In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

257 Bricks and Stones: Bashing Back with a Fistful of Words Crystal Grills with Flint I came to the Institute because I was pissed off, and I wanted to put my two-cents in with people who were working to find a way to put a stop to all the bullshit and hassles LGBT people deal with just for being gay. I used to be quite shy, and I didn’t expect to tell my story— certainly not to a roomful of strangers where the only familiar face was my mum’s. I’d already come out to her, and she’d come around to being really understanding and supportive, but there were some things I’d never told her. I think something strange happens when people who don’t know each other share similar experiences and come together for a common reason, and I found myself saying things I never thought I’d say. I think the Institute was a safe place for me to speak, as well as a safe place for Mum to hear, in a way that could never have happened between the two of us alone, with shame and blame always getting in the way. With the group there, neither of us could take things too personally, and Mum wasn’t put in the position of having to respond right off the bat. She could take in the information and just sit with it, and nobody—including me—would read her silence the wrong way. We were all just following the Institute guidelines, speaking in turn, one at a time around the circle. The stories just came out of me. Each time it was my turn to speak, I told a little bit more, and a little bit more. First, I told the group about the years of daily taunts and ridicule from classmates and kids down the street. Then I told them about the group of girls that liked to corner me and my friend and threaten us. And then I told the worst story of all, the one I’d never wanted Mum to hear, because how could I expect Crystal Grills with Flint 258 her to see my being gay as something positive when I’d already been bashed bloody once, and I was afraid it would happen again? But in that space, my story was just one of many stories, all of them with the same undercurrent of violence, and all sounding so familiar. It was difficult to say it but good at the same time, and four years after the bashing my mum finally heard what happened to me. I told the group that I’d been walking a lesbian friend home from school so she wouldn’t get the shit kicked out of her, then that same group of girls cornered us again and kicked the crap out of us and absolutely mauled us with trolley bars (metal handles from shopping carts) and bricks. My mum had to hear about the blood pouring out of us, all because we were gay, and about the way our attackers said that being gay is against everything and we should burn in hell, and the way they booted us one more time and told us to die in the gutter. Mum had to hear how I’d hidden the cuts and bruises under long sleeves and long pants until they healed, and how I had explained away my busted eyebrow as a freak sports injury from a really rough game. When we got down to the business of actually writing the script that would become Game On!, a lot came up about violence and about how bashers really fight, what kind of insults they spit out at LGBT kids, what it really feels like to be hit—and it hurts like bloody hell to have somebody blacken your eye or break your nose or split your lip. If you really look at the way LGBT haters and bashers fight, right away you can see that they pull the same crap all the time. It’s always the same slurs and insults: they’re always yelling faggot, dyke, pervert, lemon, fairy queen, lezzo, homo, poofter, queer, pansy, fudge packer, sinner, and freak like a broken record. They make the same threats over and over again, telling you they are going to beat the shit out of you and fuck you up but good, telling you they are going to kill you for being...

Share