"The end of Eddy"

On Friday, we went to see "The end of Eddy", a play against bullying, based on the autobiographical novel by Édouard Louis. 

Here, some students' works:

The end of Eddy

The play starts with a summary about Eddie’s life, a gay boy who is born in a very low class family in a small French town which is 200km away from Paris.

He tells us that his dad is an authoritarian man who teaches their children (they all are boys) using bad works and violence and his only hobbies are getting drunk and watching TV while his mom spends her days washing the dishes and smoking.

Eddie’s life is very depressing so far, and it continues getting even worse when he's bullied at school and the only thing he can do to face the bullies is smile due to his nervousness.

But this is not all, when he starts acting like a female (according to his town society standards) even his dad starts to make fun of him with his friends. His mom also has got a very bad relationship with him since she finds him doing “grown-up activities" with his cousins in the shed.

Those events have a very negative effect on his mental health so he thinks that being gay is wrong and he decides to start dating girls to try to prove that he’s a macho man, which ends with Eddy being unable to get excited while “staying in a private zone” with the girls he flirted with. Anyway, having flirted with those girls makes his popularity levels increase a lot making him even be accepted in the group of popular guys.

The final act of the play is basically Eddie coming out of the closet.

In my personal and humble opinion, the play was quite good, if I had to say something bad about it, it would be that some scenes were a little bit explicit and out of context, but the rest was so cool. The actors besides having great skills to do their job, were also able to change the scenery and music on their own, which makes them even more skillful.

 

 

                                                       (By Juan Pablo Valle)

   

 

(By Miguel Pablo Lozano, María Ortega and Mª José Sánchez)

 

In his novel, Édouard Louis says: " The truth is a revenge because we live in a world of lies, about poor people, about gay people, about what we are, what we experience. Every time, truth is a fight.” Heartbreaking, isn't it?

 

First Trans Awareness Week- IES La Rosaleda

Assigned sex is a label that we are given at birth based on medical factors, including our hormones, chromosomes, and genitals. Sometimes, our genetically assigned sex does not line up with our own perception or our feelings regarding our gender. Researches show that a person, who feels like that, has suffered, at least on time, bullying and social exclusion. LGTB at School Erasmus+ project contributes to decrease the number of bullying and social exclusion cases, aiming to open a dialogue in the participants schools in order to remove taboos related to gender.

According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 2019 Report, based on a survey about LGBTI people in the EU, the school still is far from a safe place for LGBTI students. The 45% of the survey participants felt discriminated against at school. In the same framework, it is important to highlight that 69% of them were Trans. As reported by the Spanish NGO Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans and Bisexuals(FLGTB), Transphobia appears in classrooms in 58% of the cases (Report 2019: Young Trans in the Education system).This shows a need for policy measures targeting children and young people belonging to this group.

In this context, the LGTB at School project organized the first Transgender Awareness week, which took place in the highschool IES La Rosaleda from 22nd to 25th March 2020. Our goal was to raise awareness and give information to the whole school community in order to create a Trans friendly and inclusive school environment. The event started with a guided visit of a Trans Photography Exhibition. It was a small sample of 20 photos of different Trans people. We chose those people between more than 100, our criteria was academic and work performance in order to break stereotypes such as cross-dressers, drag queens and drag kings.

The second day of the event was dedicated to dismantling myths on the reality of trans people and the new Spanish Trans Law. We had the honor to count with the NGO CHRYSALLIS Andalucía. Its president, María José Márquez and Serena Gil, a young Trans, analysed the current situation, obstacles and problems that a Trans person can face and opened a debate about the new Spanish Trans Law.

Then, on the third day, we watched the movie 3 Generations, which is about a New York teen (Elle Fanning), who prepares to transition from female to male. A very interesting debate followed the movie. We closed our event playing our Diversity Trivial. An extra mark in Philosophy subject was given to the students, who were members of the winning team.

This event identified a great lack of information on transsexuality in schools and visibilized stories of Trans people who have suffered systematic stigmatization. Luckily, the majority of the students and professors embraced our initiative and they actively participated in it.

This event inaugurated a new era for our school, giving the opportunity to understand that the Trans youth need the same things as cis youth, that is: love, respect, support and enjoy the same rights and obligations as the rest of the students, neither more nor less!

Discrimination Mini-Research