GRIN Campaign, Global Respect in Education, is a transatlantic non-profit organisation and

advocacy group Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the develop ...

which campaigns primarily for

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 ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

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 ...

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 ...

, and

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the l ...

/ questioning (

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 ...

Q) people's social and political equality in education."Teens from Sussex School Go Public with Their GRIN Photo Campaign to Combat Bulling of Gays in Schools", ''UK Gay News'', December 31, 2010. It seeks to end

discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of Racial discrimination, r ...

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

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 ...

based on

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...

and

gender expression Gender expression, or gender presentation, is a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender, specifically with the categories of femininity or masculinity. This also includes gender roles. These cate ...

in all educational institutes with an underlying message that "being different was 'cool'". It is one of the first campaigns of its kind to originate outside the United States, be run by students and intentionally international.Tom C. "Gaytalk Live", 4 December 2010, Episode 048/383, ''Queer Public Radio''.Jason Chu, B. Brian Topaz editor, "Put On a GRIN and Stand for Equality", ''SF Gam Newpower'', 9 December 2011. The campaign supports both direct action and a viral photographic protest, known as “RESPECT” to help "make respecting people in school a cool idea" and ignorance to be “uncool”.Bryan Moore, "Respect protest: Anti-bullying effort launches beyond the United States", ''San Diego Gay & Lesbian News'', December 24th, 2010. The photographs show people in front of a white backdrop wearing block rainbow colors with “RESPECT” painted on their face in the colors of the gay pride flag. The campaign was created on October 29, 2010, by

Bedales School Bedales School is a co-educational, boarding and day independent school in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of con ...

student Claudia White. The RESPECT photographs are featured on the campaign's website, as well as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

and

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

. The campaign also had over 1000 followers on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

within a week of its website going live.

History

GRIN Campaign was initiated in response to a rash of widely publicized bullying-related suicides of juvenile, particularly, LGBTQ youth, including that of

Tyler Clementi Tyler Clementi (December 19, 1991 – September 22, 2010) was an American student at Rutgers University–New Brunswick who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River at the age of 18, on September 22, 2010. On S ...

. It was established as a UK and US alternative to other, older LGBT civil rights advocacy organizations, which did not place as much emphasis on education, and focused only on the United States. The campaign hopes to build awareness in the same spirit as the

Day of Silence Day of Silence is GLSEN's annual day of action to spread awareness about the effects of the bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. In the United States, students take a day-lo ...

It Gets Better Project It Gets Better is an Internet-based 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth around the globe. It was founded in the United States by gay activist, author, m ...

, No on 8 campaigns and efforts to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. The campaign coordinated with

Spirit Day Spirit Day is an annual LGBTQ awareness day observed on the third Thursday in October. Started in 2010 by Canadian teenager Brittany McMillan, it was initially created in response to a rash of widely publicized bullying-related suicides of ga ...

(October 20) when people are encouraged to wear purple symbolic of spirit from the

rainbow flag A rainbow flag is a multicolored flag consisting of the colors of the rainbow. The designs differ, but many of the colors are based on the spectral colors of the visible light spectrum. The LGBT flag introduced in 1978 is the most recognize ...

. In 2011 the campaign worked to add "amendments to the UK’s Educational White Paper, started developing anti-bullying and LGBT rights lesson plans, and wrote letters to corporations in the UK that they believed were being homophobic or transphobic." In the summer of 2012 the campaign received a grant to travel to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

in the United States to teach their lesson plans about discrimination based bullying and utilize the RESPECT photographic campaign. In 2013 the campaign started a petition to add the word 'transphobia' to the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

and the dictionary lexicon of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

. The petition was hosted on the website Change.org and gained nearly 10,000 signatures. By June, both Microsoft and the Oxford English Dictionary had added the word 'transphobia' to their dictionary lexicons.

References

External links

Official GRIN site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grin Campaign International LGBT political advocacy groups Anti-bullying charities Anti-bullying campaigns LGBT and education

History

See also

References

External links