Over the past year, there have been a string of high profile teen suicides. Three were clustered in a Minnesota school district. The most recent suicide happened in rural Indiana. The common thread is that the victims were all being harassed because they were—or were perceived to be—gay.
Suicide is about isolation, loss of hope, feeling like the emotional pain is too much to bear. It will probably always be a reality, particularly for adolescents who feel the full force of their emotions, at times like a crushing weight. In the US, the number of teens who kill themselves each year has largely stayed the same over the past 30 years, and suicide is consistently the second or third leading cause of death among teenagers. A 1989 landmark federal study brought attention to the fact that gay teens are much more likely to commit suicide than their non-gay peers. Family rejection, ostracism at school, and loneliness can overwhelm and lead to desperate decisions.
When I was thirteen, I tied a belt around my neck and sat in my bedroom closet, contemplating. I hated my lumpy, pre-pubescent body. I was reminded about being overweight by friends and felt piercing embarrassment about having to change and shower in the locker room, back-to-school shopping for clothes that never fit and being mistaken for a girl by strangers due to my shapeless body. In a fuzzy sense, coming to terms with being gay figured in at that moment. I felt inadequate around other boys and thought I’d never fit in with my effeminate shyness and sensitivity.
Luckily, I was too afraid to try to hurt myself, and things got better as my height started catching up with my weight and I made a deal with myself to never, ever consider that I could possibly be gay.
That was 27 years ago, and I’ve since come out and worked as a social worker for LGBT youth for most of my adult career. But when I read about the recent gay teen suicides, I found myself wondering: Haven’t we made progress?
From a time when coming out in high school was near impossible, we now have gay student council presidents and homecoming kings and gay couples attending proms and Gay/Straight Alliances and high school theater productions of Rent and students organizing a National Day of Silence to protest homophobia and primetime TV shows featuring popular gay teens.
But we still have gay kids getting viciously harassed and killing themselves.
For sure, change has yet to come to many areas of the country. At the Minnesota school where three kids killed themselves, the district had a specific policy forbidding teachers from discussing gay issues even in the context of “tolerance” education or anti-bullying policies and despite student complaints of anti-gay harassment by students and even by some teachers. This is the attitude, the culture in many suburban and rural communities.
But studies show that as many as 60 percent of gay teenagers consider suicide, and they’re not all growing up in places where coming out remains strenuously taboo. Family support makes a big difference, and I think another factor is the complexity of adolescence, at times—and by its nature—resistant to outside meddling.
There’s a saying in developmental psychology. Adolescence is paradox. It’s a sky high feeling that anything is possible, and it’s the depths of futility. It’s demanding to be taken seriously as an individual but wanting more than anything to blend into the crowd. It’s protesting unequal treatment while perpetrating hateful, aggressive acts against those less powerful than you.
Gay teens find themselves in this mix, at turns encouraged and supported and at others despondent and ashamed. Their cues from the outside world are pitched at odd angles. ‘Be yourself’ is the message from the mainstream media, and ‘Don’t step too near’ is the refrain from the well-publicized political battles happening across the country. At best, public attitudes have moved from hostility to ambivalence. Polls now show just a slim majority of the general public believes gays and lesbians should be “accepted” in society.
It’s the wrong time to get complacent. I don’t think that we can expect political change or even school policy change to completely eliminate gay teen suicide, but it can make a difference. As disturbing as these stories are, it counts as progress that they have claimed attention and not been buried by the squeamishness of the past.
The LGBT community definitely made progress, but that has the interest in the not so young community. I’m 15 year old boy and in my freshman year of highschool and have been bullied because of how I speak, “oh you sound like a girl, don’t be such a fag” one kid told me. I have contemplated suicide but than I told my mom and a couple of friends, it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Back to the suicide, I can see why these boys of such a young age, as early as 13 years old. The kids in today’s schools and community need to loosen up about it. Even loosening up a fraction of how tight the hold on how gays are bad and different would have made the difference, these kids couldn’t hold it back any further and felt like the world hated them. I know this because I felt it, and I felt it hard. It is so hard to tell people that your gay because it can spread to bullies and they will text message you and email you and facebook or twitter you until you have had enough and do something about it even if you kill your self. I have had first hand experience. The LGBT community is definitely “accepted” in society, but its not the whole society its just the older section of society and i think that we should inform our youngsters about the LGBT’s because it is a big deal. Because someone is gay doesn’t mean they are different, it means that they are human and they are who they are and they all have their own personalities and they need to live their lives to the fullest.
Hey Daniel,
Thanks so much for commenting on my article. You make an excellent point: we need to change the attitudes of teenagers toward gays. Also, not everyone has the courage that you did to come out to your parents, so that you were not alone in dealing with the bullying. I’m so glad you did. Your story can be an excellent example for others.
Every LGBT teen should know that they are never truly alone in dealing with this problem. Not sure if you are in the US, but there’s a national hotline called the Trevor Project. The phone number is 1-866-488-7386. You can talk to someone who understands, and they have a database of resources across the country. Many states/cities have LGBT youth groups, for example.
Best of luck to you, and I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
Andy
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i have nothing against gays i have alot of gay friends which is awsome and i love them all the same and no i am not gay i am just not against it i keep telling are they hurting u and they all say no and will i am like so what is the problem and will i say when did marriage and love beacome as gender and god loves all of us the same
I agree Tabitha. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. 🙂