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For several weeks last spring, fliers announcing Sennett Middle School's Gay-Straight Alliance were torn from the hallways, revealing a hidden message to the culprits about why the club was important in the first place. Safe spaces can be hard to come by when you're a middle school student, especially if you're lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. For the past 10 years, GSAs have helped high school students fight anti-gay harassment. Experts say middle school is where GSAs might be needed most -- and their numbers are starting to grow.
Harassment.
Name-calling.
Physical assault.
Getting slammed into lockers. Taunted in the hallways. Tormented in the bathrooms.
For LGBTQ teens, school can be a battleground.
In fact, LGBTQ students, as well as students perceived by peers to be gay, are the most common targets of harassment at school. That harassment can reach its most fevered pitch in middle school.
Every two years, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, gauges the treatment of LGTBQ students in its National Campus Climate Survey. In 2005, 64 percent of middle school students reported anti-gay bullying and name-calling as major problems in their schools -- 18 percentage points higher than what was reported by high school students.
"There is something about the name-calling environment in junior high and middle school that is particularly prevalent, and it makes middle school an important focus for behavioral change," says Eliza Byard, GLSEN's deputy director.
Anti-gay harassment has prompted the widespread growth of gay-straight alliances. Commonly called GSAs, these student-run clubs create safe spaces for gay youth and their allies; most clubs also organize campuswide events to increase the acceptance of marginalized groups and reduce anti-gay bullying.
High school GSAs have existed for more than a decade; at the end of 2005-2006 school year, more than 3,000 GSAs were listed on GLSEN's high school roster. Middle school GSAs are less common, but they're growing. Three years ago, there were fewer than two dozen middle school GSAs. Today, at least 500 exist -- serving one out of every 20 middle and junior high schools nationwide. The growth can be attributed, in part, to younger students learning about GSAs from high school siblings, the prevalence of the Internet, and the fact that in general, students feel more comfortable discussing issues of sexual orientation at an earlier age than in generations past.
In Madison, Wis., active GSAs exist or are being launched in 10 of the city's 11 middle schools. That's the highest per capita concentration of middle school GSAs in the nation, and it's starting to reduce the jokes and bullying -- mostly subtle, but sometimes not-so-subtle -- faced by LGBTQ teens.
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