Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series of articles addressing the difficulties of life at SLUH for members of the LGBTQ+ community in an attempt to raise awareness of their daily struggles and start a conversation on ways that we as individuals and as a school can change our habits to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals. This article focuses on the use of speech to isolate and/or belittle the LGBTQ+ community.

Language, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it well, is the ultimate instrument. It can be used to build roads and to level buildings, to discipline and to console, to buy a hotdog at a baseball game and to deny your mooching friend one too. But one of the ugliest aspects of language is its ability to devalue. 

The idea behind a derogatory comment or slur is pretty simple: a word is associated with a certain group of people; that word is used in a negative sense and thus given a negative connotation over time;  through common consensus of a word’s negative connotation, slurs and derogatory terminology can be used as a shortcut to discriminate against the targeted group of people.

In my time at SLUH, I have been witness to more than a few slurs. Each time, it’s been about as pleasurable as stepping on a nail and more of a mood killer than a pop quiz over a reading assignment I didn’t do. As an underclassman, they would paralyze me because I would never see them coming. But it was only through almost a dozen interviews with members of the SLUH community, some alumni and some still in high school, that I learned the impact they have on LGBTQ+ students. 

A commonality in the interviews was the feeling that using words like ‘gay’ and the f-slur only create distance between LGBTQ+ members and their peers and inflict serious psychological damage.

“I felt excluded,” siad Nicholas Dalaviras, ’20. “I felt like there's this population of the school and they didn’t want anything to do with me because I'm somehow less of a man than they are.”

“It’s very hard when you hear people saying every once in a while, ‘Oh, that's gay’ and calling people fags in a joking way. That implies that being gay is a negative,” said Alex Seidel, ’10. “That impacts people in a lot of different ways because, psychologically, they're hearing, ‘being gay is bad,’ and it reinforces that worldview that being gay is bad and being gay is unnatural or something, and it makes it harder for people to come out and makes it harder for people to embrace who they are.”

In my conversation with Komlavi Adissem, ’20, he pointed out that oftentimes assumptions are made about people who have certain characteristics. Even though the idea of high school kids breaking up into separate social groups is oftentimes a cliche one, it sometimes feels like SLUH is doing just that.

“The bigger assumptions (about gay people)—those are hurtful,” said Adissem. “And you don't know me just because I'm gay. You can't make inferences about me like that.”

Though the common consensus on homophobia at SLUH was more on its subtlety and closed-door mentality, the instances of blatant homophobia at SLUH were numbing to say the least.

“I was sitting at the switchboard with someone who I thought was like my best friend at the time and out of nowhere he said ‘you're a faggot and you're gonna burn in hell,’” said Francesco Galante, a former student at SLUH who left mid-way through his sophomore year due to his increasing discomfort at SLUH. “I hear people saying those things and I'm still trying to come to terms with who I am at the time. And so that compounded and made my mental status not great.”

Fitz Cain, ’20, described in detail a scenario where he was called the f-slur by one of his classmates at a party in his senior year. Following the event, the friends of this classmate, though willing to admit that their friend was in the wrong, decided not to address it beyond that.

To Adissem and Seidel, it’s this refusal to hold people accountable for the things they say that perpetuates such an exclusive culture at SLUH.

“We need to un-normalize the use of homophobic slurs,” said Adissem. “I can't tell you the number of times even in a non-homophobic context, just like joking around with friends, that I've heard people use fag or faggot or whatever. That is not okay and should never be okay.”

“If you let everyone get away with being able to talk their way out of calling someone a fag jokingly or something like that, you're not promoting equality and tolerance of the LGBTQ community. You're unconsciously permitting that type of intolerance,” said Seidel.

Unfortunately, these experiences are not uncommon in Missouri and in the United States as a whole. According to GLSEN, a pro-LGBTQ+ organization focused on creating schools a safer environment for LGBTQ+ individuals and an organization that has been conducting surveys on school climate for over twenty years, 98.8 percent of students across the nation have heard the word ‘gay’ used in a derogatory way in their school while 95.2 percent reported hearing words worse than this used. In Missouri, the numbers were reported at 93 percent, and 85 percent, respectively.

For me, this was the hardest part to come to terms with because I too was someone who, as a freshman, used the word ‘gay’ with a negative connotation. At the time, it felt normal. All of my peers were doing it, and it made me feel more accepted. It felt good to be accepted.

But something Cain said about the response to him being called the f-slur impacted me.

“It just sucks to feel like people don't have your back,” said Cain. “And I think especially with the student body, when it comes to LGBTQ issues, people are so uncomfortable with it that they just back away. And I think it's kind of on SLUH and it's kind of on just everybody to make it less uncomfortable or to confront the discomfort and have the tough conversations.”

By using this type of language, we are turning our backs to all the LGBTQ+ people at SLUH. By choosing to talk about them in a demeaning way, we say that acceptance by our peers is worth devaluing the lives of others.

Dalaviras made a point in our conversation that, in reality, the only way to make a society that is tolerant is to refuse tolerating bigotry, a bit of a paradox in and of itself. 

“You have to promote a culture of acceptance,” said Dalaviras. “There's got to be a culture where their friends hold them accountable. And once you can get your friends and community to hold you accountable for your shortcoming, that's the way we would do it.”

Language, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it well, is the ultimate weapon. It can lift people up and drag them through the mud, foster a sense of inclusivity and push others to the fringes of society, command a community of hatred and discrimination and inspire a revolution of acceptance and tolerance.

I do not expect his article to change anyone’s mind or fix SLUH overnight, but for the time being, this conversation is ongoing.