rode my bike home that evening feeling pretty awful and wondering why this guy would call me this name.  And also wondering why no one did anything to come to my defense, especially the coach.

Here’s another example.  In the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I was selected to attend New Jersey Boys State.  This was supposed to be some great honor, sponsored by the state VFW.  Boys in my class were interviewed and then we were selected as delegates by the local VFW.  We had to go to Rider College and spend a week electing two houses of a state congress and a Boys State governor.  We all had to wear the same clothes, literally march back and forth to meals, and live in hot, stuffy, dorm rooms with an assigned roommate.  I became the Election Board Official for my dorm city, and the VFW mentor, Norman, tried to get me to participate beyond counting votes.  I couldn’t quite get myself to participate fully in the shirtless pissing matches that were going on in the dorm common room, so I stayed in my room and read To Kill a Mockingbird.  So gay…

One evening, the various dorm cities came together for a primary vote, and the Election Board Officials had to count the votes by a show of hands.  We were in this lecture hall, and I was standing in the aisle, and these boys were trying to give me false numbers, as a way to throw the vote.  They kept calling me “fag” and “homo” and trying to intimidate me so I would report different numbers than the counts indicated.  There were adults around, but no one did anything to stop the name calling.  In retrospect, I find it ironic that a state program meant to teach civic responsibility would allow this kind of blatant harassment of another student.

These are just a couple of examples where I think that adults failed to help a young person who was being verbally bullied by his peers.  And I wasn’t even identifying as gay at those points in my life.  But for some reason, we have allowed these words and this kind of harassment to continue and to be “ok.”  I know from people who live in my hometown that bullying still exists and that adults still aren’t doing anything about it.  And for me, this spells trouble.  Why are teachers, school administrators, coaches, Sunday School teachers, and anyone else working with young people not held accountable for protecting a young person’s right to dignity?

Regardless of what Michele Bachmann and her posse have to say about homosexuality, I’ve got news for all of them.  Gay people are not going away any time soon.  Even if they believe that gayness is some kind of genetic mutation, we’ve got generations to go before that mutation works itself out of the gene pool.  It’s like having an appendix, people.  Accept that it’s around, and stop worrying about what’s for.  Homosexual behavior will not disappear as long as sexual desire exists, and gay identity is creeping closer and closer to the center of our culture.  If you stop and think how many “gay” things everyday people do now, you’ll realize that what I say is true.  I have four letters to say: “YMCA.”  This song happens at every hetero wedding I’ve ever been to, yet it’s SUPER GAY.  Heterosexuals LOVE to appropriate gayness, and I LOVE it.

So, I didn’t tell my tales of bullying woe to get any sympathy.  I don’t need anyone’s sympathy.  I’m happier than I’ve ever been, presumably gayer than I’ve ever been by some people’s standards, and my life is pretty great.  However, I shared those moments to illustrate that ADULTS need to step up here.  ADULTS could do a lot of good work around stopping young people from bullying each other.  ADULTS, regardless of what religious beliefs they have, could encourage young people to stop judging and pouncing on difference.  When an adult is in a position of power or authority over a gr0up of young people, s/he needs to model the acceptance of difference.  If we really live in the United States and believe in all the hoo hah of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then ADULTS better start to model that, and remind young people that the LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL at the end of the Pledge of Allegiance includes the DIFFERENT kids in the classroom.

This community in Wisconsin is just the beginning.  Michele Bachmann better get her act together and stop wiping about this.  And Barack Obama too.  And all the rest of these so-called leaders.  Basic human rights, people.  Basic human rights.  It’s not brain surgery.  And the toilet paper rolls are empty.

The silver lining of a tragedy

The days leading up to the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy have been filled with stories of loss and focused on the negative effects of that day.  Granted, the world as a whole changed drastically, and countless individuals’ worlds changed to something beyond their recognition.  I woke up this morning, just ahead of the time that the first plane hit the North Tower back in 2001, and I noted that moment.  I started my day thinking that I might succeed in avoiding some of the media coverage, but before long, I found myself in front of the television, watching and listening to people read the names of loved ones lost.  I made it through about 30 names or so, and then changed the channel.  It was too much, and I felt a bit like I was choking.

The History Channel was showing a documentary containing footage from a variety of different sources, and as I watched, I recognized some local news people who were shoving cameras and microphones in people’s faces to get comments as the disaster unfolded.  I found myself wondering what these guys must be thinking when they’re in these moments.  What drives them to pursue news like this when they’re so close to being in harm’s way?

As the day continued, I knew that I wanted to write something for my blog, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I wanted to say.  I’ve told my story about where I was so many times (teaching then working), and that I didn’t live or work (in Brooklyn) close to the Towers (in Manhattan).  For a few years after the event, whenever I met someone new outside of New York City, one of the “getting to know me” questions was typically about 9-11.  I think the mythology around the disaster grew much faster and quicker outside of New York City.   People living in the five boroughs and in the immediate suburbs dealt with the ramifications on a daily basis, whereas people outside of the greater metropolitan area for the most part watched and listened to accounts of what was happening.  These people had to fill in blanks for themselves, and I think that might have contributed to a national mythology around the disasters in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  And please don’t think that I mean “mythology” in a negative way.  I mean it in the way that we create stories to explain events that we don’t entirely understand, in the same way that the Greeks created stories to explain natural events that they couldn’t understand, like the rising and setting of the sun or the changing of the seasons.

