Brian Moylan at Gawker brought the goods today. Oh my god, he brought the goods. Reacting to the recent spate of gay teen suicides, Brian decided to use his platform at one of the most widely read blogs on the internet to explain some things, in a piece called What’s It Like to Be A Gay Teen. Here are a few snippets, but please, read the whole thing and share it wherever you think it needs to be shared:
Yes, high school—and often college—sucks for everyone. That’s because teens are total assholes. They’re just like normal people, but amped up on a combination of hormones and self-doubt that makes them particularly awful. And mean! Teens are cruel, especially to other teens and especially to other teens who are perceived as different.
Imagine your worst high school memory and multiply it by ten and that is how bad it is for many gay teenagers every day. The ones that have it the worst are those that are bullied repeatedly by their peers until they become suicidal, drop out of school, or are robbed of their education because they can’t focus on learning the Pythagorean theorem or the amendments to the Constitution because they’re thinking about how they’re going to physically survive the day. In many cases, parents, teachers, principals and other grown-ups don’t care about about the gay student’s problems and condone the bullying behavior, either explicitly or with their own inaction.
[…]
That’s the saddest part about Tyler Clementi’s story. I don’t know if he was out to his parents or if he was out in high school or how he was treated before landing at Rutgers, but I know from personal experience that graduating high school and going to college is the one thing many gay teens have to look forward to. Many are just waiting for their parents to drive away with an empty minivan, so that they can go into the dorm and come out for the first time in their lives. They imagine college as this magical place where everyone will love and accept them and they might even have the chance to meet people like them, or go on a date with a cute boy (or girl) and do all the silly, mundane things that college kids do the world over.
[…]
I wish I could go back and tell Tyler that things would get better and make him believe it. I really wish I was there for him—for all these kids—in those moments before they made their final decision. To tell them that it’s not their fault and that we would make it through this together. I wish I was there to tell their attackers to stop because they are literally committing murder. I wish I could bring each of them back, as silly as it sounds, because we failed them. We all failed them by pretending like it’s easier to be a gay teen now, that there still aren’t people in the world that are happy that gay teens are killing themselves.
No, really, go read it all. It’s stunning. Thanks, Brian, for being awesome.
