School Bullies Target Effeminate Boys
Published: Sunday | July 1, 2012 6 Comments
Nadisha Hunter, Staff Reporter

Several schoolboys are being targeted for bullying by their peers because they are not as “macho” as expected.

Labelled “sissies” or “gays”, these young men are enduring a painful level of bullying, even if they are not homosexuals.

The Sunday Gleaner has confirmed that homophobic bullying in schools is taking a toll on some students.

Most times, with no proof, bullies have taken aim at some boys, driving them to the edge.

Psychologist Claudine Hyatt, who heads the Department of Psychology, Counselling and Allied Services at Mico Care Centre, told The Sunday Gleaner that some youngsters are bullied until they become suicidal.

“I have anecdotal evidence of individuals coming in who have been bullied, they have been physically attacked, they have been verbally abused by individuals, oftentimes these persons pursue or contemplate suicide as a means of resolving the unrest that they experience in their interpersonal relationship,” said Hyatt.

“As you can imagine, someone’s sexuality is almost similar to their personality in that it is a part of their identity and so in Jamaica when we engage in homophobic bullying you are saying to the individual that they should repudiate who you are; they should get rid of that part of them,” added Hyatt .

She called for sensitisation programmes which could help students to be more accepting of people’s decision.

“We need a curriculum that promotes respect for diversity. I think once we are embracing that posture it becomes easier for us to accept that differences exist and this is just another manifestation of human difference.

“I think if we promote tolerance in Jamaica and teach it to our students then it will translate in a reduction in homophobic bullying,” she argued.

decline in grades

Homophobic bullying, Hyatt said, has also resulted in a dramatic decline in some students’ grades and has affected their growth in society.

It is obvious that the tolerance level for these students is low in some schools.

The Sunday Gleaner recently spoke with a group from a prominent secondary school in Kingston who were dead set against homosexuality.

” We bun dem thing deh man, any boy a do them thing deh no fi mix with other students,” one boy declared.

“If I personally know of a gay in the school, me personally a make him life miserable,” he continued.

Another student argued, “While we can’t tell people what to choose, we have to torment them because we don’t want them around us.”

dislikes behaviour

He admitted that he participated in the act of homophobic bullying as he dislikes the behaviour of students accused of being homosexuals.

It is another problem that teachers are now having to deal with.

One teacher, who recently taught at two prominent schools in the Corporate Area, has charged that guidance counsellors sometimes do not address the issue well.

“There are some (guidance counsellors) who, because their church don’t belief in homosexuality, don’t deal with the situation properly. But the stakeholders in education need to come on board and assist,” said the teacher.

In a letter to the editor of The Gleaner, the teacher argued that the Government and civil society have failed to adequately address the negative impact on human development, caused by the discrimination against youth who are perceived to be homosexuals.

“I recall a particular case in which a young man, who behaved effeminate and was perceived to be gay, was affected by severe bullying by not only his peers but also, shockingly, by his own teachers.”

The teacher added, “The mother of this student got frustrated to the point where she, as well as other members of the family reportedly started to physically abuse the young man”.

According to the teacher, in addition to the physical scars the young man had emotional scars because of the bullying.

Arthur Chigoriwa | VOA | A Zimbabwean court on Wednesday ruled that two women who recently confessed to engaging in witchcraft practices should stand trial after a medical examination declared them mentally stable.

Rosemary Kamanga, aged 48, and Esnath Maodza, 56, were arrested in Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West, two week ago after they were discovered stark naked in a neighborhood in the morning.

The two suspects claimed they had been dropped off a winnowing basket by a colleague, named as Shylet Muzeza while returning from a nocturnal witching assignment at a nearby compound.

Though small, unable to fly and virtually impossible to sustain the weight of a human being, let alone three, belief abounds in Zimbabwe and other African traditions that a winnowing basket is used as a mode of transport by witches.

Kamanga and Maodza, who found themselves in an unsuspecting family’s backyard, demanded human flesh from their colleague, accusing her of abandoning them and exposing them to retribution by the neighborhood.

Presiding, Chinhoyi Magistrate Fanny Nyakudya told a packed court room that a medical evaluation he had requested found the two to be of “sound mind.”

The suspects are facing charges of breaching the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, pertaining to “engaging in practices commonly associated with witchcraft.”

The two are currently on free bail and are expected back in court July 11.

Prosecutors say they will call, among other witnesses, experts from the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association, ZINATHA, to explain the intricacies of witchcraft to the court.

Parliament amended the country’s laws a few years ago to recognize acts typical of witchcraft as a criminal offense.

Psalm 41[a]

1 Blessed are those who have regard for the weak;
the Lord delivers them in times of trouble.
2 The Lord protects and preserves them—
they are counted among the blessed in the land—
he does not give them over to the desire of their foes.
3 The Lord sustains them on their sickbed
and restores them from their bed of illness.
4 I said, “Have mercy on me, Lord;
heal me, for I have sinned against you.”
5 My enemies say of me in malice,
“When will he die and his name perish? ”
6 When one of them comes to see me,
he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander;
then he goes out and spreads it around.
7 All my enemies whisper together against me;
they imagine the worst for me, saying,
8 “A vile disease has afflicted him;
he will never get up from the place where he lies.”
9 Even my close friend,
someone I trusted,
one who shared my bread,
has turned[b] against me.
10 But may you have mercy on me, Lord;
raise me up, that I may repay them.
11 I know that you are pleased with me,
for my enemy does not triumph over me.
12 Because of my integrity you uphold me
and set me in your presence forever.
13 Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting.
Amen and Amen.

What do you know about our past leaders, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga?

http://youtu.be/uBRVRy7HsMU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yS8Pl0jYUY&feature=related

The world’s first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.
The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three ‘parents’.
Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.
Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults –two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their ‘germline’ means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.
Altering the human germline – in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species – is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world’s scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers, led by fertility pioneer Professor Jacques Cohen, say that this ‘is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children’.
Some experts severely criticised the experiments. Lord Winston, of the Hammersmith Hospital in West London, told the BBC yesterday: ‘Regarding the treat-ment of the infertile, there is no evidence that this technique is worth doing . . . I am very surprised that it was even carried out at this stage. It would certainly not be allowed in Britain.’

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: ‘One has tremendous sympathy for couples who suffer infertility problems. But this seems to be a further illustration of the fact that the whole process of in vitro fertilisation as a means of conceiving babies leads to babies being regarded as objects on a production line.

‘It is a further and very worrying step down the wrong road for humanity.’ Professor Cohen and his colleagues diagnosed that the women were infertile because they had defects in tiny structures in their egg cells, called mitochondria.

They took eggs from donors and, using a fine needle, sucked some of the internal material – containing ‘healthy’ mitochondria – and injected it into eggs from the women wanting to conceive.
Because mitochondria contain genes, the babies resulting from the treatment have inherited DNA from both women. These genes can now be passed down the germline along the maternal line.

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates ‘assisted reproduction’ technology in Britain, said that it would not license the technique here because it involved altering the germline.
Jacques Cohen is regarded as a brilliant but controversial scientist who has pushed the boundaries of assisted reproduction technologies.

He developed a technique which allows infertile men to have their own children, by injecting Fluid DNA straight into the egg in the lab.

Prior to this, only infertile women were able to conceive using IVF. Last year, Professor Cohen said that his expertise would allow him to clone children –a prospect treated with horror by the mainstream scientific community.
‘It would be an afternoon’s work for one of my students,’ he said, adding that he had been approached by ‘at least three’ individuals wishing to create a cloned child, but had turned down their requests.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk