The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.
The LGBT community in America has made great strides towards equality in the past decade. Same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in June of 2015. Social attitudes towards the LGBT community have definitely improved in recent years, but unfortunately the social stigma around queer people has not entirely disappeared. I often feel alienated from my heterosexual peers, and I feel that they are often unable or unwilling to understand the experiences of both myself and others in the community.
To share a personal anecdote, my friends and I were once eating lunch in the school cafeteria, talking about nothing in particular and simply existing as we are. Everyone sitting at our table, myself included, are queer. Then, the table adjacent to us, sat with several boys I had never spoken to, began throwing fries in our direction. Next, they threw a water bottle. I then saw the flash of a camera as one of the boys took a picture of my friends and I.
This made me wonder, what would he do with this picture? Would he send it to his friends, commenting on the freaks at the table beside him? At that moment I felt like a sideshow attraction, a zoo animal. I felt like the proverbial ‘other’, something to be regarded with either blind hatred or a morbid sort of fascination. Whatever I felt, I did not feel human or accepted. I cannot prove the boys acted out of homophobic hatred, but I remember the momentary dread I was overcome with when they stood up to leave the lunchroom. I felt the way a deer must feel during hunting season, ready to run for my life if necessary: marked and singled out.
I doubt they intended to harm me or my friends. I like to think the students at my school do not hold such malice towards queer people that they are driven to enact violence upon us. That being said, the fear and dehumanization I felt was very real. I firmly believe that non-LGBT students should make an effort to understand and accept their queer peers.
We all deserve to feel accepted regardless of gender or sexuality. The fact that some students see fit to throw derogatory remarks and, evidently, fries at people like me and my friends simply for being unapologetically queer in a school setting is absolutely unacceptable.