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Growing Up Gay
Since the publication of Olly Alexander's documentaryGrowing Up Gay in 2017, the group Years & Years, a British group created in 2010, broke up in 2021. But rest assured, the group survived, but never has since consisted solely of Olly Alexander. The 2 other musicians who were part of it, Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen have decided to go their own way, even if Mikey will still accompany Olly on stage.
Let the fans be reassured, since this event the group's latest album: Night Call was released in stores and on digital platforms in January 2022!
Despite a childhood where he was harassed for 7 years at school, Olly Alexander managed to make an absolutely extraordinary artistic career, as a musician with the group Years & Years but also as an actor with the series “It's a Sin ”.
However, he wanted to return to an intimate part of his life.
Through a documentary called: **Growing Up Gay, ** he tells us about the time when he was persecuted and his current problems resulting from this abuse suffered at school.
School bullying is a real problem, in England, as in France, but alas certainly in other countries of the world!
Growing Up Gay: The Documentary
In the documentary Growing Up Gay directed by Vicki Cooper, Olly Alexander confides in his current difficulties as an adult. Indeed, he has suffered since adolescence from bouts of anxiety and depression. According to him, it is the consequence of years of persecution at school, where he was harassed by his classmates, as gay.
At that time, he never dared to tell his parents about it.
We also meet in this report, other gays who are in the same situation as him, and who, too, have to manage serious consequences in their daily life as adults.
For Olly Alexander, all these troubles would come from the fact of building himself, of growing up as gay in a hetero-normed world. But also, and above all, because he found no one to talk about it at that time, being convinced during his adolescence that he was not normal being gay!
For the singer of Years & Years, it's like a toxic pain that got inside him, and the consequences of which are disastrous for him today as an adult.
In the documentary Growing Up Gay, we also learn about staggering figures.
We learn that 40% of LGBTQIA + people are at risk of suffering from similar problems, namely depression, and anxiety attacks, while these mental disorders only affect 25% of the general population.
We also learn, according to a Stonewall study, that 2 out of 3 teenagers who are harassed mutilate themselves! And among them, 45% of transgender people will try to end their lives!
This harassment would explain, still according to Olly Alexander, the excesses of drugs in the gay world, which he describes as slamming.
This is how we learn, according to Imperial College, that this risk-taking with drugs among LGBT people kills one person every 12 days!
According to** Olly Alexander**, all this could be explained by a huge problem of self-esteem!
The only remedy for this problem: talk about it! And he recommends doing it by participating in discussion groups provided by certain LGBT associations.
Harassment, a toxic pain that does not only affect gays!
A few days before the filming of this show, I learned of a fact that deeply saddened me, namely the death of Jonathan Destin, at the age of 27.
This young man had also been harassed at school, as 12% of students still are today.
Just like Olly Alexander, he too had been harassed for six years at school, as in college, but for “grossophobia”!
Unlike Olly Alexander, Jonathan had tried to tell one of his teachers about it, even though he was getting beaten up regularly. He would then have replied that his comrades just wanted to “play” with him!
Unable to do so, on February 8, 2011, he tried to end his life by setting himself on fire, before throwing himself into a river.
After 2 and a half months in a coma, 72% burnt, and numerous operations, he became a figure in the fight against school bullying after writing his book: “Condemned to kill me”.
This book was adapted into a TV movie by TF1, the first French television channel, under the title: “The Day I Burned My Heart”.
Since then, he has regularly intervened in schools to raise students' awareness of bullying.
It would seem that his commitment has finally allowed an unprecedented awareness within the French National Education!
He died in his sleep on August 20, 2022, at the age of 27, his heart tired from all the operations he underwent following his immolation.
Whatever the discrimination one is the victim of or the problems one encounters, bullying at school therefore affects 12% of children for a wide variety of reasons: homophobia, transphobia, grossophobia, or racketeering...
Remember, as Olly Alexander says in Growing Up Gay, the only cure is to talk about it! It remains to find an attentive ear!
It is also for this purpose that the HappyGayTV team has created the Hot-Line for all LGBTQIA +. Even if its goal is not to replace associations which have set up emergency lines for people in distress, it is however possible to share their questions, problems, doubts, comments, but also its joys!
That's why I'm now waiting for your reaction on theHot-Line! Share your experience with us, and don't forget that you have 2 minutes in all to express yourself, by sending either an audio message or a video message to our servers!
I am sure that this article and this video did not leave you indifferent!
