Ally Week is a national youth-led effort encouraging students to be allies with the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

(

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

, gay,

bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whic ...

and

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

) members of their community in standing against

bullying Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) of an ...

harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...

and name-calling. It takes place in

K-12 schools The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...

and colleges. It was created by Joe Montana and other youth members of the Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network GLSEN National JumpStart Student Leadership Team. It is done in the same spirit as Day of Silence to educate on anti-LGBT+ harassment issues. It is usually held in September or October, often coinciding with

National Coming Out Day National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an annual LGBT awareness day observed on October 11, to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people ( the LGBT community, sometimes also called the queer community) in " coming out of the closet". Fir ...

on October 11. October is also

LGBT History Month LGBT History Month is an annual month-long observance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, and the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements. It was founded in 1994 by Missouri high-school history teacher Rodney ...

. The event started in October 2005 and has grown since. The goal of Ally Week is to diminish stereotypes and exclusion while highlighting that peer support for LGBT+ students is stronger than the students themselves may have thought existed. In a survey of 240 undergraduates regarding what peer support they felt LGBT+ students had, research found that their personal attitudes were significantly more positive than they thought their friends and fellow students held. Allies are identified as supporters but not necessarily members of a marginalized group. During Ally Week people are encouraged to sign an ally pledge "taking a stand for a safe and harassment-free school for all students", and that they will not use anti-LGBT+ language and slurs, they will intervene if possible to stop bullying and harassment and support safer schools efforts. In 2008 the pledge cards were mistakenly used with kindergartners and opponents of gay marriage used this to correlate to the

Proposition 8 Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage; it passed in the November 2008 California state elections and was later overturned in cou ...

battle in California, GLSEN stated they would review materials and ensure they were appropriate for all grade levels. In 2010 the campaign encouraged awareness of the Safe Schools Improvement Act, similar to the recently signed " Dignity For All Students Act" (New York State) legislation to protect LGBT+ students from bullying. The 2018 days for Ally Week is September 24–28.

Notes

Sources

* Goldman, Linda, ''Coming out, coming in: nurturing the well-being and inclusion of gay youth in mainstream society'', CRC Press, 2008, , . * Marcus, Eric, ''What If Someone I Know Is Gay?: Answers to Questions about What It Means to Be Gay and Lesbian'', Simon and Schuster, 2007, , . * Meyer, Elizabeth J., ''Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools: Volume 10 of Explorations of Educational Purpose'', Springer, 2010, , . * Windmeyer, Shane L., ''The Advocate college guide for LGBT+ students'', Alyson Books, 2006, {{ISBN, 1-55583-857-X, 9781555838577.

External links

GLSEN
website
Ally Week
information Youth-led organizations LGBT youth Anti-homophobia homophobia Transphobia category:Biphobia category:Lesbophobia category:Discrimination against LGBT people LGBT and education Awareness weeks in the United States September observances October observances

See also

Notes

Sources

External links