GRIN Campaign

Last updated
Global Respect In Education
Founded2010
Founder Claudia White
TypeEducational Charity
Focus Education, LGBTQ, respect, bullying and homophobia
Location
  • UK
Area served
Global with focus on the US and UK
Method Popular education and social media awareness campaigns
Website www.grincampaign.com

GRIN Campaign, Global Respect in Education, is a transatlantic non-profit organisation and advocacy group which campaigns primarily for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people's social and political equality in education. [1] [2] [3] It seeks to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression in all educational institutes with an underlying message that "being different was 'cool'". [4] It is one of the first campaigns of its kind to originate outside the United States, be run by students and intentionally international. [5] [6] [7]

Contents

The campaign supports both direct action and a viral photographic protest, known as “RESPECT” to help "make respecting people in school a cool idea" and ignorance to be “uncool”. [1] [6] The photographs show people in front of a white backdrop wearing block rainbow colors with “RESPECT” painted on their face in the colors of the gay pride flag. [8] The campaign was created on October 29, 2010, by Bedales School student Claudia White. [1] The RESPECT photographs are featured on the campaign's website, as well as Facebook and Flickr. The campaign also had over 1000 followers on Twitter within a week of its website going live. [9] [ unreliable source? ]

History

GRIN Campaign was initiated in response to a rash of widely publicized bullying-related suicides of juvenile, particularly, LGBTQ youth, including that of Tyler Clementi. [2] [10] It was established as a UK and US alternative to other, older LGBT civil rights advocacy organizations, which did not place as much emphasis on education, and focused only on the United States. [6] The campaign hopes to build awareness in the same spirit as the Day of Silence, It Gets Better Project, No on 8 campaigns and efforts to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. [11]

The campaign coordinated with Spirit Day (October 20) when people are encouraged to wear purple symbolic of spirit from the rainbow flag. [2]

In 2011 the campaign worked to add "amendments to the UK’s Educational White Paper, started developing anti-bullying and LGBT rights lesson plans, and wrote letters to corporations in the UK that they believed were being homophobic or transphobic." [6] In the summer of 2012 the campaign received a grant to travel to San Francisco in the United States to teach their lesson plans about discrimination based bullying and utilize the RESPECT photographic campaign. [6]

In 2013 the campaign started a petition to add the word 'transphobia' to the Oxford English Dictionary and the dictionary lexicon of Microsoft Office. The petition was hosted on the website Change.org and gained nearly 10,000 signatures. By June, both Microsoft and the Oxford English Dictionary had added the word 'transphobia' to their dictionary lexicons. [12] [13] [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transphobia</span> Anti-transgender prejudice

Transphobia consists of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to social gender roles. Transphobia is a type of prejudice and discrimination, similar to racism, sexism, or ableism, and it is closely associated with homophobia. People of color who are transgender experience discrimination above and beyond that which can be explained as a simple combination of transphobia and racism.

GLSEN is an American education organization working to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression and to prompt LGBT cultural inclusion and awareness in K-12 schools. Founded in 1990 in Boston, Massachusetts, the organization is now headquartered in New York City and has an office of public policy based in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stonewall (charity)</span> UK-based charity and advocacy group for LGBT rights

Stonewall Equality Limited, trading as Stonewall, is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) rights charity in the United Kingdom. It is the largest LGBT rights organisation in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">São Paulo Gay Pride Parade</span> Annual LGBT event in Brazil

São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade is an annual gay pride parade that has taken place in Avenida Paulista, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, since 1997. It is South America's largest Pride parade, and is listed by Guinness World Records as the biggest pride parade in the world starting in 2006 with 2.5 million people. They broke the Guinness record in 2009 with four million attendees. They have kept the title from 2006 to at least 2016. They had five million attendants in 2017. As of 2019 it has three to five million attendants each year. In 2019, it was also the second larger event of the city of São Paulo in terms of total revenue and the first in terms of daily revenue. In 2010, the city hall of São Paulo invested 1 million reais in the parade. According to the LGBT app Grindr, the gay parade of the city was elected the best in the world.

The Queer Youth Network (QYN) was a national non-profit-making organisation that was run by and for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) young people and is based in the United Kingdom. It had an aim to represent the needs and views of younger LGBT people by campaigning for greater visibility and equal rights, as well as providing general support and information to those who are just coming out or who are experiencing homophobia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT rights opposition</span> Opposition to legal rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people

Opposition to legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people exists throughout the world. LGBT rights opponents may be opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality; laws permitting civil unions or partnerships or supporting LGBT parenting and adoption, LGBT military members, access to assisted reproductive technology, and access to sex reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy for transgender individuals.

The origin of the LGBT student movement can be linked to other activist movements from the mid-20th century in the United States. The Civil Rights Movement and Second-wave feminist movement were working towards equal rights for other minority groups in the United States. Though the student movement began a few years before the Stonewall riots, the riots helped to spur the student movement to take more action in the US. Despite this, the overall view of these gay liberation student organizations received minimal attention from contemporary LGBT historians. This oversight stems from the idea that the organizations were founded with haste as a result of the riots. Others historians argue that this group gives too much credit to groups that disagree with some of the basic principles of activist LGBT organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT rights in the United Kingdom</span>

The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have developed significantly over time. Today, lesbian, gay and bisexual rights are considered to be advanced by international standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Educational Action Challenging Homophobia</span> LGBT charity in the UK

