TMC Poll: Does homophobic bullying happen in University?

by Devil’s Food Cake

Gay chicken anyone? In what must be a first, a report in the Guardian earlier this week tells of two students demonstrating the game to a professor, who was thus inspired to carry out research on the number of straight men who make out with each other.

Straight. Right. In what must be the most hilarious article I’ve ever read, Eric Anderson, a sociology lecturer at Bath University, describes his resulting interest in the number of heterosexual students who kissed each other for fun, describes these make-out sessions as having originated for the “shock value”of it all, and explains that two straight guys making out is now just a normal, everyday thing that two men do “for a laugh”.

Yeah. And can’t a girl just hug another girl with her legs in friendship?

Anyway – enough of that. An interesting point comes up in the course of the article, where “Anderson, 43, now believes homophobia is dying out on university campuses, and says attitudes to male kissing reflect that.” He goes on to say that: “homophobia is in rapid retreat – it’s just not the issue it was when I was a kid.”

In interesting rebuttal to this point, Gary Nunn, Communications Officer at Stonewall, says that: “Stonewall’s own research shows that homophobic bullying is rife in schools[...]  and research by the Equality Challenge Unit finds that 49.5% of students in higher education have been treated in a negative way because of their sexual orientation… Homophobic bullying doesn’t just stop at university. Stonewall’s own University Guide shows that many universities still don’t do enough to tackle homophobia on their campuses.”

I know I had to deal with homophobic bullying at university: a girl once flipped a lit cigarette at me in the Student’s Union bar, and a friend was lambasted for being a dyke in the same place. But what’s your experience of bullying at university?

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