Combating Bullying by Affirming Variation

Keeping It Queer
By Erica Chu

Combating Bullying by Affirming Variation

In my last column I talked the root causes of anti-gay bullying: the policing of gender norms. Whether it’s chastising your sister because her eyebrows aren’t tidy enough or teasing your friend because his jeans are a little too feminine, enforcing “normal” gender standards on others does nothing but limit the potential happiness of others and the possible range of human expression. We who are LGBTQ understand what it’s like to be pressured into being something we can’t or don’t want to be, so as we think of what must be done to prevent anti-gay bullying, we have to start creating an environment that accepts all kinds of gendered expressions: from showtune-singing men and toolbelt-wielding women to men in heels, women with facial hair, and people with all manner of clothing, hair, ways of looking, being, and talking about themselves.

Despite these insights, the lingering question for many responding to the recent increase in attention to bullying is “Why is anti-gay bulling the central concern?” The short response is it shouldn’t be. Bullying has been a very serious problem for all kinds of people for quite a long time, and it has played a central role in many people’s experience with depression, suicide, and violence. Most kids taunted with anti-gay slurs never end up identifying as LGBTQ—this kind of bullying damages straight kids too. Expecting young people to be and act like a very limited standard of masculinity and femininity is constraining and costly even for those who pull it off.

Maintaining an image is difficult, but it’s something we all end up doing (for good or ill) whether it’s trying to act straight enough, gay enough, masculine, feminine, or some other kind of normal enough. When we can’t pull it off, we’re bullied or we’re reminded in more subtle ways that we need to try harder.

As an adolescent, I was rarely bullied with anti-gay slurs, but I was often treated like I was too fat, not pretty enough, not white enough, not American enough, not Chinese enough, too strange looking, not rich enough, too religious, too smart, too weird, too goofy, and basically not normal enough. For every person, the list is varied in content and length on what we supposedly need to work on to be more acceptable in the world.

Our cultural obsession with normalcy is what causes judgment, which then leads directly to bullying. If we want to stop bullying, we must stop striving after normalcy, stop trying to enforce normalcy on others, and start accepting and affirming variation.

Variation is good. Weirdness is good, and failing to affirm others in their departure from the norm (no matter how weird it seems to you) is just as bad as telling them they shouldn’t be gay because heterosexuality is normal.

The end of bullying may seem along ways off, but we can start now by making sure we’re not supporting the logic bullies use. The next time you start thinking “That is so weird/ugly/too ___/not ___ enough,” challenge yourself to affirm the choices of others. Don’t give up the battle to stand up for the outsider—even the battle taking place inside your head. If you can change your own mind, you’re on your way to changing the world.


Erica Chu is a student at Loyola University Chicago and is seeking a PhD in English with a concentration in Women Studies and Gender Studies. They manage the blog keepingitqueer.blogspot.com and can be reached at ericachu@msn.com.