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Help! Trying to be safe at school as an openly gay couple.

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by MariRawr, Sep 6, 2012.

  1. MariRawr

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2012
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    Location:
    Netherlands, Dordrecht
    Sexual Orientation:
    Lesbian
    In very short... Me and my girlfriend have just started school together. The start was quite fresh, a lot of people didn't know anyone so we weren't the odd ones out either. People are friendly to us and we are friendly to them. There's no serious whoopdidoo friendships going on but there's some people we talk to almost every day for a few minutes which is a good start. However, I've been to another location of this same school, and when a boy came out there, they bullied him for about 2 months and even now it's still being thrown at him.

    Sooo... this issue is... We don't want to hide. We want to be open about this, especially since we barely have any time to spend together outside school. We want to be able to hug and such without having people bullying us. And believe me, they will. I know these kids. They see holding hands as a sign of extreme attraction whilst you must also know there's lots of straight girls that hold hands with their best friends when they walk around school. I guess the difference is that there's still a few people that used to bully me that're now in the same building with me again.

    Anyway, we have some options. We can go to school counsellor and inform her that we don't want to have to hide this but also don't want to deal with bullying. Our school is very much against bullying, especially homophobic bullying, as we have a lesbian teacher too, and other teachers are also totally fine with gays. It's the students that are the problem. A lot of them are ignorant towards homosexuality. They don't understand it and so they attack it and beat it down whenever they see it.

    Our counsellor has certain power within the school, yet she doesn't have the right to spill any information without the student(s)' permission. We want to ask her to try to get some kind of event going. Something with informing the students about bullying, including homophobic bullying of course. That way, a lot more students will be better informed and homophobic bullying will go down a lot. AND if people actually DO engage in homophobic bullying, they can be punished hard enough from the start as they already knew that what they were doing won't be tolerated.

    However, if the counsellor can't do this, we have another chance: There's an organisation in our country that stands up for gay rights in schools. They actually organize events like I mentioned before sometimes. If the counsellor can't do it, we can step to that organisation and ask for their help in getting the event to happen anyway.

    The thing is... I'm not sure if we should try this. It could turn out to disappoint us. I'm kind of nervous about it all and my girlfriend is terrified. Me and her both got cases of extreme bullying before and hence we never want it to happen again. But at the same time, we can't be happy if we have to constantly remind ourselves not to touch each other too much or even be too nice to each other in front of people that might bully us for whatever reason. We're stuck and we need some help.


    Should we go to the counsellor?
     
  2. Mercy

    Mercy Guest

    id advise you to maybe see how your girl friend feels about seeing the counseller and discuss ways to pe out and proud at school wiht your partner . Why not start a LGTB support group or something together so other lgtb teens feel like they have a safe haven to go to ?
     
  3. Will2M

    Full Member

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    Location:
    Seattle
    I agree with Mercy, try to start an LGBT group, but that is a separate thing. I would definitely go to your counselor! The way you described your situation it sounds like you could definitely get some event organized. Another thought would be go to the lesbian teacher. She is an authority figure so if you team up with her it would be much easier to get something organized.

    Hope this helps! Good luck!