We expected about 15 people to come to our first meeting – only a small number of students attend our school, after all. We certainly didn’t expect the session to attract 50 students.
Our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) society, which we set up in January, has proved a success. Several members have told me how alone they felt before coming to the group, and all four of us founders were unaware of just how large this community was until it met for the first time.
As one of my co-founders says: “It became apparent that our school had loads of LGBT folk in it, each relatively sure that they were the only one in school. So many people popped up who had remained quiet while there was no active LGBT community hub in school.”
Isolation and emotional distress are common experiences among LGBT youth. According to a 2014 survey of LGBT students by Youth Chances, 45% of respondents said they had experienced harassment, homophobic threats, or intimidation.
The sad fact is that those of us running the club found ourselves trying to fill enormous gaps in the curriculum: we’ve had requests from our younger members to run sessions on sexual education and mental health. This is a problem that affects young people in schools across the UK, where sex education isn’t compulsory. When such education is delivered, it is always focused on heterosexual couples and preventing pregnancy.
One of our members Tola Sokoya, 17, says: “It’s especially ridiculous that, in an all-girls’ school, we weren’t given any information about same-sex relationships. By the time the group started, I’d basically figured out my identity, but you can really see the impact that it’s had on the younger years, who are still in that stage of discovering themselves.”
Another member, Ryanna Ekanem, also 17, highlighted that “there was an absence of ongoing, in-depth discussion about the LGBT community [in schools], which became more evident as clubs discussing other social issues like feminism and current affairs were introduced.”
Now, she says, the club has linked a cross-section, from the younger years all the way to the top, who can bond over an important part of their identity.
The school has been highly supportive of the society. It has also been incredibly encouraging to see it respond to our concerns by improving the sexuality and mental health aspects of their personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum.
The extent of the education we received on LGBT issues at my school previously consisted of being given the phone number for switchboard at the start of year 7– resulting in mocking laughter from my class – and one PSHE session in year 10 (which was held at the request of students). Now, discussions are run for Year 9 and 10 classes exploring sexuality and gender in depth. This hopefully means that those in younger years will no longer feel that they have to reach out for support in an extra-curricular club. This is exactly the kind of thing we would hope to see in the education system as a whole.
Schools are still largely failing to offer LGBT students the support they so desperately need. A friend, who attends a different school to mine, describes an incident where she was “pulled out of class to be told that while talking about boys was fine, I could only mention my attraction to girls outside of school ‘in my own time’.”
Our society isn’t the only one of its kind in the UK. Some schools, such as Highgate School, have prominent and active groups – although even they came under fire from a former chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Council who reportedly believes homophobic bullying “derives from too much media coverage”.
For most LGBT pupils, though, the idea of creating such a community is a distant dream. A friend, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that “starting an LGBT group in my college would be a death wish. There’s a lot of casual violence against the people who are out here and those still in the closet would be too afraid to come.”
In the aftermath of a tragedy like the Orlando shooting, the LGBT community around the world is reminded of our reasons to be fearful. But we are also reminded of the enormous courage, hope, and solidarity displayed by our members. In a session we ran on Orlando, we agreed that our resolution would be one of solidarity and hope for the future.
The strongest aspect of the LGBT movement is our sense of community – it is essential that we do everything in our power to support younger members and include them in it.
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