My day yielded very little inspiration.  I have nothing terribly profound to say about 9-11 itself.  I was lucky to be away from the site of the disaster, and I am happy to say that I did not know anyone directly who died in the building collapses.  However, today I did begin to feel a sense of gratitude for the experience of living in New York City when this event happened.  I realized last week, in a conversation with my boyfriend, that had I not moved here in June 1999 and waited, I might have never made it.  I’m not sure that I’d have had the guts to move here after such a horrific event.  I barely made it here to begin with, and an attack of this scale and scope would certainly have not made me any more eager to become a New Yorker.

But what I’ve come to recognize today is that the events surrounding 9-11 actually galvanized my will to be a New Yorker, and in many ways taught me what a great city I’d chosen to make my home.  There are days when I wonder how many more years I can take the hustle and bustle, and then other days when I’m pretty sure that this will be my home until I don’t need one anymore.  And moving through 9-11 as a resident of the city prepared me for my own personal challenges that would follow not so many years later.  I somehow absorbed the lessons of survival and perseverance that so many people exhibited during the days and weeks after 9-11, and I’m grateful that I was able to bear witness to all of it.

When my first partner Craig became ill with colon cancer in October 2002, and as I watched him fight that illness for four years, I tried to tell myself that there had to be a lesson embedded in all of it.  Somewhere.  Lessons presented themselves, even after Craig’s death, and my experiences of his illness and then losing him are tragic ones that I cherish, even though they were some of the most harrowing of my life.  I think I looked for the lessons as I moved through those experiences with Craig because 9-11 taught me that there are lessons.  It’s just that sometimes the lessons that we need to learn don’t always feel so good as we’re learning them.

Like millions of people around the world, I mourn the loss of life from 9-11, and I also mourn the loss of a world that seemed to be a little less heavy and burdened on September 10, 2001.  But at the same time, I find myself thankful for the experiences of 9-11 and beyond, because I know that the adversity of those moments in my life have made me believe in the power of the human spirit and its ability to survive.  That’s the silver lining in the tragedy.

Hurricane Irene Post #2–This is how it went down

Ah, there’s nothing like a little Category 1 hurricane to make life interesting.  Apparently all of these New Yorkers are now bellyaching about how Irene didn’t give them enough of an ass whooping, but I had my fill.  And my fill was tame compared to what others on the East Coast had to deal with.  Not to mention that members of my family faced threats of tornadoes, power outages, fallen trees, etc.  Irene was no Katrina, but some of my fellow New Yorkers need a bit of an attitude check.

As Irene arrived on Saturday evening, I spent some time with some colleagues, and after they left around midnight, I proceeded to fall asleep on my couch until 3:00am.  I woke up, news coverage blaring, heavy rain falling, and wind blowing.  I also suddenly got a text from my boyfriend telling me that four of his windows had blown open, and one of them had to be nailed shut to keep it closed.  I quickly felt around my apartment, checking the areas that tend to get damp in a heavy rain, and everything was fine.  Buster and Dusty and I headed to bed, and I set the alarm for 7:00am.

When the alarm went off a few hours later, I groggily hit the snooze button and turned over.  I could hear the rain hitting the window, but the sound was pretty typical for a rain storm.  As I turned back over, I realized that I also heard a dripping sound that was not the large bubbling fountain that I have for the cats.  “Here we go,” I thought, as I jumped out of bed.  I had moved a hutch and placed a garbage pail underneath the place that has leaked three times in past heavy rains.  But that’s in my dining room.  It only took four steps before I was stepping on sopping wet carpet just outside of my bedroom door.  Water was seeping in where the floor met the wall, and the carpet was soaked.  Now mind you, I’m on the sixth floor of a fourteen story tower, so this is an interesting way to get leaks.

I moved out into the apartment to find a bubble in my dining room ceiling, dripping water steadily into the garbage pail.  The carpet was wet in that room as well, even though I was catching the water falling from the ceiling.  Again, more seepage from the walls.  Still raining heavily.  I moved to the parts of the living room that have historically had leaks, and those areas were wet as well.  I called the Public Safety officer in my building and an engineer responded in minutes.  By 7:30am he and another facilities person were sucking up water with a massive wet vacuum.  After the carpet was less sopping, we agreed that they would return around 12:30pm to do more water clean up.  It was still raining, and we knew that there would be more leaking.

