Article about acceptance

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2010/11/01/it-gets-better-column-sarah-liss.html

Accepting Gays: We Still Have A Long Way To Go

by Sarah Liss

I choked up when flamboyant Kurt came out to his father on Glee. I welled up when he quietly steeled himself for his dad’s rejection, and I wept when the gruff older man quietly embraced his gay son. I also got teary when I first met Marshall, the fastidious, sensitive gay kid played impeccably by Keir Gilchrist on The United States of Tara. I had a similar reaction when the most recent season of Degrassi: the Next Generation introduced a transgender character.

I’m a big suck when it comes to seeing LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or questioning) teens onscreen. The waterworks are triggered by recognizing – and remembering – the pain of figuring out you’re different in high school, a time when you’re yearning so badly to fit in.

In North America, we like to believe we’ve evolved into a progressive, accepting culture: every episode of Ellen in which the talk-show host gushes about her wife; every New York Times profile of an out LGBTQ personality like Rachel Maddow or Lee Daniels; the Gay, Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) awards, which are handed out to arts and media folks for positive representations of homosexuality. We itemize these symbolic acts as proof that we’ve come a long way, baby.

But the fact remains: being queer in high school can still be an incredibly lonely and alienating experience. You feel like some sort of awkward, flightless bird — a penguin, maybe — yanked out of your natural habitat and relocated to a tropical beach filled with seagulls. You’re searching for community and acceptance and, too often, colliding with bullies who don’t understand why you can’t just conform. Which is why, I think, the It Gets Better campaign really can help.

I came out on a political, ideological level before I’d even put all the pieces together in my own mind. I was a moody, arty kid with a vague investment in social justice causes. At 14, I decided I was bisexual because “falling in love with whoever, regardless of gender, just made sense.” (That’s what I told anyone who’d listen.) I was lucky enough to grow up with liberal parents who didn’t flinch when I made that statement, though they assumed it was a flaky teenage phase. I still made mix tapes for boys, and went to school dances with dudes.

And then, I fell in love with my best friend — my female best friend. If you’d asked me then, I couldn’t have explained that that was what was going on. But we were inseparable. We scrawled epic, intense notes in which we tried to define our “best friendship,” which we’d leave in each other’s lockers. We drank peach Schnapps and hung out in parks till after midnight, leaning against each other and talking about Big Things. We’d “take breaks” and stop talking, but renege within a day because it was unbearable not to be in contact.

I didn’t — or couldn’t — grasp that we were smitten with one another. I just knew that it was painful to be together, and more painful to be apart. And even though I went to a high school without a stratified social hierarchy, and even though bullying wasn’t a part of my day-to-day reality, even though I was generally loved and supported — I still spiralled into depression. I felt weird and freakish and confused, and I didn’t have the language or the wherewithal to explain what was happening.

For my best friend, it was worse. She was two years older than I was and had figured out she was a lesbian in her early teens. At the time, she didn’t know any out gay people, and the sense of isolation was overwhelming. She developed a severe eating disorder and subsequently tried to commit suicide. Luckily, happily, she survived both; by the time I met her, she’d received proper treatment and was stable, if not happy.

Looking back on high school now makes me ache for the kids who are going through it today. I was lucky enough to spend my formative teenage years in a progressive family, in an urban centre, in the forward-thinking late-‘90s. Ellen DeGeneres had already proclaimed that, yup, she was gay. We didn’t have Kurt on Glee, but we had soft-spoken sweetheart Ricky on My So-Called Life. We had the 1997 film All Over Me and rock trio Sleater-Kinney (who were two-thirds queer). We had Ross’s lesbian ex-wife on Friends and the entertaining (albeit problematic) girl-on-girl comic-nerd fantasy Chasing Amy.

But even with those LGBTQ touchstones, high school was still a harrowing experience for me. And I can’t imagine what it’s like for a gay teen in a small town, for the effeminate boys and the butch girls and the genderqueer kids who don’t pass and have targets on their backs. I was never bullied, but the weight of difference still made me feel small and scared. And if there’s one commonality to all the instances of cruelty that have led to the recent string of LGBTQ youth taking their own lives, it’s that vulnerability is like catnip to a bully.

Every time some ignorant jerk uses “fag” or “that’s so gay” as a derogatory slur (Perez Hilton, I’m looking at you), he or she is contributing to the myth that there’s something wrong with belonging to the LGBTQ community. Every time we promote the idea that it’s unmanly to connect with your emotions, or there’s something less than feminine about being tough and stoic, we’re perpetuating damaging stereotypes.

We can’t connect with every lost queer or questioning kid out there — the best thing we can do is to help those kids feel a little less vulnerable. The Marshalls and Kurts on our TV sets are a step in the right direction – they’re illustrations that it’s okay, even fabulous, to be fey and sensitive and sweet and gay.

One of the best things about the cavalcade of It Gets Better videos is the diversity of people who have made them. I love the proud elderly queers, the ultra-glamourous drag queens and the images of men in uniform kissing, in flagrant defiance of the U.S. Army’s controversial Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Fictional characters may earn GLAAD awards, but it’s ultimately the real-life stories of courage and fear and joy that can help you feel like you’re not alone, that there’s a community out there that has your back.

End of article

Obviously this article is not specifically about Glee. I'm realizing that I want this journal to be about more than the tv show; I want to include the larger social issues that are often addressed in Glee. And since I am a person with a disability who also has close friends that are gay and lesbian, those two issues are of particular importance to me. Which is why the characters of Kurt and Artie resonate so much with me.

We do have so much further to go in the acceptance of people who are gay. Not only acceptance, but understanding. Empathy. You don't have to be gay to feel their pain, to recognize their loneliness, to chronicle their journey. I think that is the principle lesson that Glee is teaching us - that everyone struggles in high school, from the revered jocks and the haughty cheerleaders to the "sub-basement" (Sue's word) kids in show choir. We can celebrate our differences and find our commmonalities and work together rather than against each other.

I feel so hopeful when I read positive comments on websites from viewers who adore Kurt, who love him for the fabulous, arrogant, searching, talented, emotional teenager that he is, and who are rooting for his success and happiness. But there are plenty of comments that go in the opposite direction as well. And given the fact that I am writing this on the day after the mid-term elections, I unfortunately feel a little less hopeful for kids like Kurt today. And kids like Artie, who won't get the financial assistance they need to have the opportunity to be all they can be. Hell, today I feel sad for all the students in show choir, because there probably won't be money soon for show choirs in any public schools. Or any arts programs in schools.

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