A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.
Interpretation
Bullying often targets children who challenge traditional gender roles and identities.
This quote by Dan Savage highlights the unfortunate reality that many children face bullying due to their nonconformity to established gender norms. It points out that those who express their identities in ways that diverge from societal expectations, such as effeminate boys and masculine girls, are particularly vulnerable to harassment and discrimination.
In practice
In a school assembly addressing bullying, the quote can be used to illustrate the importance of inclusivity.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.
It's going to take generations of gay people marrying before these things start to feel natural. We haven't had it long enough to remake it as our own, so it does feel like you're getting dressed up in straight drag to do it.
And that really captures the difference for the bullied straight kid versus the bullied gay kid, is that the bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. [...] And I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
Like it or not children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents all over America - as many as 10 million children. And it does nothing to make their lives more stable and secure to attack their families, to attack their parents to prevent us from marrying each other.
World, they have taken the small children like butterflies and thrown them, beating their wings, into the fire--
As I suffer in the defence of my Country, I must consider this hour as the most glorious of my life -Remember that I die as becomes a British Officer, while the manner of my death must reflect disgrace on your Commander.
I've still never had a dream that I'm disabled. Never.
As long as a man's heart beats, as long as a man's flesh quivers, I do not allow that a being gifted with thought and will can allow himself to despair.
People have told me that I'm courageous, but I have seen greater courage.
The ads all call me fearless, but that's just publicity. Anyone who thinks I'm not scared out of my mind whenever I do one of my stunts is crazier than I am.
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