By Sivi Satchi ’15, Feature Editor

About a year ago four girls from Newark Academy’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) proudly shared their personal experience about their sexuality with students, teachers, and faculty. In response, we as a group showed our acceptance with a gesture rarely bestowed on club presentations – we gave them a standing ovation. It’s clear that the Newark Academy community as a whole is welcoming and inclusive. We see nothing like the horrors described in the recent book “LGBT Youth in America’s Schools” by Jason Cianciotto and Sean Cahill: ranging from being outed by guidance counselors to bullying induced suicide. However, phrases like “he’s such a fag” or “that’s so gay” are still used by many students at Newark Academy to describe anyone or anything as inferior. Because such use is widespread, can we truly consider ourselves an accepting place for anyone from the LGBT community?

Spanish teacher Señor Gomez feels that while we are indeed an accepting community, “there are some exceptions”. Similarly, Shivani Pandiri ’14 felt, “our school is pretty tolerant. There are always going to be kids who are bigoted and offensive about their views, but the majority of students are open-minded and willing to accept anyone.” Still, why is it that we frequently condone the use of pejorative terms like “faggot” despite being an inclusive school? Sure, we can “call out people on their homophobia” as Amani Garvin ’15 says, but we don’t always do. Perhaps we consciously or subconsciously still think of someone who is anything but straight as too different from us, and haven’t experienced a truly mixed community to overcome these notions?

While in the past there have been openly gay male students, recently there have been few. This could perhaps be attributed to the idea of masculinity ingrained in our culture. David Leverenz of the University of Florida writes, “The word ‘faggot’ has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fear of homosexuals. It comes out of the depths of manhood: a label of ultimate contempt for anyone who seems sissy, un-tough, uncool.” In other words, homophobia – seen most often in the Academy through the use of demeaning terms – is the fear that other men will emasculate a guy who does not measure up to the standard of the “real man”. This fear of being seen as a sissy shapes the common definition of manhood and seems to infect every race, religion, and economic group. We have all seen recent legislative actions in too many countries discriminating against LGBT rights. The crippling desire to live up to the common expectation of manliness leaves even the most tolerant men silent at best – or in the worst case, forces them to berate others who are different in order to assert that manliness.

On the other side of the sexual divide, if a girl at Newark Academy comes out as gay or bisexual, she’s sure to be met with some opprobrium. As Garvin stated, “female sexuality in between the spectrum comes along with this idea that it’s linked to promiscuity instead of actual relationships. So someone coming out as bisexual is seen as skeevy and more done for attention or to be seen as more sexual. The term ‘double your options’ comes out a lot. Girls who come out are frequently called a slut or a whore who is just seeking attention.” However, like the idea of masculinity, this is a culturally enforced belief, which permeates most settings.

A transgender student describes his experience at Newark Academy to be mostly accepting. “The teachers make it really easy” he said “[and] compared to other schools, NA is really LGBT friendly. But there are some people who are never going to be accepting”. Here again we have proof that while we are better than most communities we still have some ways to go.

We continue to push boundaries though. Last year, two girls went to prom together, an act that, in other schools, probably would have met with resistance. We are definitely taking strides in the right direction and becoming an even more progressive school, but to say that we are completely accepting of all differences would be too generous. We will probably never get to a state of complete tolerance where boys don’t feel the need to assert their masculinity through discriminatory words and girls don’t need to negate each other’s sexuality – but knowing Newark Academy students, we won’t stop trying.