There has been a lot of news recently about gay teens committing suicide after the death of Tyler Clementi at Rutger's University a few weeks ago. The Ellen DeGeneres Show (which I am friends with on Facebook) posted a video about the bullying that led to this and several other suicides since. This mention of bullying made me think about why it is occurring which led me to the subject of gender, yet again. So naturally, I decided to blog about it. When we watched the video "Tough Guise" yesterday it mentioned that when boys don't fit into the prescribed gender box, they are called bitch, pussy and other derogatory names for women. Another thing that is frequently challenged is their sexuality. There is a prevalent stereotype in our society that gay men are very feminine. Therefore, if you are not masculine in all respects, you may be considered gay.
The reason why this is tied to bullying is that as gay teens, these men did not fit into the gender box. This is one of the main reasons why gay students are bullied in high school. We as a society have not yet fully accepted the idea that there can be multiple types of male and female. We expect everyone to fit into their gender box. I think in many ways we even go as far as denying gay men a gender. They're not real men, they're "gay." I fear that as long as these concepts pervade in the modern world and lead to such bullying, we will see no end to teens willing to take their own lives.
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