(no subject)

[rm]

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/cnn-news/19141470/detail.html

BOSTON -- Sirdeaner Walker, 44, has been surrounded by family after discovering her son, Carl Walker-Hoover, 11, hanging by an extension cord in the third-floor landing of the family's Northampton Avenue home in Springfield.

Walker said her boy, upset yet again over another bullying episode at school, had committed suicide.

"They were always saying, 'you're gay, you must be gay, you act like a girl,'" said Walker.

Comments

[nickelchief.livejournal.com]

I don't think I realized until I read this thread how common that response is from authority figures. A guidance counselor told me in seventh grade, when I complained about incessant, violent, daily bullying from perpetrators who thought I was gay:

YOU MUST BE DOING SOMETHING TO INVITE THEIR ABUSE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT MAKES THEM COME AFTER YOU?

LOOK AT YOUR OWN BEHAVIOR. YOU ARE LEAVING YOURSELF OPEN AND VULNERABLE.

THEY ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. IT IS UP TO YOU.

I can't even begin to describe the damage those few words did to me. I was so fucking quiet and so fucking scared to begin with, I drove myself out of my mind trying to figure out how this was my fault.

It still hurts. I feel desperately sad for this kid.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

That makes me almost incoherent with rage.

No-one ever said like that to me — but that'd be because I didn't trust anyone enough even to let them know I was being bullied.

I still don't. I'm amazed when people act decently rather than abominably, because I don't expect it, because so few people do.