Greg Knotts
This book offers an insight into the lives of children. Gay children. Straight children. It also offers an insight into the adults in the lives of those children: parents, teachers, administrators, and doctors. Professionals in education, mental health, and gender studies should be required to read this thoughtful, factual investigation into the lives of children. The voices of students, coupled with suggestions for programmatic and systemic means for combating homophobia complete this account of real lives in the public schools at the dawn of the new millennium. With a background in clinical psychology, the author infuses a mental health lens into the accounts offered by children — gay and straight alike — about what it means to be in the homophobic environment of public schools. The book can be used as a resource for students and parents, as well as anyone who works with children in any capacity.
Jean Baker offers a critical look at the existence of homophobia in the school system and the reaction of people to that homophobia. Baker suggests that with very few changes in behavior and language, the struggle against this pervasive negative attitude can be changed with little effort. The book is targeted at children who will grow up to be gay — and the effects a homophobic environment can have on them. But Baker also makes a solid attempt to include the lives of children who will grow up to be straight and the effects this same homophobic environment can have on them and the future lives of everyone involved.
Baker uses the phrase 'children who will grow up to be…' (straight or gay) and allows for their identities to be formed as they continue to grow and mature. This is a powerful distinction. Whether espousing an essentialist or social constructivist argument, Baker says, in effect, 'let's not talk about the sexuality of children; let's talk about the impact on their later sexuality that this homophobic environment will have.' It is solid base from which to begin the discussion. So often it is difficult to discuss sexuality and children — in any medium. What Baker does is say that we are not discussing the sexuality of children. We are discussing the mental health of children. It is a valid place to begin her discussion.
As the book is targeted especially for children who will grow up to be gay, Baker begins the discussion with one focusing on the pervasive homophobic and heteronormative culture at large. Baker supports her assertions of a homophobic culture with research from Herek, Hetrick, and Lacayo. She also uses popular media and cultural representations of homophobia from the Boy Scouts, to federally funded programs, to religious groups. Then she brings that discussion next to the school community and then to the level of the individual within that community. "Children who are growing up to be gay may start to catch on that they are different from other children and that this difference is shameful in some mysterious and poorly understood way" (p. 6). Children are following adult models of prejudice and the language of silence that is steeped in the larger community, but lives itself out in the school community as well.
One of the greatest difficulties, Baker says, is the lack of parental support for gay children. Often it is not an intended lack of support. Unlike other minority groups, parents of gay children are often not members of the minority to which their children belong and so are not able to recognize, experience, or even be aware of the kinds of attitudes and behaviors their children are exhibiting that may be crying out for help.
Baker offers some pragmatic suggestions on how schools can combat the pervasive homophobia found within the school culture. Implementing explicit policies and programs that disallow for homophobia is a necessary beginning. Including sexuality under the multicultural umbrella is also a necessary step. Including comprehensive sex education — at appropriate age levels and in appropriate ways — is also necessary. Baker does not define what 'appropriate' in either case means, which is problematic, but this assertion for a comprehensive sex education is echoed in many studies and the language of anyone, it seems, outside of the present Bush administration, who continually lobbies for, and only funds, abstinence-only sex education programs.
Baker uses an entire chapter to debunk many commonly held myths of homosexuals and homosexuality. The work of Bem, Duberman, and Sullivan are used in discussions of everything from homosexuality as 'choice,' to the ever-popular homosexual as sexual predator myths. Baker also includes the many voices from her own research. Voices of children who have lived these myths in the realities of their school settings and how those pervasively negative thoughts impact them are included to help combat these myths and fallacies.
Identity development and the coming out process are treated with depth and insight. Baker also discusses the coming out process for parents who have children who identify as homosexual. How parents embrace (or not) this coming out is extremely impactful and can contribute in a variety of ways to how youth construct their future worlds.
Baker offers insights into the school community. Using voices from her own research, we learn of the often horrific circumstances that students are subjected to while at school. We learn of the verbal and physical harassment, the loss of effort and achievement on the part of many gay youth, the suicide attempts, which are three times as likely to occur in gay youth than in their heterosexual counterparts. These voices are simply echoing those that the literature reflect consistently in the gay youth experience. Baker constructs the school, reflecting the work of Franklin, as one of offering 'cultural permission' for homophobic attitudes and behaviors. Her research brings an opportunity to hear the voices of the often silenced sexual minority youth who call for a change to this cultural permission at school.
Offer us a comprehensive sex education, these youth report. Provide out role models and support networks at school. Include these topics into the curriculum. Be honest and be factual — do not bring a value-laden discussion into these issues. Provide a safe space for discussion and information gathering. Youth are clamoring for help — and they are offering a blueprinted roadmap as to how to best provide this help.
Baker offers a step-by-step way in which teachers, school counselors, and administrators can address gay and lesbian issues at school. This chapter is perhaps the most valuable in this work. It is a critical look at practice and the reality of what educators face today. Baker offers suggestions from the very low stakes to the very high stakes manner of adopting a new role in the school community. The chapter reads as a 'how to' for all kinds of educators and how they might best approach a topic they may have not been comfortable with previously. Baker does not demand that all educators adopt soap boxes and become advocates for sexual minorities, but rather offers a variety of ways in which they can change the present hostile environment with minor effort and a little willingness.
Baker also includes a thorough discussion of politics, social policy, and the medical and mental health community approaches to issues of minority sexuality. Nothing in these chapters is transformative, per se, but they help provide a thorough treatment of the presence of homophobia in a variety of settings — and how that homophobia affects children.
The cover of the book contains six pictures of children of different ages in various settings. Two pictures are obviously elementary aged children and the other four contain pictures of youth in the middle school and high school grades. These pictures reflect the content of the book as well. Very few researchers approach the topic of sexuality and elementary aged children. Baker, in framing her argument in 'children who will become…', does not necessarily directly address minority sexuality at this age either. However, what she does do is allow for the possibility that these children who will become are, in fact, becoming as early as the elementary grades. It is important and somewhat transformative that such a discussion of the elementary grades is happening in this discussion of homophobia.
Baker ends this book with a chapter entitled 'The Tipping Point.' Using the work of Gladwell and the idea of a 'tipping point' in what he calls 'social epidemics,' Baker leaves us with wondering what the tipping point will be that forces us to confront this pervasive homophobia. For Baker, the 'tipping point' was the suicide of one of her own children as a result of not being able to confront his identifying as gay. It is clear that this heavily influences Baker as many chapters, and information within others, are devoted to how parents can talk with, help, and be resources for their children. What Baker leaves us with is wondering what our tipping point will be. Will the suicide rate of gay youth need to be even higher than it already is? Will the harassment of gay youth have to escalate to even more consistent violence? Baker offers concrete, tangible ways to combat this pervasive homophobia in schools. How Homophobia Hurts Children: Nurturing Diversity at Home, at School, and in the Community calls us to let the tipping point be now and let that homophobic school culture become a thing of the past.
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