Finn Boyle

Finn Boyle addresses 2,000 student council members at the Iowa Association of Student Councils’ annual fall conference.

The LGBTQ+ community has existed since the beginning of time; however, despite the community’s prevalence, both individuals and their stories are shunned by others, as they do not align with their preconceptions of what gender and sexuality mean.

As people have known me at PV, they have known me as being a gay man generally well-received by most of the school; however, I was not always so secure in my identity. Over time, I have grown more confident in who I am and the opinions that are formed through the way I present myself.

I attended Rivermont Collegiate from kindergarten until the seventh grade, and by my last two years, I was openly gay and felt accepted at the school. When I transferred to PV going into the eighth grade, I had never dealt with the realities of the backlash against my community. Transferring felt like discovering a foreign land, an environment plagued with a virus I wasn’t adapted to.

Finn Boyle, a graduate of Bettendorf High School, shared this similar sentiment despite attending a different school. “In many first interactions, I could see the wheels turning in people’s heads as they made their check-box analyses: ‘slight lisp? Check. An outfit not consisting of sweatpants and a sweatshirt? Check. Talks with his hands? Check. Aha, I was right! He is gay,’” shared Boyle. “Their inner dialogues manifested into their outward reactionary smiles after confirming their initial suspicions.”

The stigma crept out of their minds and manifested into their actions.

As I went to and from each class, people immediately started checking off boxes in their heads, until an individual eventually built up the confidence to ask if I was gay. Because this happened each period, I had no choice but to admit who I really was. By the end of the first day, my shield had folded, and by the end of the week, word had spread around the school of the “new gay kid.”

I started noticing looks in the hallways and classrooms that were too long to be justified as an innocent glance. As time passed, people got more confident in their actions. Peers would ask me if I was gay without performing the obvious mental calculations beforehand. It very quickly progressed into men avoiding me and women seeking me out like an accessory they could buy with their attention.

The confidence in people’s actions continued to grow as they became more comfortable pushing the limits of what they could get away with. In my years at PV, most of the direct harassment I faced was from one majority: straight men. This trend, however, has been consistently seen through the experiences of other queer men. “From my personal experience, boys at Pleasant Valley are more likely to express homophobia than girls. While there are definitely supportive guys and some girls who are not accepting, most of the homophobic comments I hear tend to come from conservative boys,” said sophomore Noah Saxon.

At first, straight men started harassing me individually with small things. A few examples consist of whispering “gay” or “you’re a f-ing weirdo” in my ear, asking an excessive amount of questions about myself and gay people, or flirting with me to lead me on as a joke. However, this was not the worst of it, as more of my peers soon joined in.

A group of then seventh-grade boys that terrorized me for almost the entire year. Some things they would say and do are: “Bro, are you gay? Because that’s crazy.” They would obsessively follow me around, huddled together. On one occasion, they followed me up and down the court during warmups, loudly narrating what I was doing, mimicking me.

One day during their regular pastime, the boys followed me into the locker room, vocally making fun of me. Before I got to my locker, I turned around with the intent of saying something to get them off my tail. However, before a word could leave my mouth, one of my classmates firmly grabbed my butt and tried to walk right past me like nothing happened. I remember my body jolting as the feeling of panic flooded my body, because I had just become the laughing stock of these 7th-grade boys during the moment I was supposed to be defending myself.

In that moment, I had no clue what I was feeling. Never before in my life had I felt so angry and sad at the same time. Tears were welling in my eyes while I attempted to process what just happened. In the hours following, I gaslit myself into believing that I was overreacting. Looking back, I understand that in the moment, I felt violated. I was upset that he touched me, but I was almost more upset at myself because subconsciously, it was the defining feature of myself that led to this assault.

This only scratches the surface of the things that I have experienced as an individual; however, I am grateful that during this ongoing chapter of my life, I know people experiencing the same thing as me.

Will Emerle is a senior at Pleasant Valley. He is talented in theater and accomplished academically. In addition, Emerle is a proud openly gay man; unfortunately, this does not mean he is immune to the stigma of the LGBTQ+ community and the harassment created by it. “The worst external harassment I experienced was someone whispering to their friend about how they thought it would be funny to joke about group-raping me,” said Emerle.

Referring to his one semester he spent at Assumption Catholic high school, Emerle continues, “The worst physical harassment I experienced was when a boy shouted ‘Look, it’s the gay one!’ then jumped at me and tried to grab my neck. I jumped out of the way just in time, and he smashed into the floor, thank god. Another time, a boy walked up to me and whispered ‘I love to kill f*****s’ to me under his breath, then walked away.” Emerle notes these experiences as being a few of the many reasons he transferred to Pleasant Valley High School.

