It is back-to-school time and many parents and educators are doing everything they can to ensure that their children and students have a safe, welcoming, and stimulating school environment to return to when classes begin. Many teachers and principals are already in full-time in-service meetings and workshops addressing issues related to gender and learning, bullying and school safety, as well as developing the curriculum for the first month of school. Unfortunately, most of these schools will fail in their efforts to reduce bullying because anti-bullying programs are overly generic and vague and do not directly address some of the most prevalent harmful and most ignored behaviors in schools: gendered harassment. Anti-bullying programs do not specifically talk about: sexual harassment, homophobic harassment, and harassment for gender non-conformity. So what can concerned parents and teachers do?
How is gendered harassment different from bullying?
The first step is to understand the differences in these behaviors and why schools tend to ignore them.
Gendered harassment is a term used to describe any unwanted behavior that acts to assert and police the boundaries of traditional gender norms: heterosexual masculinity and femininity. It is related to, but different from bullying. (Meyer, 2006)
Bullying is any behavior that repeatedly and over time intentionally inflicts injury on another individual (Olweus, 1993)
Harassment is any biased behavior that has a negative impact on the target or the environment and can include negative religious, racial, sexual, and homophobic behaviors (Land, 2003).
In other words, bullying is repeated and intentional hurtful behaviors directed at a specific person, whereas harassment includes unintentional or intentional behaviors that are discriminatory in nature. Harassing behaviors can be targeted at a specific person, or be general comments or behaviors that are derogatory to an identifiable social group. As a result, it has much broader impacts on the classroom and school culture. Forms of gendered harassment include: (hetero)sexual harassment, homophobic harassment, and harassment for gender non-conformity (or transphobic harassment). I link these three forms of harassment because they are linked to the norm-setting and policing of narrowly defined traditional heterosexual gender roles (Larkin, 1994; Renold, 2002; Smith & Smith, 1998; Stein, 1995). Although physical bullying is often the most obvious form that is acknowledged and addressed in schools, verbal bullying and harassment are also prevalent and often ignored even though they have been found to be quite damaging to students as well. Hoover and Juul found in their study on bullying that repeated verbal attacks by peers are as devastating as infrequent cases of physical abuse (1993, p. 27). Most bullying policies and interventions are not designed to get at the more persistent and insidious forms of harassment that occur in schools. Canadian researcher Gerald Walton (2004) observes that bullying and zero-tolerance policies, "do not consider the cultural and societal antecedents of violence in schools. Neither do these programs consider psychological violence"(p. 29). The UK is introducing a new program this fall to help schools teach children of all ages about gender bullying and violence.
I began investigating this problem as a result of my experiences as a high school teacher in the U.S. observing the hostile climate that existed for bisexual, gay, lesbian, questioning, and transgender (BGLQT) students in my school. During my first year of teaching I observed a very bright and athletic student - a leader in the school -- dissolve into depression, drug use, and skipping classes as a result of how her friends were treating her. She had fallen in love with a young woman she had met that summer and her classmates made sure she felt their disapproval. In addition to being excluded from her peer group, she was verbally harassed on a regular basis. This change in her school experience was enough to send a previously strong and confident young woman into a downward spiral of self-doubt and dangerous behavior. As a young teacher who wanted to support this student, I felt frustrated and angry by what the other teachers allowed to happen in their presence at the school.
As I investigated this problem further, I learned that although BGLQT youth are commonly targeted for harassment, they are not the only ones suffering due to the homophobic and heteronormative climate of the school. Any student whose behavior is perceived to be different in some way can be isolated and harassed using anti-gay insults, and any student who wishes to establish his/her place in the social pecking order of the school must engage in heterosexualized discussions and behaviors which often include various forms of gendered harassment - this pressure is particularly strong for boys and young men as documented by C.J. Pascoe in her book, Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.
Why is gendered harassment a problem?
Students who are harassed in their schools have been found to be more likely to skip school, abuse drugs and alcohol, and have a higher rate of suicidal ideation (Bagley, Bolitho, & Bertrand, 1997; Irving & Parker-Jenkins, 1995; Rigby & Slee, 1999; Sharp, 1995; Slee, 1995). Most of these students perceive school as a dangerous place which causes significant damage to their level of engagement in the school community. One group of students that is regularly targeted in schools is BGLQT youth (California Safe Schools Coalition, 2004; Kosciw & Diaz, 2006; Reis, 1999; Reis & Saewyc, 1999; Taylor et al., 2008). In a national phone survey with youth in the U.S., the National Mental Health Association (2002) found that 50% of the respondents reported that students who were gay would be bullied most or all of the time. In another U.S. survey, 90% of BGLQT students report hearing homophobic remarks in school frequently or often (Kosciw, Diaz, & Gretytak, 2008). What is disturbing about this trend is not only its prevalence, but the lack of educators' effective intervention to stop this problem. In the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) 2008 School Climate Survey, 82% of BGLQT youth say that their teachers rarely or never intervene when hearing homophobic remarks (Kosciw et al., 2008, p. 22). In a study in California, students were asked how often they heard biased remarks (sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, religion, race, disability), and how often teachers intervened. The forms of verbal harassment which students reported hearing the most were based on sexual orientation, race, body size, and gender presentation. The forms that students reported teachers were least likely to interrupt were sexual orientation and gender presentation (California Safe Schools Coalition, 2004).
10 things parents and teachers can do to address gendered harassment:
