Negative Coping and Academic Struggles

From the above quotes it is clear that the participants often struggled with both their identity development, as well as having to deal with GSB. Often the two were linked in that participants may have been targeted and labelled for being different, prior to even understanding and identifying as such themselves. Such struggles appeared to have resulted in the participants adopting negative coping strategies in order to avoid

becoming a target, or to lessen the extent that they were targeted. Participants discussed a variety of negative coping strategies. For instance, Robert admitted to drug abuse:

The one things is ah, in my high school, like last year of high school I started um, ashamed to say but I started abusing like cocaine and that, um, and I think maybe that drug use ah, had to do, maybe had to do with maybe shame about being gay. I’m sure some of that had to do with certain remarks I would get from other people.

Self-harm was discussed by Heather:

Okay, um back then it definitely really really affected my mental health, especially because like, my um, best friend she would make me feel like awful and I think that um, I started like, self-harming a bit more.

Absenteeism or skipping school was a coping method employed by Peter and Lauren:

Peter: “So like, I started a little bit when I was like, in second or third

grade. And I would just like, go home sick as often as I could cause I just didn’t want to be there cause they were mean…”

Lauren: “…if you’re not at school as much, and you, not that you’re kind

of faded out, people still know who you are, but you’re definitely not the center of gossip or the center of attention if you’re not really going very damn often

[…]

like my mom would call in, because I would like, fake...being sick or something.”

Eating disorders or developing unhealthy relationships with food was another coping strategy that participants employed. This seemed to be a mechanism of coping with GSB, but also appeared to be a way that individuals could better conform to gender or

appearance expectations. For some, this would help to lessen the extent of their differences or help make the differences, or themselves, more invisible:

Allison: “High school, oh gee, I went through like, through all of that,

through when we started the GSA, I actually got super anemic, and I had like body issues, like I wouldn’t eat properly. Just because I felt…I don’t know. It was a way of compensating.”

Rebecca: “I felt a very strong pressure to look a certain way, and I

actually went through intensive dieting um, and I lost around thirty pounds and I was even underweight a little bit, um, and that, really destroyed my relationship with food and I still struggle with it until today. Um, in terms of binge eating sometimes and um, purging just to, you know, have the ideal body shape just to meet the expectations of what a girl should look like so…”

Samantha: “I had…I had bad habits that made it extremely easy to lean

on. Like self-starvation, et cetera. Like I lost forty pounds during that time, so like, that was a weird support system but that helps make your skin thicker when you’re invisible. I lost forty pounds.”

In two cases, that of Nathan and Robert, such negative coping also appeared to contribute to academic struggles. Robert admitted that their drug use “…definitely affected my grades”, and Nathan admitted that part of their catering behaviour purposely involved doing poorly on schoolwork to avoid signaling their difference:

Um, it was for me so, seeing what boys liked to do and how they

expressed their interests, you know, um, a lot of kids that I grew up with they didn’t like school so much, they were more so in terms of playing outside or you know, playing sports and stuff, whereas I loved books and I loved learning, and I…I noticed that a lot of the guys you know, whereas I liked reading and writing more, and music and poetry, they didn’t and, whenever I even wanted to show, was good at it, even though I was, I was, you know, I was…it was noticed, you know, whether I did a presentation in class or a presentation in…it was kind of like they picked up on, ‘oh, he’s different in this sense’, and it, that was a problem for me because I would purposely sometimes cater, oh, you know, like actually like not doing so well on something, or you know

[…] because you know that’s what boys can’t like…

From this section, it is clear that students often suffered various negative consequences as a result of experiencing GSB, as well as having to navigate identity development in the

heteronormative context of schools. Furthermore, in some respects it appears as though academic struggles may be linked with attempts to avoid GSB targeting, as well as being a by-product of some of the negative coping strategies that students may employ to deal with GSB and oppressive heteronormative school contexts.

The above examples of negative coping strategies also reinforce the idea that resilience is relative to different contexts and thus individuals can be resilient in certain aspects of their life but may struggle in other areas. For instance, such negative coping mechanisms are not indicative of what one might typically consider strategies that would be used by a resilient individual. Indeed, such harmful behaviours may indicate mental health issues that the participants may still be dealing with (although none admitted to the ongoing use of such methods of coping), thus suggesting that individuals are not as resilient in this regard, or in an overall sense. Yet, despite any ongoing struggles that the participants may still be facing that would classify them as less resilient in some respects, the

participants in this study had all transitioned to post-secondary schooling and had done so despite having dealt with GSB and oppressive school climates. Therefore, they can still be considered academically resilient. In the above cases, this academic resilience may also be even more outstanding and commendable given the negative coping strategies which may have also affected academic success. Focusing on how these students were resilient despite these odds may shed light on how school structures could be altered to help future students faced with some of the same struggles be resilient as well.

Given the findings that focus on the negative effects of bullying, there appears to be a juxtaposition that emerges whereby bullying and GSB can be conceptualized as something that is larger than an interaction between students but is also reduced to something that is felt most at the individual level. For example, when considering how the participants described their responses to GSB, a trend towards the individualization of the issue appears. This was apparent in the ways that students internalized the blame for their differences, and for their targeting, but also in the descriptions of how they would shrink inwards in their coping strategies.

Simultaneously, when one considers how GSB was described as more of an omnipresent threat that was pervasive throughout the schooling environment, and less of a behaviour that was centered around the repetitive actions of a single individual or group, the issue can be viewed through a broader lens. Further, when based on notions of difference in relation to gender and sexuality, GSB appears to further the development of hostile and heteronormative school climates. This reaffirms the importance of adopting a more structural approach to understanding the issue, as the interactions that come to be classified or categorized as bullying are taking place within, and working to construct, a school environment that extends beyond the individual and their interactions.

Thus, the widespread negative effects of GSB should be considered by schools looking to address the issue and suggests that the implications span beyond a target/perpetrator duality and includes the climate of the school. Approaches that attempt to address bullying as something more than an isolated incident, and ongoing Ministry efforts to foster safe and accepting environments continue to appear promising for addressing the extent or breadth of the issue, but it is important as well to try to challenge the

internalization of blame and look at ways that schools can transform GSB into something that is not an individual issue, but is something rooted in broader social forces that can ultimately be overcome.