After caving in to his conservative mates in parliament last week, Malcolm Turnbull “gutted” the safe schools program and cut off funding entirely from June 2017.
From this spawned the “I Need Safe Schools” campaign. It’s almost guaranteed that a queer person can tell you a heartfelt, personal story about why they need (or needed) safe schools. I’m no different, and this is my soapbox, so here is why I needed safe schools.
I grew up in regional Australia. By all accounts I managed to be a relatively successful human while in high school – school captain, academically proficient, captain of the soccer team, blah blah blah. It’s a textbook case.
I escaped the clutches of my small town, moved to Sydney and went to University. A successful story, except my mother complains that I’m still at uni, eight years after I started.
It sounds as though I had a fine time in high school, and truth be told, I probably did. But I wasn’t myself. And I didn’t learn who that was until I was well into my university years.
Growing up in a regional area, I never met anyone gay. And if I did, it wasn’t even something I had any level of understanding of. There were two kids in my school who had two mums, and all I knew was that they both looked like men and were therefore ugly and worthy of ridicule, and their lesbianism explained their kids’ hippy names, because lesbians were clearly crazy weirdos.
This was the vocabulary I learned around homosexuality. Kids in my school would bully me by calling me a lesbian, and I felt hurt by that. I recall the day rumours went around that Missy Higgins was a lesbian, and I was hurt on her behalf. “Who could say such a thing about Missy?!” I was outraged, and probably – unbeknownst to me at the time, though abundantly clear now – a little too in love with a lesbian-esque singer I’d never met.
Shamefully, I bullied a gay kid. Not to his face, but there was a boy a few years below me who was incredibly camp, and we used to say his name with a lisp and a limp wrist, and laugh. It sickens me to think of that now.
But that’s how I knew about homosexuality: the women were ugly, the men were feminine. I wanted short hair, but was so afraid people would think I was *shock, horror* gay. The idea of being gay was something that repulsed and terrified me. Yet I still spent my days pining after Missy Higgins and some of my peers. I was so ignorant to homosexuality both in general and to my own developing teenage sexuality that I failed to properly understand what these feelings were.
If I’d had a program like safe schools, the stigma around homosexuality would’ve been reduced. I would’ve realised that queer people are people too, and in fact that queer people are people like me. I would’ve been so much more comfortable in my own skin – more attuned to my own feelings and identity.
But, more importantly, if I’d had a program like safe schools, I would’ve known that bullying that camp boy a few years below me was fundamentally wrong, and maybe I would’ve done more to stop it, rather than join the throngs of others, because it was easy.
If I’d had safe schools, my high school years would have been far less homophobic. Less homophobic in the way treated others and myself. And maybe I would’ve cut my hair short about three years sooner.
[Main Image:FreeImages.com/Iran Araujo]
This Week…
This Wednesday March 30 sees the return of Yellow Wednesdays at Secret Garden Bar. Also at Secret Garden on Friday April 1 is the next weekly instalment of Homosocial.
This Friday April 1 and Saturday April 2, Salvador Dali Llama are hosting at Tokyo Sing Song, alongside Sloom, The Cosmic Hollow, Bad Valley and Rackett.
Also on Saturday April 2, Keep it Disco are hosting a party at the Oxford Hotel with Ben Fester and Preacha.
Then on Sunday April 3, The Shift Club is launching its Rocky Horror Drag Show with all of Sydney’s best drag queens in the leading roles.
