"It Gets Better", and some don't make it out of the dungeon.

Me at 8 years. I made it.
Many don't.

I am pleased the Ontario government is going to implement the new health and physical education curriculum. As I stated in this post, it's long overdue and very much needed.  Dammit Janet does a good piece here.

I have been passionate about this since I was a kid in high school, trying to figure my way forward. I knew I was different from grade three or four. I didn't know why or how I was different, or if there was something wrong with me. Teachers never said anything in school about differences. You learned from your friends and peers. We were taught how babies were made and how to avoid Venereal Disease and you didn't want to be called Fag or Homo.

That was it. So in grade ten, I found myself in the library of my high school practically alone. It needed to be that way, you couldn't be caught looking up something like homosexuality. I've told the story of the beating and taunting I was subject too in high school, you can see that here. I mention it as it was after the beating when I was sure I must be a homo.

In the library I checked the shelves. Nothing said "Want to find out if you're a fag?" I was scared. I finally pulled out a huge dictionary. I looked up homosexuality. It confirmed my friends and peers taunts. I was a pervert. It was freaky to read that. It was a low point. Yet somehow I came around to thinking it couldn't be true. I wasn't a bad person. I still never talked to anyone about it. You couldn't.




And this all came flooding back to me when I heard Graham Moore who won Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Imitation Game". His words could have saved me a lot of grief. And a lot of lost lives.

I am very excited the Ontario Government has brought in such an important and life saving curriculum.

So many like me didn't make it, so many struggled much more, some still live with the scars. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, from high school, no less. 

The carnage of the system can be explained no better than through Canuck Attitude blogger, Bruce. Bruce was a victim,  This is what he had to say about the "It Gets Better" project. 

Bruce said ...  "As much as I'm impressed and heartened by Dan

Bruce making bread on a visit to my farm

Savage's It Gets Better Project and the incredible response it has generated, I can't shake the feeling that all we are doing is patting kids on the head and sending them back to the dungeons while telling them to be patient. I'm sorry, but that's still a kind of tacit approval of bullying." 

Bruce was a victim of our school system, three decades after leaving it. His life experience, an experience not unlike many other gay men.  Some make it too see, "It Gets Better", and some don't make it out of the dungeon.

The new curriculum the Ontario government is bringing in this September will go a long way to eliminating the dungeon and cases of culturally induced PTSD.