Educational Action Challenging Homophobia (EACH) is a charity based in the United Kingdom which "affirms the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBTQ) people and reduces discrimination experienced because of sexual orientation or gender identity." Since 2003, EACH has delivered training and consultancy services on sexuality and gender identity matters across the statutory, voluntary and private sectors. It also provides support to those affected by homophobic, biphobic or transphobic bullying through its nationwide, freephone helpline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Think Before You Speak (campaign)</span> LGBT support campaign

The Think Before You Speak campaign is a television, radio, and magazine advertising campaign launched in 2008 and developed to raise awareness of the common use of derogatory vocabulary among youth towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people. It also aims to "raise awareness about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBTQ bias and behaviour in America's schools." As LGBTQ people have become more accepted in the mainstream culture, more studies have confirmed that they are one of the most targeted groups for harassment and bullying. An "analysis of 14 years of hate crime data" by the FBI found that gays and lesbians, or those perceived to be gay, "are far more likely to be victims of a violent hate crime than any other minority group in the United States". "As Americans become more accepting of LGBT people, the most extreme elements of the anti-gay movement are digging in their heels and continuing to defame gays and lesbians with falsehoods that grow more incendiary by the day," said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report. "The leaders of this movement may deny it, but it seems clear that their demonization of gays and lesbians plays a role in fomenting the violence, hatred and bullying we're seeing." Because of their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression, nearly half of LGBTQ students have been physically assaulted at school. The campaign takes positive steps to counteract hateful and anti-gay speech that LGBTQ students experience in their daily lives in hopes to de-escalate the cycle of hate speech/harassment/bullying/physical threats and violence.

Research has found that attempted suicide rates and suicidal ideation among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) youth are significantly higher than among the general population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Education and the LGBT community</span>

Historically speaking, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people have not been given equal treatment and rights by both governmental actions and society's general opinion. Much of the intolerance for LGBT individuals come from lack of education around the LGBT community, and contributes to the stigma that results in same-sex marriage being legal in few countries (31) and persistence of discrimination, such as in the workplace.

The Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD) is a charitable organization which works towards stopping bullying, discrimination, and homophobia in schools and communities in Canada, and abroad. Through workshops, presentations, training conferences, and by supporting youth initiatives, they engage youth in celebrating diversity of gender identity, gender expression, and romantic orientation and/or sexual orientation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Time for Inclusive Education</span>

Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) is a charity and which has a stated aim of addressing prejudice and bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) young people with education in Scotland’s schools. The charity is overseen by a Board and delivers services in schools across Scotland.

Education sector responses to LGBT violence addresses the ways in which education systems work to create safe learning environments for LGBT students. Overall, education sector responses tend to focus on homophobia and violence linked to sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, and less on transphobia. Most responses focus in some way on diverse expressions of gender and support students to understand that gender may be expressed in a different way from binary models. Responses vary greatly in their scope ; duration ; and level of support that they enjoy.

Due to the increased vulnerability that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth face compared to their non-LGBT peers, there are notable differences in the mental and physical health risks tied to the social interactions of LGBT youth compared to the social interactions of heterosexual youth. Youth of the LGBT community experience greater encounters with not only health risks, but also violence and bullying, due to their sexual orientation, self-identification, and lack of support from institutions in society.

The LGB Alliance is a British advocacy group and registered charity founded in 2019 in opposition to the policies of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on transgender issues. Its founders are Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott. The LGB Alliance describes its objective as "asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted", and states that such a right is threatened by "attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender". The group has opposed a ban on conversion therapy that includes trans people in the UK, opposed the use of puberty blockers for children, and opposed gender recognition reform.

Bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people, particularly LGBT youth, involves intentional actions toward the victim, repeated negative actions by one or more people against another person, and an imbalance of physical or psychological power.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Bryan Moore, "Respect protest: Anti-bullying effort launches beyond the United States", San Diego Gay & Lesbian News, December 24th, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 "Teens from Sussex School Go Public with Their GRIN Photo Campaign to Combat Bulling of Gays in Schools", UK Gay News, December 31, 2010.
  3. "On the Show from 9 January 2011- School Students' Global Respect IN Education (GRIN) Campaign & Whitehawk & Manor Farm History Society Book", RadioReverb (97.2 FM - East Sussex), 9 January 2011.
  4. "Online anti-bullying campaign launched", Petersford Post, 18 March 2011, page 5.
  5. Tom C. "Gaytalk Live", 4 December 2010, Episode 048/383, Queer Public Radio.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Jason Chu, B. Brian Topaz editor, "Put On a GRIN and Stand for Equality", SF Gam Newpower, 9 December 2011.
  7. "Sgoilearan Sussex a’ dèanamh sabaid air gràin air luchd-gèidh le iomairt GRIN", Naidheachdan Pinc, January 1, 2011.
  8. "School Children Encouraged To GRIN", Shout Out: BCFM 93.2 (Bristol, UK), 10 December 2010.
  9. "Teenager Launches Global Respect in Education (GRIN) Campaign", Bedales, 15/11/2010.
  10. Michael Diviesti, "The GRIN Campaign, bringing respect for the LGBT community to our schools", Twenty Ten, December 14, 2010. (audio interview version at )
  11. "Teenager Launches Global Respect in Education", Gay UK News, 3 December 2010.
  12. Anna Peirano (2013-06-24). ""Transphobic" officially added to Oxford English Dictionary | Articles". dot429. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  13. "The Oxford English Dictionary And Microsoft Office Will Officially Recognize "Transphobia" / Queerty". Queerty.com. 2013-06-24. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  14. "New words list June 2013". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2014-01-15.