👉 So leave us your comments, your questions, your ideas, on the Hot-Line!
👉 Without forgetting that if you don't want to miss any other video on our channel and continue this great adventure with us, subscribe to the HappyGayTV Club. It's here !
👉 To become an Ambassador, contact us here, and download the business card with the QR Code, to share it on social networks, the link is here.
Thanks in advance and see you soon!
Marco DRION
© HappyGayTV - September 2022
Show transcript
Good morning, my little ones, hello to all ! As you all know, HappyGayTV & You, is the show where we talk to each other! And this is thanks to a tool that we have set up at your disposal which is the Hot-Line, available on the HappyGayTV.com website, and where you can leave us audio messages or video messages, it's free and it runs 24 hours a day! Feel free to leave yours !
You have two minutes to express yourself. Today you did wonders again! Thank you, guys. And this is the reason why I wanted to tell you that I really really, enjoy listening to your messages and hosting this show regularly, because you guys are creative, interesting and funny each and every time. What a pleasure! Proof with this first happy video.
Hello HappyGayTV friends! I would like to send you this little postcard from our vacation in the Canary Islands, and more specifically in Tenerife. We had the opportunity to check out El Teide volcano, the highest peak in Spain, which actually offers a scenery worthy of the planet Mars, it's very impressive! But also, typical villages like the one
of Icod de los Vinos, in which we managed, around a tiny square, to see a beautiful reminder, with all colors of a gay rainbow, and I wanted to share this little discovery with you. Thank you Chris 92. You're doing a great job! What a beautiful surprise to spot this beautiful bench, with the colors of our gay flag, in the middle of a square on the island of Tenerife. I just have one question:
do you know why this bench was put there, in that square? I'm asking you this question, because it seemed to me, that the favorite destination for gays in the Canary Islands, was more Gran Canaria? But I may be wrong, or maybe things are changing. There must be a story behind putting this bench at this location? Well, I think so! By the way, if any of you know about it, leave us an audio message immediately
or a video message on the Hot-Line. We're all eager to know, what is the story behind this bench. Thank you in advance. Hello, my name is Laurent and I am talking to you from Belgium. First of all, I would like to congratulate the entire HappyGayTV team for putting together this project that is very useful for our community, and for the excellent work you've done on it. So, the reason I'm reaching out to you today, it's to talk to you briefly about a
documentary that I watched a few weeks ago, and it touched me a lot. It's entitled Growing Up Gay, based on Olly Alexander. For those who don't know, he is a musician, singer and actor. He is the lead singer of the band Years & Years, by the way, an excellent band I would recommend to you, if you didn't hear about them before. He is also one of the actors in the series:
"It's a Sin", that you probably know this time. In this documentary, he opens up about his own mental struggles, like depression, anxiety attacks, scarification, or eating disorders. He's mostly exploring the connections, between these disorders and the fact of growing up gay, in a stigmatizing world, and in which gay children are bullied.
The documentary is very touching, sometimes even revolting, as we can see that Olly Alexander, despite the very successful career he has built, is still very fragile, when he relives those difficult moments. He also goes to meet young people, boys or girls, who have dealt or are dealing with the same feelings of rejection from the society,
just because they are who they are, and the ensuing seclusion. He also talks about the suffering of the parents unable to help and protect their child. Basically, I was very moved by these testimonies, and most of all, I find them useful for all young people who suffer from being gay in our world. Coming out as gay is still an uphill battle for most of us, and realizing that we are not alone in the world, is very, very important!
So I highly recommend to all of you to watch this documentary, if you have the chance. You can find it on streaming platforms, and especially the most famous of them. That was my little contribution to HappyGayTV. Good luck to the team, and to everyone of you, I wish you a lot of happiness ! Laurent, thank you for your message,
your kind compliments speak. to our hearts. And you should know that at the time we are shooting these images, the website is not yet fully launched, so it will be even better, at least we hope so, once it is all done. I'm taking this opportunity, on behalf of the entire team, to say hello to all Belgians who are watching us, and I know that there are more and more of them!
