Making a better world

Rob Nettleton

Student, Ottawa

Nettleton grew up in Marmora, Ont., and is now a journalism/sociology student at Carleton University in Ottawa. On Oct. 13, he and his friend Melanie Rickert set up a camera in the University Centre at Carleton for about 4½ hours, inviting people to contribute their thoughts in front of the lens. On Oct. 20, Nettleton and Rickert posted the edited clip on the It Gets Better site as well as YouTube.

Q: What are your personal experiences with bullying?

A: I was bullied from about Grade 5 to Grade 11 about my sexuality. It wasn’t to the extent that the victims of the [recent] suicides have been bullied at all, but I grew up in a very small town, so there was a lot of curiosity and a lot of fear about who I was or who they assumed I was, and so it was mainly more just verbal stuff. I was never physically abused or anything like that by schoolmates, but it was a lot of verbal things, a lot of sideways glances, being in the change rooms and stuff and they would say an offhand comment or something.

I think one of the biggest issues with bullying is that it’s not always just the words or the punches that hurt the most; it’s that feeling of isolation. I went to a school where I was — from what I knew — the only gay student there and so I was the only student who was bullied for being gay and I always felt alone. I never knew of any other gay people around, and that’s the thing that got to me the most and why I went through periods of contemplating hurting myself was because I thought I was alone. So what these videos do is that they offer that kind of reassurance of, you know what, we’ve all gone through it, it’s so worth it to stick it out and don’t worry, you’re not alone — you’re never alone, because there are people like you, there are millions of people like you [in the same situation] around the world. It’s OK to be different, it’s OK to be unique.

Q: What’s your favourite moment in your video?

A: I think my favourite [clip] is actually the one that’s at the very beginning. It’s the best one to start off with, because it’s a student who says, “I’m Julian and I’m gay,” and then his friend interrupts and she says, “I’m Kat and I’m not gay, but I love him.” And that’s it. This guy saying he’s gay and then this girl saying she loves him. I think that was amazing because it sets up the video as being about loving diversity, about loving everybody.

On a personal level, it was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been part of in my life.

Shannon Lanaway

Teacher, Nelson, B.C.

Lanaway teaches across the Kootenays, from kindergarten to Grade 12. She and the other educators featured in the video are part of the LGBTQ group in the Action for Social Justice committee of the B.C. Teachers Federation. Lanaway and her colleagues were at a meeting of the LGBTQ group in Vancouver when they spontaneously decided to shoot the video and post it to It Gets Better. (Lanaway is seated far left in the video.)

Q: How much homophobic bullying do you see in the schools?

A: It’s in the hallway, it’s in the classroom. The school can be the most unsafe place [for LGBTQ students], because it’s an institutionalized requirement of public school that you go to school every day. You really can’t get out of it if there is that kind of homophobic bullying that’s not being addressed. School can be one of the most unsafe places. And the bullying is prevalent. And it’s really upsetting.

Q: What are your thoughts on Dan Savage's project?

A: Often we feel really isolated as teachers who work in this specific area. It Gets Better blasted it open, so it made bullying everybody’s issue. And that’s what really got me. It’s like, oh my God, we’re going to get some help on this finally! I just felt incredibly supported at that point when I saw the site. It was going to become an issue around humanity and compassion. It wasn’t going to be just our little action group trying to fight the world. It validated for me that this is really a huge issue that everyone needs to consider. Maybe it will make other teachers sit up and pay attention.

Tamsyn Waterhouse

Software engineer, Google, Mountain View, Calif.

Tamsyn Waterhouse is a transsexual woman who was born in Winnipeg, and spent her childhood in the town of Starbuck, Man. Born male, Waterhouse began transitioning in 2006, while she was in graduate school. She and a number of LGBTQ colleagues at Google collaborated on a video for It Gets Better that was posted on Oct. 19.

Q: Why did you want to participate in this video?

A: After the It Gets Better project launched, a member of the Gayglers group here at work suggested that we record and contribute a video as a group. A few people took charge, we got permission from above, we went into the studio and took turns in front of the camera, and then our director and editor cut it and released it. This is Google, so that's pretty much the whole story. I went in with only a rough idea of what I wanted to talk about, and then I sat in front of the camera and started talking, and I poured it all out. A lot of what I said caught me by surprise.

The most surprising thing for me was when I said, “I'm very proud to be transsexual,” and really meant it. Transsexuality is still very stigmatized. To many people, transsexual women are either aberrations or sex objects, and transsexual men don't exist. There's a lot of emphasis on passing, too — fitting in invisibly to one's new gender. Not only is that a really repressive attitude, but it also ignores all the rest of the transgender spectrum. I realized that I had let that attitude get to me, that I was reluctant to tell anyone that I'm trans, and that I was avoiding telling stories from my past that would reveal that I used to be a guy. Why was I doing that? I'm clearly trans; why the token effort to hide who I am? I realized that it was just more self-programming…. Participating in the video helped me to get over it, and now I can say unreservedly that I'm proud of who I am.

Q: What has been the response from friends and co-workers about thevideo?

A: Three high-fives and one date! I felt like a celebrity at work for a couple of days; I think we all did. I also received a lot of congratulatory emails and phone calls from friends and family. Working for Google, I should understand how quickly content like videos can get big, but I was really surprised by how quickly it reached everyone in my life: colleagues, friends, and family alike. I really hope that it can also reach those who need it the most.

One of my teammates sent me a quotation from [Kurt] Vonnegut that really hit me hard: “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’” I cried.