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Transcript: East Lothian young voices speak out and call for change – #WhatWillYouDo

Listen to the young people here.

Read the blog about this project here.

Unknown Speaker  0:00 

I think a huge problem is that in a group of people, if each of them perceives others to be transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, they will then act in similar ways to gain popularity with those people. And because of that, the problem just gets worse and worse, everyone encouraging each other to take those actions, and then doing them themselves to keep up with those people to keep their social standing. And it just makes the problem worse and worse, snowballing it.

Unknown Speaker  0:31 

So there was an incident in my class where male a was taking photos of females bums when they were wearing leggings, and they were sitting down in class, and we didn’t know what to do at first, but then we told guidance about it. And they didn’t do much about it, but tell them off a bit. And then he continued to do it. And then guidance realised what they were doing was wrong. So they told him off again. And he stopped doing it for now, but we’re all really scared, he’s gonna start doing it again.

Unknown Speaker  1:02 

With trans and non binary students, people can get their heads around like I’m a trans woman or a trans man, but non binary people can get the correct names used, but not the correct pronouns and there’s very little education around non binary people.

Unknown Speaker  1:16 

The issue that I’ve come across is the language and the terms being used to describe people in the in the changing rooms while they’re getting changed. There’s a lot of kind of rape jokes and racist comments, homophobic comments that kind of get thrown about not really knowing the context and the use of what they’re saying.

Unknown Speaker  1:44 

Yeah, I think definitely. A lot of the things that are said, especially since they are out of the eye of teachers, definitely, they’re a lot more willing to just say whatever they want, but then no one in the changing rooms ever challenges it. So nothing ever comes from it, it always just goes unchecked. And everyone just can just say, whatever they think, and everyone obviously doesn’t, again, doesn’t think about what they mean, what’s behind it, and what effect you could have on people, even just in the changing rooms.

Unknown Speaker  2:11 

Slutshaming is something that happens all the time, even in school, especially with uniform and things. Yeah, like, the that a girl wearing something is performative, but a boy can wear something that shows more skin and it’s seen as acceptable. Even the way that the school deal with it, like saying that girls can’t have their midriff out, but boys are allowed to basically wear whatever they want. And like pointing out girls in classes for it. Yeah, and also, like, as we were saying earlier, the behaviors never challenged in school when slutshaming happens, because it’s not always blatantly obvious. Like whispers and quite secretive.

Unknown Speaker  2:57 

In social dance people are made to dance with people that they don’t want to whether it’s their perpetrators, or just, quite often people are made to go into standard heteronormative male female roles, if they’re non binary, or trans don’t want to fit in either of those. Quite often they’re forced to, and it makes people really uncomfortable. And people often have to dance with people, they just don’t want to even if it’s not someone that sometimes in the past might be someone they’re scared of, or someone they just don’t want to dance with. So yeah, it’s definitely a problem that should be faced and something that should be talked about more and I think teachers should handle it.

Unknown Speaker  3:31  A teacher did say that if you spoke to him and outed yourself, they would be more like respectful and allow you to not have to dance with the person or people you don’t want to. But they ended up not sticking to it, which was really unfortunate.

Unknown Speaker  3:54 

I’d say especially when you’re at school, there’s a lot of like laddish kind of group cultures where boys who are when they’re by themselves are absolutely fine, they’re lovely people, but they act up in group situations and they’re more likely to cat call, be rude, sexualise girls. It’s all part of like the peer pressure of feeling like they aren’t man enough if they don’t do it with their friends and don’t participate in the group. Yeah. Like I think that toxic masculinity feeds into it because they’re not quite – they don’t quite accept who they are by themselves. They feel like they’ve got to impress the friend, their friends and girls to be honest. Yeah, they feel like it makes them a better person in the group, and that the group will accept them more if they take part in it.  And I also think it kind of causes more bystanders as well because they’re less likely to call out their friends when they’re in group situations.

Unknown speaker 4:58

There’s very little education around trans people, like, not even on like what trans people are. A lot of people think they don’t have pronouns, nobody knows what pronouns are. Um, if there was just more education in the school, that would be good. I think there’ll be a lot less ignorance, you get a lot of questions like what was between your legs? Like, what are you? Are you a man or a woman? It’s just very gross. And it’s, it definitely has a negative effect on trans people’s educations. When your lessons are filled with transphobic bullying.

Unknown speaker 5:29

I’d say during the pandemic, social media was a big part, especially when not being in school, and it allowed you to connect to connect with your friends. But I’d say it had positive impacts for some people and negative impacts for others. I guess in many ways that allowed people to educate themselves on issues that they didn’t have the opportunity to learn about in school, because they had more flexible time. And social media is the only really way to access, like conversations with friends. Like look at the power of social media house, like the me too movement, BlackLivesMatter, all these different kinds of things that allow young people to be more educated. And I’d say like, for most people that I know, it did have a positive impact. But then you’ve got the other side of it, where it really is the ‘for you’ page, like it shows you what you want to see. So those who have misogynistic kind of attitudes, and have harassed others, were seeing more rape culture videos, being exposed to the more nasty side of social media, especially during the Sarah Everard protests, I think that kind of heightened everyone’s kind of, and also, I’d say like in school with the everyone’s invited campaign that really highlighted just how bad it is because I’d say a lot people don’t notice it as much. Until in the statistics. Yeah.

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