Coming back to the documentary you're talking about, Growing up gay by Olly Alexander, which is the English translation for "Grandir gay", I believe your message to be very important and interesting, because that's true, we could assume that since gay marriage is accepted in England as it is in France, that everything is perfect in the best of all worlds, for the LGBT community! At least in England where this documentary was shot,
unless I'm wrong. In fact, in this report, we found out about some terrifying statistics! We knew that 40% of LGBT people are at risk of suffering from anxiety or depression, while this only occurs in 25% of the overall population! In the words of Olly Alexander, this is because most gays have never been spared in their early life. He himself was bullied at school,
when he was between nine and fifteen years old, and he never told anyone, not even his parents! Today, he entrusts us in this report, that because of this harassment, he is suffering from severe anxiety attacks that can turn into genuine panic attacks, including when he is on stage! And in this case, the two other musicians with him in the band Years & Years,
are the ones helping him get back to a calmer emotional state. We also learn, according to a study by Stonewall, that two out of three teenagers who have been harassed, harm themselves. And among them, 45% of transsexuals will try to end their lives! And according to him, this would explain drugs outbursts in the gay community, and also, eating disorders amongst LGBT people! And we learn besides in this documentary that,
according to the Imperial College, this risk-taking with drugs, causes a fatality every twelve days! One person dies every twelve days! We also learn that a quarter of the people who are homeless are LGBT! Olly Alexander also points out, that it is an illusion to think that it will be okay if we don't talk about it. Quite the opposite!
He is convinced that the groups are part of the solution, and that all these disorders are related to a problem of self-esteem. And I have to tell you something, Laurent, I have watched this documentary, not long after we launched HappyGayTV, and I can tell you that at that time, I was wondering whether, in spite of everything, our channel had its purpose.
Doubt is very powerful! And it is thanks to this report that I understood that we were right when we created HappyGayTV, and that we actually did well, by implementing the Hot-Line, a geniune exchange platform, a platform where you can bring your words to life. Obviously, this will never replace the discussion groups created by some LGBT associations, but while waiting for their approval, I believe that our channel, can and will be able to represent a moment
of comfort, even if it is only temporary, for someone who would simply feel alone or struggling. I am now convinced that that the Hot-Line will enable a lot of of young and older people, understand that are not alone and will help find solutions together, and ways. to move forward. Coming back again to Olly Alexander, what I love about his documentary,
is that it takes up the leitmotif the HappyGayTV theme, the purpose of the channel, when he says that a professor once said to one of his friends that you can be be gay and happy! Yes! I was over the moon! Thank you Olly, thank you, I realized that we didn't our time, in creating HappyGayTV. And so, this documentary is a must watch,
especially if you are convinced, from your living room sofa, where you might be watching us, that everything is fine now for the LGBT community. Thank you Laurent!
Hello HappyGayTV, this is Julien ! I would like to leave a message, a big shout out, for a company, because, I left some flyers on the table in the coffee room, and it was removed, torn up and thrown in the dustbin. Why? Because supposedly, it was vulgar! The website content was tacky... So there you go, let me know what you think about it because, well, I wasn't quite happy! Kisses to you!
Yes, Julien or Juju 86 91, thank you for your message. Actually, to put what you said in context, when you talk about flyer, you're actually referring to, to this little business card that we have edited lately, and which allows all those who want to become ambassadors of HappyGayTV. Thank you Julien, for taking a shot at it, if I may say so. That's brave, and very thoughtful from you ! Sadly, that is, too,
just the story of ordinary homophobia, in fact! I believe that it depends actually, on what sector your company is in. If you would have put this in a box related to fashion, or to audiovisual for example, without wanting to be too cliché, it would certainly have been been better received. On the other hand, in the industrial sector, mainly in construction, to name a few, I'm not sure that the reception is
supposedly very good, but you never know. Well, that said, from you to me if it's intended, the message on this card is still a bit provocative, for someone who would not be know about it and especially who might not have a sense of humor! That's why, I recommend instead of putting these small cards in the gay scene,
where they will certainly receive a better reception. Or else, at events, like for example, during an intervention in school environment, to address homophobia and transphobia for example. And for all those who, like Julien, would like to be part of our ambassadors, it's really easy: go straight away on the HappyGayTV.com website, at the very bottom of the page in the footer. Click on : "Contacts", and send us an e-mail,
with all your information, and tell us where you want to share them. We'll assess together, the number of cards to be given to you, and then you will receive, once your your mission is finished, a small surprise gift to thank you for your help! There you go, my little ones! That's all for today! This show will keep running thanks to all your messages, so don't be afraid to send us more. And see you soon, for a new episode,
of the first season of HappyGayTV & You. Ciao, ciao my little ones! I love you guys! Love you. See you soon, and take care of yourself!
