*sniff*

[emmagrant01]

You may have seen this already, but it was new to me. It's a video in which which a high school student comes out to her entire school at an assembly.

I went to high school more than 20 years ago now, and I can't imagine something like this happening at my school when I was a teenager. I had a couple of gay friends, but they were only out to their friends and we all knew it was important to keep their secret.

I've since learned that quite a few more people I knew in school were gay, and I've even become friends via Facebook with one classmate who is a transwoman, who hid her identity very well in school. Most of these people were closeted in high school because they didn't have much of a choice. It would have been unthinkable for one of them to do what this young woman did, in the late 1980s in the Bible belt.

I know we have a long way to go, but wow -- we've really come a long way. :-)

Comments

[helenadax.livejournal.com]

Her speech is awesome but are you sure this is real?

[essie007.livejournal.com]

Just curious, why wouldn't it be real? Is there some editing you're catching, or do you just mean the situation seems unbelievable.

If you mean the situation then I have absolutely no problem believing this is real. I graduated high school in 06 in an admittedly very liberal town, and something like this would not have been at all out of place in one of our school assemblies.

[nimori.livejournal.com]

I graduated in '94 and one of my friends came out at an assembly. Nobody even blinked.

Mind, this was an art school in Canada, but it was 17 years ago. There certainly wasn't the level of discussion about LGBQT issues, even in Canada.

[helenadax.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think it's unbelievable (though if that's real, she's very, very brave). But I had the feeling that she was acting because she doesn't seem nervous or scared. Her voice didn't shake, she didn't have to stop talking because of the emotion, her hands didn't shake neither.

But I can be mistaken, of course, especially because I'm not a native speaker and I can be missing something. Maybe she is nervous and I just can't see it.

[elements.livejournal.com]

It struck me as rehearsed but sincere - and there were a few points where her voice wasn't completely strong and sure. She does mention performing, singing and acting (including what sounds like a community theater production of RENT, as opposed to just a high school production, so she must be pretty darn good). I think she prepared and practiced for this speech, and used all her skills as a performer to help her deliver it without looking nervous.

It also seems to me that she's likely one of the more popular kids at this school. She's a senior, and active in theater and clearly very good, clearly an excellent writer & public speaker and so probably a good student, and she's cute, etc. So she also likely has a certain amount of social confidence that for one thing let her even consider doing this speech, when apparently no-one else is out at the school, and for another lets her know that she's unlikely to be seriously ostracized. Her family and close friends already know and support her, and if her friends are also popular, it'll be harder for people to bully her. She's very well placed to be the one doing this, and she knows it. So it didn't strike me as less real as much as carefully thought about. She knew exactly what she was doing, and that she could do it well, and so even though I don't think she was lying about being nervous, she also knew on a gut level that she was going to be OK.

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

I'm not in the Bible belt, but it would have been totally unheard of at my school, as well. It would appear that, although things may seem to move ever so slowly, they are moving in the right direction. Bless her, for her courage. Sometimes it just takes a few brave souls to start the ball rolling.

[oldenuf2nb.livejournal.com]

She's not mine, but I'm so proud of her. My God, what a brave kid. I hope someday we live in a world where what she just did isn't an act of bravery; where her peers simply look at her and say, "okay."

You know what? Most of them probably did. And isn't that the most encouraging idea ever?

[dysonrules.livejournal.com]

The new generation is amazing. My 13-year-old stood up during a school assembly on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and said, "I have a dream that one day all gay people will have the same rights as everyone else."

She said she discovered later that all the other "speeches" were rehearsed. Hers was the only impromptu. :)

*so proud*

[drarryxlover.livejournal.com]

Good on her! My school was like yours, I was at high school three years ago (when I finished) and my best friend's sisters best friend is gay and it took her a while to tell her friends and it got around the school and I remember the looks she got, how girls avoided her. If we wanted to bring a girl to the school ball we had to sign a form that said we were both gay and in a relationship, Catholic schools are really behind.
But good on her! And she's right it's our generation that needs to change.

[eskimosatan.livejournal.com]

I'm on the bible belt and it is hard. I only went to school a little over ten years ago and I look at all the changes that have happened in those ten years and it amazes me. When I went to school, three boys beat a gay kid to death, just because he was gay. I was horrified.

