Pierre-Gilles Guéguen
Light and Shadows on a Case of Gay Bashing (excerpt)
“The following text is based on an article dating back to 2010. Since then, public opinion has become more favourable towards homosexual and lesbian persons. President Obama has made several moves to make gay rights evolve. Still, the facts related in this article remain too frequent; they remind us that human sexuation is not natural but linked to the traumas exerted by language on our bodies and that for each subject they have a resonance that is unique and should be taken into consideration as such.
An article in the New York Times on the 4th of October 2010, written by the journalist Jessie McKinley, a correspondent of the NYT in San Francisco, had a resounding success at moving public opinion. The article reports on a series of suicides amongst gay adolescents, following the humiliation and abuse that was inflicted upon them by their classmates or fellow students.
The list of these suicides is long, but the journalist focuses on four specific cases, one of which particularly shook public opinion; it is about a student who was filmed, without his knowledge, in his room in a university residence during a homosexual relation. The video was then placed on the web. Shortly afterwards, the young man committed suicide in a spectacular way by throwing himself off the George Washington Bridge in New York City.”
Translated from the French by Frances Coates-Ruet,
with thanks to Nancy Gillespie
