Bullying Awareness

Bullying is defined as systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt and/or psychogical distress on one or more students. However it is defined it can be terrifying and for many students is something they experience daily. It can be as direct as teasing, bitting or threatening, or indirect as in exclusion, rumors or manipulation.

Bullying damages the Target - Students who are targets of repeated bullying behavior can/often do experience extreme fear and stress. They may be afraid to go to school or even to ride the bus to school. Once there, they may be afraid to be in certain places in the building, such as bathrooms. They may exhibit physical symptoms of illness and may not be able to concentrate on school work.

Bullying damages the Perpetrator - If bullying behaviors are allowed to continue, they can escalate into even more serious behavior such as sexual harassment, or criminal activity in higher grades and in adulthood.

Bullying damages the Bystander - Bystanders can be deeply affected. They may feel angry and helpless because they don't know what to do. They may worry about becoming a target themselves. They may feel guilty for not taking action.

What Communities Can Do

The NEA believes that bullying and harassment are community issues and require total community involvement to find solutions. Numerous opportunities will arise for community involvement. A community task force could incorporate many of the following suggestions:

• Develop a systematic approach that includes ail community stakeholders
• Sponsor a conference or forum to educate and raise awareness
• Create a speakers bureau to speak out on the issue
• Work with faith-based organizations
• Work with mayor's office to celebrate "Respect for Everyone" campaigns
• Sponsor "Teach-In" for parents and community using students, parents, and teachers to discuss strategies to prevent bullying in schools, in the community
• Partner with higher education institutions to publish data showing how bullying contributes to absenteeism and low achievement in school
• Connect with service teaming programs in schools
• Arrange for public relations support from local TV, radio and print media
• Sponsor early childhood and after-school programs
• Schedule Business Round-Table - Chamber of Commerce

April 17th is our 3rd Monday Meeting

This month's meeting will feature two speakers: Emperor 32 Dale Gravel Twist and Empress 32 Rhoda Gravel of the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Emerald Empire of Eugene. They will be discussing Community, Family, and Friends.

We will still be meeting in the same place downstairs but will enter at the side door. (From the lower parking lot, just before you get to the steps going up to the main part of the church, go through the door to the right).

When I hear music, I fear no invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
 -- H.D. Thoreau.

If you want to have peace in the world, we have to start with the children.
 -- Gandhi

Write letters!

By our presence or absence, our actions or idleness, our words or our silence we can communicate and advocate for the safety and equity of our students, their families and friends, and all members of the communities in which we live.

One way we can make our beliefs known and perhaps spur change is through writing letters to the editor. Here are a few suggestions for writing such a letter:

• Make one point (or at most two) in your letter. State the point clearly, ideally in the first sentence.
• Make your letter timely (tie the issue you want to write about to a recent event or specific article).
• Familiarize yourself with the coverage/editorial position of the paper. Refute or support specific statements, address relevant facts that are ignored, but do avoid blanket attacks on the media in general or the newspaper in particular.
• Check the letter specifications of the paper (length/format requirements may vary from paper to paper). Generally, two short paragraphs are ideal. You must include your name, address, and phone number.
• Look at the letters that appear in your paper. Is a certain type usually printed? That may give some clues as to what to include or not include.
• Support your facts. If the topic you address is controversial, consider sending documentation aiong witn your letter. Don't overload the editors with too much information.
• Find others to write letters when possible. This will show that other people in the community are concerned about the issue. If your letter doesn't get published, perhaps someone else's on the same topic will.
• Don't fret if your letter is not published. There are many reasons your lettei may not be selected, the most common of which is that publications receive many letters and must make tough choices. If your letter is not published, don't let that discourage you from writing at another time, when the same or another issue moves you to action.

To keep young, every day read a poem, hear a choice piece of music, view a fine painting, and, if possible, do a good action. Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances, and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
 -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

On Internalized Transphobia (part one of four)

I have been aware all along that there is a bigotry towards transpeople, though I have seldom encountered it myself, except from eadocrinoiogists who "don't do that kind of work," and that not all of this comes from straight people.

Trannier Than Thou

There's a kind of class warfare going on among transfolk themselves. It crops up on bulletin boards and listservs, which are rife with shouting matches between people who have never met in person. I sometimes sigh and resign from one board, only to see this crop up on another. After about the twentieth back-and- forth venomous message I tend to hit the eject button.

The categories for exclusion are numerous. Some younger post-operative transsexuals disdain, or are even angry with, older transitioners for having stayed in their birth gender for half a century, enjoying the benefits of being "straight," such as marriage, children, perhaps even a career, and then, when most of the barriers to a sudden change have weakened, ta-daaaa!

Forgetting that when the older people were young, it was a time when everything was harder to achieve: finding a sympathetic and experienced counselor and doctor, access to hormones, and a good surgeon. And the prospect of no longer being able to find work was much higher. Many (myself included) went years not knowing what a transsexual was! So we tried to get by on being transvestites, and hating it, partly because many of us didn't get the buzz from it that true transvestites seem to - just an external inexpressible yearning.

Older transpeople, in turn, seem to disdain the younger ones -- "too political" -- "too idealistic" — and shake their heads over the unfathomable, to them, rise of the genderqueers.

Some post-ops assume a role of "graduate" transsexuals and act patronizingly toward pre-op "undergrads."

Many townspeople, post- and pre-op alike, disdain transvestites and cross-dressers, assuming that cross-dressing can be reduced to the acting out of masturbatory fantasies. There is some truth to what's worrying them, which is that the straight public, and especially puritanical bigots, will confuse them with "those people," and resist their efforts to gain equal accessto restrooms or other "sex" segregated facilities. But by attempting to distance themselves from CDs, they're (we're) being reactive, not proactive. It amounts to "hey, I'm not them, discriminate against them, not me."

Not good.

The technical term for all this is internalized transphobia.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

 -- Risa Bear

PFLAG promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, their families and friends through: support, to cope with an adverse society; education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and advocacy, to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays provides opportunity for dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity, and acts to create a society that is healthy and respectful of human diversity

PLEASE JOIN US IN THE WORK OF PFLAG

• To support GLBTQ youth
• To purchase literature for distribution
• To publish and send our monthly newsletter

An Opportunity For You —— PFLAG is looking for someone who might be interested in doing our monthly newsletter. We are also looking for someone with grant writing experience who might wish to put your skills to work in our efforts to support our youth. Please contact us if you are interested.

This newsletter edited by our wonderful Rose Mary Gray.