Tonight's post is a response to something that I experienced last night [and have been experiencing a lot lately].
I was on the Fayetteville Public Schools fan page, reading witty comments from students who were requesting school be canceled [which it wasn't...silly, silly FPS]. Anyway, as I was browsing, I came across something quite peculiar. It went something along the lines of:
if you dont close school were gonna rename you gayetteville
Before moving on, let's examine the above statement. The first thing I notice is the total lack of punctuation and also the lack of capitalization. When presenting our arguments to the people who educate us, it would make sense that we would want to APPEAR intelligent, at least on paper. Otherwise, our teachers are simply convinced that we need to attend school. The above sentence should actually say:
If you don't close school, we're going to rename you Gayetteville.
Now that's better.
My second thought was that this child didn't even have the brain capacity to come up with something better than Gayetteville. I was pretty much fed up with the ignorance and grammatical errors on the FPS page by this point, so I was entirely ready to settle down into my living room chair and enjoy an evening viewing of the HBO Original Series, "Carnivale." [It is wonderful, by the way. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest putting it in your Netflix queue. Now.]
But then I saw the comment below it. Brace yourselves.
more like FAGGOTVILLE
...I'll let you regain your composure before I continue.
Here was my brain: UM, EXCUSE ME? I was entirely prepared to rant. But instead, I calmly replied, "Unnecessary," like the good teenager that I am and let it go. FPS deleted it within the hour, so I was satisfied.
But today, I saw that someone had called FPS District a dyke which is not nearly as bad asFAGGOTVILLE, [Wittiest comment I've ever seen in my life. Oh, man. Can't live up to it, EVER. And it's in all caps! I'm stunned.] but it's still not okay.
The derogatory terms have got to stop, you guys. It is simply unacceptable for students to walk around calling each other faggots and dykes and rug munchers and fruits and fairies and homos and queers and ass bandits. [I've never heard that last one before, but I saw it and it made me giggle.] It's okay for me to call myself a dyke, because I am. And I don't mean it in an offensive way, and when my friends say it, I know they don't either. It's all in good fun.
But when you're trying to insult somebody, don't throw out the word faggot, please. For God's sake, get a brain, get a thesaurus, and find a better word than ass bandit [lolololol, love it].
It's also NOT okay to call somebody a fairy if you know that they are actually part of the LGBT community and you're trying to be an ignorant asshole. That will get you beat up on the streets of San Francisco. And nobody wants that.
If I haven't convinced you yet, here's something that might help. Recognize this kid?
His name was Asher Brown, and he was 13 years old when he killed himself with a shotgun in his stepdad's closet - this past September. This suicide was a DIRECT result of anti-LGBT bullying, and nobody even knew if this kid was gay or not! People at his school teased him because of his size and the way he dressed; they often called him words like "faggot", "queer", and the words I mentioned above. And he took his life.
There are cases of kids just like Asher everywhere. Even at your school. So take a stand. If you see someone saying something ignorant or picking on another kid, say something. It's okay to stand up against homophobic bullying. You might just save a life.
Emily
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