Example No. 1: In an interview earlier this week with The Guardian, “Looking” star Russell Tovey, 33, revealed that he was assaulted for being gay, spurring a change in his physical presentation, which his father encouraged.The author of that column responds thus:“I feel like I could have been really effeminate, if I hadn’t gone to the school I went to. Where I felt like I had to toughen up,” he said. “If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path. Because it’s probably given me the unique quality that people think I have.”
Can someone please tell Tovey that he’s not the only one who’s been bullied for being gay? In fact, this happens all the time, causing a suicide rate in the LGBT community drastically higher than the rate for our straight counterparts. But the solution to being bullied isn’t to “hit the gym,” as Tovey says. Rather, it’s our job as a community to speak out against old notions of how people are supposed to express their identities. It’s our job to stop the bullying.Earlier, we read about anti-LGBT violence and self-defense:
"We need to look at the systemic inequalities that are causing people to be victims of violence,” .... “The solution to that is definitely not creating violence to end violence."While I do not agree completely with Tovey's attitude, nor do I agree that the other side presents a complete real-world solution. Doing "our job as a community ... to stop the bullying" and "to look at the systemic inequalities" will not work overnight, if they do at all; in the meantime, what are people supposed to do?
