During one of the sections we’ve had this quarter, Chloe played a small clip for us from a video on YouTube that is of a woman speaking out against the It Gets Better Project. Her claim was that for a lot of people, it doesn’t get better, however you get stronger. I was immediately intrigued by this argument for the simple fact that I’ve never heard anything like it before. After being exposed to this video, I have to admit, as an openly gay and genderqueer person, I have often wondered, does it ever truly get better? In this blog post, I seek to analyze the stance of the It Gets Better Project and ultimately, I hope to identify the groups it “gets better” for, along with those who are left behind.
In order to critique the It Gets Better Project, it is important to get an understanding of where the project started and what it is all about. The project was founded in September of 2010, when columnist and author Dan Savage recorded a YouTube video with his partner Terry Miller. The goal of the video was to inspire hope for young people facing harassment and was made in light of all the recent suicides by young teenage members of the LGBT community. Since 2010, the It Gets Better Project has blown up and there have been hundreds upon hundreds of videos made by celebrities and others alike.
While the It Gets Better Project sends a good message to the youth, it’s important to pay close attention to the validity of their message, or more importantly, who the message actually applies to. Application of the message can be found within the sources of the message itself, meaning Dan Savage and the other celebrities contributing to his project. When looking on the It Gets Better Project’s website, the videos listed under most popular include celebrities such as Chris Koffer (Kurt from Glee), Adam Lambert and Dan Savage himself, just to name a few. All of these people are alike in some very important ways, which the lesbian blogging website VelvetPark touches on in one of its posts saying, “But seriously, we all know it gets better a lot sooner if you are white, cisgendered, and middle class. And for a lot of us it stays pretty hard.” Some of the other popular videos listed on the website include collaboration videos made by employees of Pixar, Google and Facebook. These videos give us a much wider variety of voices to hear, however the majority of the people in these videos still remain white and middle to upper class.
Another important category that is left out of this project for the most part is women. Under the list of popular videos on the website, the only videos made by women are of Hillary Clinton, Ke$ha, Sarah Silverman and Ciara/LaLa. Not to mention, none of these women identify within the LGBT community, so how does that place them in a position to encourage queer youth that it actually gets better? In the words of Adrienne Rich, there has been “virtual or total neglect of lesbian existence” and this isn’t a new concept (Rich, 32). This project is similar to the books Rich refers to in her article in the sense that it “might have been more accurate, more powerful, more truly a force for change, had the author felt impelled to deal with lesbian existence as a reality and as a source of knowledge and power available to women” (Rich, 32).
The last point I want to touch on is the category of cisgendered versus trans people of the community. Those who do not fall into the normative cisgendered placement of society face struggles unbeknownst to activists like Dan Savage. Insight into the trans world can be found in Judith Halberstam’s article when she writes, “the spaces between genders... do not represent giddy zones of mobility and freedom but represent lives reconciled to gender queerness and bodies committed to making do with the essential discomforts of their embodiment” (Halberstam). Members of the trans community may never find what many label as “home” in regards to their gender. So if you’re not white, cisgendered, male or middle class, does it ever get better?
Bibliography
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” from Professions of Desire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature. ed. George Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman. New York: Modern Language Association, 1995.
Halberstam, Judith. “Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum” in Feminist Theory: A Reader. Edited by Wendy K. Kolmar, Frances Bartkowski. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2005.
Links to the media used:
I also found the it gets better project very attention grabbing. With teen suicide rates much higher in the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender community than out of this community, it is important to remind these kids that there is hope to look forward to and although people will still be ignorant and might treat you poorly, you will gain more strength over the years and learn how to handle it better. As we read in Theo Van Der Meers Gay Bashing: a Rite of Passage, gay bullying is much too common. These gay bashers are ignorant when it comes to issues in the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender community and they need to become more educated when it comes to these issues to help them better understand that gay men should not be a threat to them. I feel like the more we are aware of it, the more likely we are to put an end to homophobia. Having not only gay people but these bullies watch the it gets better videos should help raise awareness. The it gets better project really puts these issues out in the spotlight and gives members of the community a sort of safe space to talk about not only how they have learned to handle issues, but they are able to give advice to the next generation which is crucial. For example, a young man who is recently discovering his sexuality and realizing that he is gay might not have that many people to talk to at a young age. These videos would offer advice to him and prepare him on how to cope with the pain he might someday face from things like bullying and discrimination. I would have to agree that lesbians are underrepresented in this project. After researching some videos on youtube it is clear that the majority of videos are by gay men, and there are not enough from lesbians. I think representation from some famous lesbians like maybe Ellen DeGeneres or another well known public feature would give this program a lot more credibility.
ReplyDeleteVan Der Meer, Theo. “Gay Bashing: a Rite of Passage?” from Culture: Health and Sexuality, Vol. 5, No. 2, Homophobia and Anti-Gay Violence: Contemporary Perspectives 2003