LGBT Community: The Harmful Effects Of Bullying

The LGBT community must face harsh judgements and rude remarks simply because of who they love, but the people making those judgements and remarks have not stopped to realize that everyone is a person and it is not wrong for an individual to live in a way that makes them happy. The effects of these remarks cause so much unseen damage to the person who is being handed them from time to time or even daily. The bullying from people that are against LGBT children has led these kids to dark places that vary from depression to suicide. The internet, being such a big part of daily life, makes it much easier for kids to be targeted and LGBT kids are “nearly three times as likely to skip school out of fear for their safety” (Wortham) because “about

A survey was taken, involving high schoolers, that deemed eight percent of students to be gay and of that eight percent, about six percent have reported having used heroin. This is a huge difference in numbers considering only one and one third percent of heterosexual student have reportedly used heroin. This drug could potentially be taken simply because it is an addiction, however, most of the time, drugs are used to sooth the pain someone is feeling. The pain these students are feeling is from being bullied by others. These students have a higher rate of being bullied simply because they are LGBT and “more than 40 percent of these students reported that they had seriously considered suicide, and 29 percent had made attempts to do so in the year before they took the survey” (Hoffman). It should never reach the point in a student’s life that they are being bullied so badly, they consider taking their life. The bullying of the LGBT community has gotten out of hand and “many would find these levels of physical and sexual violence unacceptable and something we should act on quickly”

Joey Graceffa, a well-known YouTuber, is a prime example of a student not realizing that it is not wrong to be a part of the LGBT community until he reached adulthood. He came out in one of the chapters in his first book In Real Life: My Journey To A Pixelated World by simply stating, “I’m gay” (Graceffa 156). From there, he talks about his life growing up and how “remembering back to how difficult it was for me as a kid growing up and feeling like it was wrong, and I shouldn’t be this way (Graceffa), which reveals that at a young age, he was never talked to about the LGBT community not being a negative entity. If his parents or his school had opened up about the LGBT community a little bit more, he might have had a better understanding and could have even avoided feeling that way. However, he was raised with little knowledge and with the idea that it was not okay to be himself, he was even teased throughout his school experienced for acting too feminine or not being interested in what the other boys were interested in. He lived in a reality that taught him it was not okay to be himself and existed in a school with students that picked on him for who he was. Joey Graceffa was allowed the full, happy childhood experience because of the bullying and