We didn’t make it to 12:30pm.  By about 9:30am or so, puddles were forming in two places on my carpet.  I called for assistance, and more people came up to assess.  They decided to check the apartment above me, only to find that it was flooded with two inches of water on the floor.  They speculate the gasket around the window failed.  Hence, the water in certain parts of my apartment.  That’s the theory anyway.  So they left to suck up that water first to try to stop the leaking in the apartment. An hour or so later, my bathroom wall and ceiling developed a ripple and a bubble respectively, and there was water all over the floor.  Somehow, a fifth leak had erupted in this area.  And I realized that my air conditioner had shut down.  I notified the facilities people, and about 30 minutes later, seven people descended on the apartment and started the clean up effort.  It was just in time, as Buster and Dusty were about to put their kitty swimmies on.  And the air conditioner was fixed a couple of hours later.  The people who came to help me today were great.  I’m very lucky and very grateful.  Having said that, I would like to know why my apartment has flooded so many times in the six years I’ve lived here, but maybe that’s another blog post.

It’s 11:00pm on Sunday evening.  I have three large dehumidifiers and a large industrial fan running, all trying to get the moisture out of the carpet.  It’s starting to smell like mold, which is a delightful smell to go to sleep with.

Overall, I’m lucky.  None of my personal belongings were damaged.  I never lost power.  I’m safe.  My boyfriend is safe.  My cats are safe.  And my family members are safe, even though they had their own floods and tornado warnings and power losses.  We’re all lucky.  Irene was an experience, but more an experience of inconvenience than one of devastation.  There were moments today when I probably acted like my ceiling was caving in or something worse, but I’m alive and unscathed.  People lost property, loved ones, and assets as a result of this storm, and I need to keep that in perspective.  I’ll still complain about the flooding and the smell it has caused, and I’m going to try and get to the bottom of the recurring leaking problem.  However, I’ll do that with the knowledge that my hurricane experience was a walk in the park compared to most.

Hurricane Irene Post #1

I figured since this has been billed as a historic event that I should probably blog about it.  Better to have a record than have to try and remember after the fact.

It’s now Noonish on Saturday in NYC and for the second time in my twelve years here, mass transit has completely shut down.  This happened once before because of a transit strike in 2005, but it’s the first time that impending weather has caused a shut down.  We’ve had two waves of rain here, one light shower and one heavier downpour.  I managed to get all of my plants in off the terrace before the heavier downpour, so now my “garden” sits behind me as I type this.  I have to keep the plants locked away in my home office because Buster and Dusty (my cats) like to investigate and chew on anything new that arrives into the apartment.  The last thing I need is an emergency vet run because of poisoned kitties.

The waiting game with this hurricane feels like the most frustrating part of the ordeal.  It would be easier if it would just arrive already.  I went to the grocery store this morning, and it was pretty nuts.  Tolerable, but nuts.  I forgot to pick up paper towels, so I ran back out to a Duane Reade pharmacy supermarket type place, and managed to get some other things.  The woman at the check out was pretty over the whole ordeal, and then she told me that they were all staying through Monday.  They were not leaving.  My first thought was to feel awful for these people.  Then I made sure to make a mental note in case they are the only ones who are open in the neighborhood after this storm passes.

I live in residence at NYU, and Sunday was supposed to be move in day for 8,000 students.  Needless to say, that was postponed until Monday, but families have actually arrived early and are moving in today.  What a way to begin a first year in college, right?  With an impending natural disaster.

I’m wondering how my apartment will hold up through this storm.  High winds and heavy rains usually equal leaks for me.  The wall-to-wall carpet gets saturated, then wet vacuumed, then treated for mold.  It’s a delight.  I’ve moved some furniture out of the potential leak paths, but it’s tough to predict.  The leaks have been known to change location.

I’m actually really more concerned about my family in southern New Jersey.  They all have homes with large trees around them, and the ground saturation from the last month combined with the high winds might be really dicey.  I’m hoping that they can manage to make it through without any damage or injury.  The forecasters are saying that the back side of the storm will bring higher winds, which I assume means after the rains.  We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m going to blog about this storm throughout, so stay tuned.  As long as I have power, I’ll try to post pics and updates.  See below for my transformed indoor office garden, courtesy of Hurricane Irene.

Stay safe!

Following through on “Pay Attention”

In my blog post on March 25, I mentioned that I wanted to get “Pay Attention” tattooed on my right forearm as a reminder to myself to do just that: pay attention.  Well, today I followed through, and you can see the pic below.  The tattoo is about two hours old, so very fresh.

The idea for this tattoo initially came about last October when that rash of suicides gained national media attention, with the most disturbing one (for me) being the death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi after he jumped from the George Washington Bridge.  You probably know the story, so I won’t retell it, but suffice it to say, I became very aware of the responsibilities that we all have to pay attention so these kinds oftragedies can be avoided.  In particular, teachers and professors have a responsibility to know what’s happening in their classrooms, meaning that if bullying or harassment is happening to anyone, that teacher or professor better find a way to intervene on behalf of the bullied or harassed.  I work very hard to be vigilante and be that kind of professor, but this reminder on my right arm won’t hurt.

I also realized, maybe too late, that every time I extend my hand out to greet someone, there’s a high probability that the person will see these words.  That’s a byproduct of this location choice, but hopefully it’s met with the spirit in which it’s intended.