Every member of the community has faced harassment in a variety of ways, and a consistent theme is the mental struggles. “The constant comments and judgmental looks I receive have left a lasting mark, making me feel like something is wrong with me. This has contributed to mental health struggles such as body dysmorphia and eating disorders,” stated Saxon. The ongoing bullying that every member of the community faces slowly degrades the confidence in our identities.

Because of the degradation we experience, sometimes the choices in our social lives contain trade-offs in an attempt to regain the stability we once had. As a result, we often perpetuate the issues that create our struggles. “Objectified for amusement or for aesthetics. Often, we choose the latter and surround ourselves with friends we call allies who date the very men who dehumanize and demean us. In efforts of social survival, we sacrifice true identity for a stereotype (the overly feminine gay man Hollywood first introduced us all to) in order to win the favor of teenage girls who feed into systemic homophobia through their acceptance of football-playing boyfriends who scream f****t out of their car windows through the same smiles previously described,” said Boyle.

Until now, I have only addressed the G of the LGBTQ+ community. This is because I find that their experiences have key differences and similarities that make them two sides of the same coin. I interviewed a lesbian about her experience at Pleasant Valley, and because of her identity, she wishes to remain anonymous; therefore, I will refer to her as Ashley. She states, “As much as I want everyone to know about my relationship and identity, I feel like it’s very hard to be 100% true to myself with the fear of what others, especially at Pleasant Valley, think about me.”

Ashley continues, “Knowing that there are so many homophobic people here makes me feel less comfortable being myself. I find that being surrounded by a degrading environment is upsetting, and at times, scary. I never know who knows that I’m gay, which means I also never know if all the people I’m surrounded by are accepting of me.” In a way, the issues that the lesbian community, as well as those who attempt to conceal their identity for fear of the likely backlash, have their own slough of unique issues that come.

A lesbian individual from Bettendorf High School faces similar issues to those of Ashley. For this reason, I will refer to her as Jill. Jill states, “I’m not openly out partly because I am afraid of being judged by them and being gay becoming my whole personality based on others’ perspectives. I try to tell certain people that I know wouldn’t judge me off of that tiny detail about myself, and of the people I’ve told, I haven’t been treated differently.”

Both Ashley and Jill take the opportunity to keep their identities a secret at both schools because of the social issues brought by being true to their identity.

Later, Jill went on to compare and contrast the way gay and lesbian individuals are perceived, and addresses the social consequences of these preconceptions, “I think gay men are treated as a stereotype by girls in particular because they almost always assume they are gonna be an obnoxious, funny or girly man, this both forces some men to be anything that way, and makes other men not embrace who they are because they believe they have to fit into that stereotype.”

Jill continues, “For lesbian women, men want to see a show and find it unrealistic that women are actually lesbian, and they feel the need to believe they can make them straight. It’s very disturbing and disgusting. Other straight women are really hit or miss on how they will react to a girl being gay. Some will be just fine with it and treat you like normal. Others will say it’s fine, but you know deep down they have a certain dislike for you because you are gay, but they will never say anything to you about it. Lastly, some girls will define you by it and treat you differently because of it.”

These motives are sparked by subconscious gender dynamics. Their actions, whether they know it or not, are centered around how each gender perceives their queer counterpart and their opposite gender. Emerle states, “Lesbians are often fetishized and sexualized by straight men, gay men are stereotyped as effeminate, bisexual individuals are denied their identities.”

Toxic masculinity is a key factor in many of the issues that both gay and lesbian individuals face. Straight men who are afflicted with toxic masculinity and preconceived gender norms feel threatened by the presence of a gay man, for their femininity and the potential for sexual interest in them makes them crack under their own insecurities, causing them to compensate for these insecurities with hate.

For the same reasons, they do not harass lesbian women in the same way they do for gay men. They often sexually harass and fetishize lesbian women, as they feel the need to continue to push these gender ideologies onto a party in which they do not apply. Women who subconsciously or consciously conform to sexist gender norms are often culprits of homophobia and harassment.

They see lesbian women as lesser than themselves, and similar to straight men, they often are uncomfortable with the thought that a lesbian woman could be sexually attracted to them. As a result, they will often try to conceal this discomfort with blind hate. However, in a similar way to straight men, they will leech off of gay men as if they are a prized accessory, for they do not feel threatened by them in the same way straight men do, as gay men don’t offer up anything that will pry at the straight woman’s insecurities.

These ongoing battles that our authenticity brings are not in vain. Looking back from Stanford to his time at Bettendorf High School, Boyle shares this helpful piece of advice, “I contorted myself and my queer identity to better align with what people wanted from me in order to make friends. My newly equipped perspective is this: through authenticity, you attract and repel. Do not let those repelled discourage you from basking in your individuality. Instead, look around: You’ve now curated a community of people who will bring you peace and fulfillment in place of the very people who brought about discomfort and drained you of your pride.”