Liseli LGBTI

LGBTI student speaks about life in high school

LGBTI high school student explains: “As LGBTI students come together and organize in schools, peer violence and other forms of discrimination decrease.” He spoke of their demands and the reasons why they will join the education boycott.

Source: Çiçek Tahaoğlu, “LGBTİ öğrenci lise hayatını anlatıyor” (“LGBTI student speaks about life in high school”), Bianet.org, 11 February 2015, http://bianet.org/bianet/lgbti/162199-egitim-boykotundan-once-liseli-lgbti-anlatti

The High School LGBTI [Liseli LGBTI] initiative recently turned one year old. The initiative brings together LGBTI high school students and recent graduates. The initiative was established in Istanbul on 6 February 2014. It is [also] organized in Ankara and Izmir, and has undertaken activities in Mersin.

Emre Demir, one of the founders of the initiative, says there are both open and closeted LGBTIs in school life: “Here is what we observe: As LGBTI students come together and organize, peer violence and other forms of violence decrease. We see clear benefits to being together and organized.”

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High School LGBTI group targeted by the newspaper Vahdet

The new addition to Vahdet newspaper’s list of news reports targeting LGBTI is the one about LGBTI high school group that will join the education rally and boycott [on 13 February 2015].

Source: “Vahdet’in hedefinde Liseli LGBTİ var: Sapkınların hedefi liseliler” (“High School LGBTI group targeted by the newspaper Vahdet: High Schoolers targeted by perverts”), kaosGL.org, February 6, 2014, http://kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=18663.

Vahdet, a newspaper founded by a splinter group from Yeni Akit, another paper known for its news reports that target LGBTI people and reproduce hate discourse, called the high school LGBTI group a “pervert group.”  Below are statements from the report written by Osman Yiğit:

“Sexual pervert groups who have the support of the CHP[1] and HDP[2] now turn to high school and try to inject the youth with their immorality.  The perverts who founded a group called “High School LGBTI” invite students to picnics, trips and pervert film screenings aiming to expand their field of action.”

The report which claimed that citizens do not want LGBTI people in the schools also reprinted a report from kaosGL.org about an “8 year old transgender child’s coming out rap”.

Vahdet and Yeni Akit join in hate

The report, which characterized the call by the LGBTI student group for ungendered restrooms a disgrace, was titled “Restroom Scandal in High School”.

The high school LGBTI group had protested in a press statement the news report by Yeni Akit last March (2014) titled, “The Perverts Pester High Schools”.

“Disgrace” according to Vahdet, “No to Discrimination in Education” in reality

High school LGBTI will lend their support to the protest rally on February 8th and the atention [drawing] boycott on February 13th, organized by the leadership of Alevi Associations, objecting to the decisions issued by the 19th Education Council to “deny the proposal of Alevism as a topic to be expanded in books used in religion classes” and to “offer religion classes to first grade elementary schools.”

[1] CHP: Republican People’s Party
[2] HDP: Peoples’ Democratic Party

LGBTI High School Students: We organize solidarity, not hatred!

Source: “Liseli LGBTİ: Nefreti Değil, Dayanışmayı Örgütlüyoruz!” (“LGBTI High School Students: We Organize Solidarity, Not Hatred!”) kaosGL.org, 17 February 2014, http://kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=15836

LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex) high school students prepared a text, which announces that they will not keep silent against oppression and ignorance in the education system.

The government does not want us in schools

The LGBTI high school students who assembled for the first time on February 6th stated, “The government does not want ‘tomboys,’ ‘faggots,’ ‘trannies’ in its schools. They beat and kill us in the streets, to top it off they also keep spilling out hatred, beating and killing in classes, corridors, toilets and books.

LGBTI high school students, who say “We call out from schools, where heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, militarism and speciesism have been grafted,” will hold their second meeting at the Lambdaistanbul Cultural Center at 17.00 PM on February 21st.

The LGBTI high school students who stated, “Our fight will continue until the corridors get colored rainbows, until our colors spill from books and until we have access to education as equally, free and in our mother tongue.” You can contact this group on Facebook via this link: https://www.facebook.com/liselilgbti