FOYLE FRIEND SCHOOL SURVEY

THE EXPERIENCES OF LESBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL PUPILS AT SCHOOL IN N.W. IRELAND

INTRODUCTION - DEFINITIONS

"Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship..."

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:- Article 26/2

What Gay Means

Homosexual attraction has always existed; it is a fundamental component of many people’s sexuality. Some people are practically one hundred percent inclined to their own gender whereas others harbour attraction for both genders in a balance that varies from person to person and time to time. People who are strongly attracted to the same gender usually refer to themselves as gay. Many gay women prefer to use the term lesbian for themselves. People who have both homosexual and heterosexual feelings may refer to themselves as bisexual although if their homosexual side is stronger they may simply term themselves gay.

The current term for lesbian, gay and bisexual is 'LGB' however in this report the author will sometimes use the term 'Gay' to encompass lesbian, gay and bisexual.

The term 'Straight' for heterosexual has pejorative overtones in some people's sensibilities but the author uses it as a less cumbersome term than heterosexual and does not intend any insult to people who identify as heterosexual.

Many cultures have accommodated this aspect of human sexuality in one way or another but until recently ours has chosen to deny its validity and has endeavoured to hide and repress it. The origins for this denial are complex and controversial but its expression in western culture has been to label homosexuality variously as deviant, immoral, unchristian or sick. Today few working in psychiatry would consider homosexual feelings as anything other than a natural expression of an individual’s sexuality and yet our established institutions still behave as if this sexuality is a sinister danger to society. The established churches and the House of Lords have all recently expressed this attitude in a very public manner. One institution that profoundly affects the lives of every young person in Northern Ireland is the educational system; a system in which the author has worked since 1973 and a system which this report shows to be profoundly homophobic.

The Number Of Gay People In The Community

There is a difference between homosexual identity and homosexual behaviour. Someone self-identifies as being homosexual if they define themselves as being lesbian or gay but many who don't self-identify as gay do have sex with people of the same gender.

Many surveys have been done and it seems that only about 4% of males and 3% of females would self-identify as completely gay[1].

However many people who would not describe themselves as gay do have sex with members of the same sex on several occasions. This may be because they are bisexual or they are homosexual but do not so identify or because they experience homosexual feelings as their predominantly heterosexual sexuality develops. Between 7% and 12% of the population are believed to fall into this category. For more details see page 71.

 In every class in a secondary school there are likely to be two or three pupils whose experiences may be similar to those in the survey.

Why The Survey was Conducted

Research has been done on the effects of homophobia in English schools such as 'Playing It Safe'[2] which surveyed London schools in 1997 but people in Northern Ireland tend to think that the situation here is different. This is not so. Homophobia is alive and well in Northern Ireland and it goes largely unchallenged. However no one has ever gathered evidence for this so in December 1997 the author set out to assess how young people who have sexual feelings for the same gender fare in our educational system.

Homophobia, a prejudice against homosexuals, is a close cousin of racial prejudice and sectarianism; all three tend to be espoused by people of the same mind-set. This country is all too aware of the dreadful consequences of sectarianism and the Stephen Lawrence enquiry in February 1999 alerted a complacent English society to an unsuspected evil in its midst; 'Institutionalised Racism'. In March 1999 an OFSTED report in England highlighted the prevalence of institutionalised racism in schools and pointed out that Afro-Caribbean and traveller children under-perform. They put this down to the fact that many schools do not combat racially motivated bullying nor do they respect the cultural identity of their minorities.

Institutionalised homophobia is a similar phenomenon. In 1983 the American theologian, Tinney, recognised seven manifestations of institutionalised homophobia. He applied them to society in general but six of the seven could justly be identified as prevalent in our school system. The author would like to believe that no school intentionally sets out to disadvantage gay pupils. However just as institutionalised racism harms children from ethnic minorities, gay children are severely disadvantaged by an all-pervading, unthinking acquiescence with institutionalised homophobia.

1. CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE The first aspect of institutionalised homophobia that Tinney identifies is an unwillingness to discuss homosexuality openly. It is interesting to note that the Northern Education & Library Board would not allow the results of this survey to be included in the Foyle Friend display in their libraries in the north-east of the province in March 1999. When the author spoke to the librarian he explained that as there were only 41 people surveyed the data wasn't statistically valid so they couldn't display it. It became very clear in the survey that something similar is happening in our schools. Only 30% of young people had ever heard their teachers mention homosexuality. Most of what they heard were passing comments and almost invariably they were negative about homosexuality and gay people.
2. THE DENIAL OF CULTURE. Gay people have contributed a disproportionate amount to our history and culture and yet this is barely recognised in school. One person (not in the survey) told the author about being severely criticised by his English teacher for mentioning E.M. Forster's homosexuality in an essay on 'A Passage To India'.
3. THE DENIAL OF POPULAR STRENGTH. There is an unwillingness to admit how many people actually are gay. Many schools would say that they don't have gay pupils. This is why this survey is important. It may spark an awareness that there are gay pupils and they do have special needs.
4. A FEAR OF OVER-VISIBILITY. Institutionalised homophobia fears gay people being visible. This is a major issue in schools. Many gay teachers feel they have to keep their homosexuality a secret for fear of the consequences and some are instructed to do this by the authorities. Gay pupils are also often told to hide their sexuality.
5. THE DENIAL OF SELF-LABELLING. Homosexuals use the word lesbian, gay or bisexual for themselves but other people call them lezzie, queer faggot, poof etc. Pupils are particularly quick to use these derogatory terms. It is often incessant and seemingly unending. Sadly, teachers too use these terms.
6. NEGATIVE SYMBOLISM. This is the tendency of people to think of gay people as morally inferior. This is the official line of all the major Church denominations. 'Negative Symbolism' is rife in our schools and many respondents referred to teachers' dismissive or abusive references to homosexuality. Nearly every young person surveyed, heterosexual and homosexual, made reference to this and denial of labeling at some point in the response to their survey
7. GHETTOISATION is the seventh manifestation of institutionalised homophobia. This is the tendency of a society to isolate its gay community. As schools don't recognise they have a gay community they can hardly be expected to do this and yet a number of gay boys indicated that they became isolated at school. However in the wider community the ghetto is alive and well. There are places where gay people can go to get away from the hostile heterosexual society and many gay people at school seek these ghettos out as safe havens.

