High School: The Queer Experience

By Nina Salameh

At my school, teachers would turn a blind eye when students yelled “gay” as an insult. The culture was, and had been since I entered, that queer couples were “cringe”, a thing to be laughed at. As someone who identified as bisexual, this created an unsafe, frightening environment. I only came out to my closest friends, and helplessly watched as the school culture became more and more harmful for queer students. My female identifying friends who came out to other girls were immediately accused of having feelings for all their friends, the people who came out as trans were mocked for their pronouns. While it seemed harmless, it led to a breaking point in my school. 

I was eating lunch with one of my closest friends when someone came over and yelled slurs at them while throwing milk boxes at their faces. The following week, a gay couple holding hands was jeered at and attacked with food again. In response, the anti-defamation league finally got involved at our school to improve the environment through “The no place for hate” campaign. I was heavily involved in the campaign, hosting workshops for large groups of students on how to create safe, accepting spaces, working with my counselors to make presentations, and meeting with admin constantly to discuss the issues faced by queer students. My admin was unfortunately highly understaffed. Yet a few tired, overworked counselors took the extra time after school to work with me, listen to me in a way that none of my peers ever had. Finally, our work culminated in a presentation about our struggles to the PTSA. Prompting parents to have engaging, sensitive conversations with their children about queer rights felt like an important step in creating a new set of social norms at my school, where being queer was no longer the butt of the joke.