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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (72566)	8/19/2003 10:35:37 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

It isn't true that no one in the school system is doing anything about it. We have posters that say "No Room for Homophobia" in every classroom in our high school, and some teachers even take that seriously. I know I do. Occasionally the students insult each other using epithets aimed at race, sex, or sexual orientation, and I do not allow that in my classroom. We need to be able to have discussions about literature and ideas, so insults aimed at the person, no matter what the basis for those insults, are not allowed. It is true that the students ( especially the boys) would LIKE to use epithets like gay, faggot and queer but they use them like all the other forbidden words in their vocabulary, and they seem to use them mostly about their friends.

To: Lane3 who wrote (72566)	8/20/2003 12:37:09 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"It's staggering - 98 percent hear 'faggot,' 'queer' and 'dyke' yelled at them every single day," Frankly, that's a "statistic" I don't believe. But even so. Fat kids have heard "fatso" and "butterball" and the like yelled that them every single day for decades. Kids who are "responsible" in teachers eyes and tell tachers what is going on have "tattletale" and "fink" and suchlike yelled at them, if they don't actually get beaten up. One of the jobs of childhood is to separate, to create your support group (clique, gang, you name it) in which you find support and acceptance and from which "outsiders" are pointedly kept out. I just got called to bed, so can't go on with this, but I think in terms of social evolution it's entirely normal and healthy. We are suffering today the attempt to reject evolution, and we're going to find out that it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.