There are five distinct groups of young people who suffer from homophobic attitudes at school.

1. The first, and most directly damaged, consists of those young people whose sexual orientation is primarily towards their own gender. These are people who are, and will always be gay. This is the group from whom most of the survey responses are drawn.
2. The second group comprises people who could be described as bisexual; that is their sexual orientation draws them to both genders. No one knows how big this group is as most yield to social pressure and restrict their emotional relationships to the opposite gender.
3. The third category is often dismissed as people ‘In a Passing Phase’. These people will settle into a predominantly heterosexual orientation as they age but in their developmental years they are drawn to the same gender. It is better to describe this not as a passing phase but as in integral part of their awakening sexuality. All too often the experiences of young lesbian, gay and bisexual people are dismissed as ‘going through a phase’. In fact the official advice from CCEA on the issue implies that most pupils experiencing homosexual feelings of school are in 'A Passing Phase'[3] This is insulting to the integrity of the young person involved and it allows those responsible to duck the issues around the young lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
4. Fourthly there are the people whose sexual orientation isn’t towards the same gender but who, because of other factors, are assumed to be gay and get treated as such. This can be just as damaging to their self-esteem as it is to genuinely gay people.
5. A fifth group of people who suffer from homophobia could be identified. These are the 100% heterosexuals who learn that intolerance of lesbian, gay and bisexual people is the accepted norm and in doing so lose something of their own humanity.

There is ample evidence from the survey of the effects of homophobia on gay pupils. Many report being bullied and even more refer to the impact of an all-pervading homophobia on their self esteem. Some outcomes of this reported in the survey are:-

• Reduced academic achievement at school;
• Social isolation at school and out of school;
• Attempted suicide;
• Psychiatric illness.

What young people did not report but which has been adequately researched elsewhere is that alcohol and drugs misuse is very much more common amongst gay people than their heterosexual peers. This can be easily explained by the lack of self-esteem engendered by a homophobic society. Another phenomenon not reported but well known in the gay community is the difficulty that young gay people have in developing stable, loving relationships. This is particularly obvious when young gay men are compared with their heterosexual equivalents. They tend to have more partners, shorter relationships and more casual sex than their heterosexual counterparts. This is often used by critics of homosexuals as evidence that gay men are inherently immoral or feckless. Others would argue that stable relationships are an artifact of a Christian, heterosexual culture and that gay people are truly liberated from that construct. Sociobiology explains that the biological rôle of the male is to attempt to have as many offspring as possible and this drives males to be naturally promiscuous whereas it is in a female's interests to keep the father of any of her children with her which results in women tending towards monogamy. If this is the case, the sociobiologist argues, then it is inevitable that gay male relationships are going to be more transient than heterosexual relationships but lesbian relationships should be more stable. Nevertheless when you talk to young gay men they are usually looking for 'the man of their dreams' - they do want a long-term, stable relationship so why can they not find one? One reason could be that they simply don't have the choice of potential partners that people moving within the heterosexual world have, but there is another factor. Their heterosexual peers are being primed for relationships all through their secondary school life. They have plenty of rôle models; schools put on social events for heterosexuals; they are taught about it in R.E. and (if they are lucky) in relationship education but, most of all, their peers are constantly discussing and experimenting with heterosexual relationships. By the time heterosexual pupils leave school they are thoroughly coached in the art of heterosexual relationships whereas a gay person enters the gay world not knowing what to expect or how to handle other gay people.

Foyle Friend hopes to raise awareness of the issues around gay pupils and suggests strategies for minimising the damage to them.

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[1] Pink Therapy, Dominic Davies and Charles Neal, Open University Press, 1996

[2] 'Playing it Safe. Responses of Secondary School Teachers to Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Pupils, Bullying, HIV & AIDS Education and Section 28' by Douglas, Warwick, Kemp & Whittty - Health and Education Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. See appendix 8.

[3] Pg18 Relationships and Sexuality Education - Guidance for Post-Primary schools. Novvember 1998 CCEA