aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Sticks & stones will break my bones, names hurt heteros too
Being called anti-gay names significantly predicts higher levels of trauma—regardless of sexuality, a study of junior high students in Illinois found.
V. Paul Poteat and Dorothy L. Espelage of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied 143 seventh graders and examined the extent they were the target of anti-gay name-calling over a 1-week period. The students were surveyed again a year later. In addition, the students reported their level of anxiety, depression, school belonging and social withdrawal.
The study, published in The Journal of Early Adolescence, found being the victim of homophobic name-calling was significantly linked with anxiety, depression, personal distress and a lower sense of school belonging, while for females, being the object of name-calling was connected with higher levels of social withdrawal.
The researchers recommend that although name-calling may appear to be harmless banter among students, “teachers and administrators should intervene during these occurrences, and school policies should specifically address and seek to decrease these occurrences.”
