There is a problem with the way that we are educating children in this country.
I’m not talking about examinations, or the provision of adequate exercise opportunities, or Michael Gove’s atrocious destruction of the teen curricula (although I’m angry about that too). I’m talking about the way that we are failing to equip LGBT+ children to understand and express themselves, and why it needs to change.
When I was little, I didn’t know who I was. I’m sure few children do and even fewer care, given the rarity of existential panic in children under the age of 6, but when I was young, all I knew was that something wasn’t right.
I had a uniform that helped to ground me. Part of it was my actual school uniform (boy’s jumper, boy’s trousers, boy’s shoes), accepted by teachers because before the age of 6, much of the time children aren’t gendered, they’re just muddy.
But when I got to junior school, things were different. I had to wear a summer dress, which made me cross and insecure, my requests to be allowed to wear the boys’ May-July uniform of a polo shirt and shorts falling on deaf and unsympathetic ears. So I took matters into my own hands. I wore shorts under my dress (which came in handy for showing off my sick handstands at lunchtime without showing off my less sick spotty blue pants).
I was a secret agent, and my shorts were my secret identity. My mission (that I’d both assigned and accepted) was to convince everyone at school that I was a girl (hence the dress) despite the fact that underneath, I was a whirling mess of confusion and panic (hence the tiger bandanas I wore from 4pm to bedtime, my flustered flirtations with literally everyone, and the insistence on calling myself Pete on school trips).
Over the years, my family adjusted to the 21st Century, and the arrival of a family computer into the house brought with it MSN, fanfiction.net, and the opportunity to ask Google (or Smarterchild) why I felt weird about myself, whenever I wanted. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I truly came across clear definitions of words like “bisexual” (though I’d had an inkling for a while, given my pubescent penchant for rewritings of the Prisoner of Azkaban, and their liberal interpretations of the relationship between Sirius Black and Remus Lupin). I wasn’t aware of the term “non-binary”, the one that I’ve also now adopted as my own, until I entrenched myself in the Tumblr community aged 19.
For 19 years I didn’t understand who I was.
In 2012, Stonewall’s School Report found that more than half (53%) of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people are never taught anything about LGB issues at school. That statistic doesn’t include transgender children, but I would confidently hazard the guess that if it did, the story would remain unchanged, if it didn’t get worse.
This information is damning when you take into account the much talked-about YouGov poll which revealed that, of the people surveyed, 49% of 18-24 year olds did not identify as exclusively heterosexual. If you wanted to apply that statistic, and the findings of the Stonewall School Report, to the population of the UK, that could mean that 25.97% of 18-24 year olds went entirely uneducated about their sexual orientations growing up.
Many people don’t feel like they find out who they truly are until they leave home to start work or attend university and have the chance to experiment, but this, to me, is too late – especially when you take into account the support charity Metro’s 2014 findings. In a survey of 7,000 16-24 year olds, they found that 44% of young LGBT people have considered suicide, and 52% report self-harm either now or in the past. Children all over the country, and doubtless all over the world, are growing up alone and confused, only learning that they are part of a wider community when they are able to connect with others online, and investigate and redefine the labels they want to claim for themselves.
Sure, things are getting better; growing representation of LGBT+ people in the media and in our communities is leading to greater awareness and acceptance, but we can do more. We need to do more.
The student body at the University of Bristol, guided by the LGBT+ Society, has been making great strides over the last few years in its efforts to provide for LGBT+ students, through awareness campaigns for asexual and transgender students (one of which went viral), the provision of gender neutral toilets, and the election of a transgender Equality, Liberation and Access Officer to the Students’ Union Sabbatical Officer team. They also offer support to students who have been affected by issues such as those that have been talked about in this article. For more information, check out lgbtplusbristol.org.uk.