A friend of mine and me held hands walking to class and hugged each other in the hall one day, purely as friends, because she was going through something and needed support, and the next day the school was talking about us being a couple. Actually, we ended going with it, because we were so pissed that not only would they make that assumption, but that it was taken so negatively. We weren't popular to begin with and no one we were willing to be friends with was going to stop talking to us because of this, but it hurt a little.

Now I talk to kids in high school who are either openly gay or open about the possibility and everyone knows and it's okay. it's amazing and I hope and pray that the trend continues and grows.

[yaycoffee.livejournal.com]

It is amazing how far we've come since my high school days in the mid nineties. I work in a Texas high school, and there is a small group of out and proud kiddos. On the other hand, I still have to reprimand people on a regular basis for language like calling someone gay or faggot as a general insult.

I think the biggest difference now is that the out and proud kids have a support group like they wouldn't have had back-in-my-day, so when that bullying comes, they've got some legs to stand on that might carry more than just their own. My group this year seems to be even more vocally homophobic than I've ever had (which might have something to do with the fact that this group is just more vocally hateful in general--from everything to religion to race... than any group I've ever had).

It's amazing how far things have come, but there's still so far to go--not just about lgbt acceptance but general acceptance. Teens can be very hard on each other. They're still balancing the values of their upbringing with their own points of view, still trying to figure out how they fit into the big picture--all at the same time trying their darndest to be accepted by their peers.

[zeitgeistic.livejournal.com]

She was very brave. That was a really moving video. Thank you for posting. <3

[shanna-souzou.livejournal.com]

I love her speech!

In the mid-90s when I was in junior high in Texas, I remember there was this boy. Early hormones were kicking in and we all knew this kid was different. Amazingly, aside from a few bullies, this young gay boy was really popular among most of his straight male and female classmates.

But one day, he hung himself from a basketball goal at the local park. I never got the full story, but I remember getting the impression that he was afraid of his mother finding out. I was especially close to him but I was close to many of his friends and for years, I watched them spiral emotionally after he left us.

What I learned from his passing is that children are not necessarily cruel. And that hate and fear is something that adults impart onto children. And that if we teach tolerance and bravery to young people, we have a better chance of turning the tide. That young woman is amazing and we should all do our part.

[worn-words.livejournal.com]

I went to a very small high school/middle school (300 kids max in the lower & upper school) and when I was 16 I did something similar, albeit it had more to do with depression and raising awareness. there were a surprising amount of depressed kids in my school and I felt like we were these kinds of invisible minorities, like we existed but no one really acknowledged our existence or our "problems". although I have to admit I was in no way as calm as this girl.

[nenne.livejournal.com]

Good for her and other silent kids at her school. :)

[elements.livejournal.com]

In my high school, we had a diversity assembly once where there was an open mic portion and two (also black) girls tried to come out as lesbians. None of us *believed* them. We just didn't believe there was anyone *actually gay* at our school. This despite me and my best friend both being bi (though we didn't tell each other, because we were already rumored to be gay together). Somehow it was believable enough to tease someone over, but not believable enough to, you know, believe. I always wondered about a few people (still wonder, because so far none of my classmates have come out in a way public enough for me to know about). But in general we all pretended none of us could *actually* be queer. Even I myself didn't acknowledge I was bi til college.

[elements.livejournal.com]

Adding to say that the reason I noted the girls were also black was that we were also so racial-issues-clueless in our hugely white school where almost all students of color were bused in from the city and socially pretty segregated, that we didn't think someone would be BOTH black *and* gay. Like, you can have one minority status at a time! Also the fact that because these girls were part of the urban-suburban busing program, most of us didn't know them, so there was no framework of their lives for us to say, aha! So that's why they behaved like X or didn't go out with Y or whatever. They were ciphers, whose identity to most of us was encompassed so much by their race and economic status that we couldn't broaden our potential view of them enough to include being queer.

I'm kind of shocked sometimes at how, in spite of growing up in a progressive/liberal family in a very liberal town in a liberal state, I had SO MUCH internalized crap as a teen.