Pema Dorji - The Trauma of Bullying in Schools

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Jan 29, 2018
by Nicole Bogart
Pema Dorji - The Trauma of Bullying in Schools

As someone who experienced the traumatic effects of the bullying of LGBT youth, Pema Dorji advocates for the creation of better environments for the upcoming generation of LGBT youth 

 

For teenagers, school is not just a place for learning, but one for social and emotional growth, and while bullying is something faced by many students across the world, studies show that LGBT youth suffer disproportionately. Many people – LGBT or not – continue to suffer long-term mental health effects from the bullying they experience in adolescence. One of the Forum’s youngest Fellows, Pema Dorji shared his experience of bullying in his home country of Bhutan.

Pema Dorji grew up in a normal middle class family “in a country with a happiness measurement index” – as he reminded us. During childhood he felt normal, and enjoyed his love for music and the company of girlfriends. At five years old, schoolmates started to call him insulting nicknames to the extent that some people stopped using or forgot his actual name. Growing up wasn’t easy for Dorji. Going to school for him was “like going to a war.”

“Growing up wasn’t fun at all for me, especially because my peers around me never failed to make me realize that I don’t belong with them, that I was an abnormal anomaly around them. The situation became so bad they even forgot my name, only remembering me by the name they used to call me – a word that roughly translates to ‘not a male, nor a female.’ After a while it takes a toll on you, you start to feel upset and at the same time angry. Being a young person, I automatically started to blame myself. It was me against a world where there were literally 10 to 20 fingers pointed at me, and I was helpless to point back.”

One episode marked him for years. One classmate’s teasing became so acute that Dorji, in self-defense, threw a bottle at him and the bully retaliated by pouring a bucket of freezing water over Dorji. When Dorji asked his teacher for support, the bully argued: “He behaves like a girl!”  Instead of offering comfort, the teacher told him: “You need to change if you want this to stop.”

Dorji felt lonelier and would constantly think of the words that people would tell him day to day. Without any information or ways to find support, Dorji grew depressed. He tried to commit suicide twice.

“It’s not easy for me to go back and recollect on those days because whenever I have alone time, whenever I am going to bed, these thoughts come across my mind saying that if I hadn’t been through this experience I might be a really different person; better or worse, but still a different person. The emotion that I felt is a sense of despair, a sense of sadness. But also I feel really proud of myself for going through the situation at a very young age. As a kid you are not supposed to be exposed to the reality of the cruel world that’s out there. But due to that I am really proud I was able to survive that…
“I’m also trying to create a better environment for the upcoming generation, so that they shouldn’t have to go through the same thing I went through as a child. Because no child deserves to go through the same situation that I went through.”


Pema Dorji on being bullied in school