By Anonymous
High School can be quite intimidating. It is a time of discovery: discovering who we are, our likes and dislikes, and our sexuality. Our bodies are changing and developing as we grow older. Important decisions need to be made as we begin to decide who we are and who we want to be, all the while dealing with puberty and hormones, which overall make it a pretty scary and confusing period in our lives.
During this stage of development, teenagers need support and patience; they need to be able to figure out who they are without receiving backlash. This is something which, unfortunately, is not often the case at LGB.
Throughout a school day, in the corridors and classrooms,, a student hears many disturbing things. A 15-year-old boy walks into a classroom to be greeted with “Hey F*ggot” by one of his classmates, while several others snicker at him and the rest sit there in silence, ignoring it. The boy laughs and sits down. Sitting at one of the desks, however, is another boy who has started discovering that he might have feelings for members of the same sex. He is confused and frightened, and he is listening to this kind of conversation practically every class, discouraged and ashamed.
Though the people saying these things consider it a joke, they are ignorant of the meaning of some of these homophobic slurs with which they slander classmates. They let the words slip out of their mouth without a second thought, and their conscience is unaffected.
It is not restricted to just homophobia either; racist and xenophobic slurs are also shockingly common. One of my earliest and most startling memories at this school was of a group of high school students calling a member of cafeteria staff a “Monkey” because of his dark skin. Still today, I hear blatant racism between my peers and in my school.
One other thing that has become an everyday occurrence is the use of rape jokes. I find it so shocking how anyone can associate the word rape with humour. It is extremely saddening that students of Ecolint, a school that prides itself on its tolerance and diversity, can have so little respect for other people, even calling people (such as myself) who call them out on it a “feminazi” simply for defending the dignity and respect of a human being, as well as saying to “stop getting so damn offended”.
This is not okay. We are the Ecolint community: we are meant to be tolerant; we are meant to have respect. We are meant to be the ones who are going to grow up and change the world into something better. We are meant to be the ones who fight against injustice and hate.
This is not “locker-room talk”; these are not “harmless jokes”. This is a real issue, and it needs to stop. Now.
