I've been putting this one off for a while, partly because I've been trying to figure out an approach -- a hook, as it were -- to hang my own reactions on, and partly because my reactions boil down to "really pissed off." Unfortunately for me, every day brings a new article, a new post, a new comment, that just makes the whole thing broader. There's also the fact that, the more I read and think about the posts that sparked this whole essay, the more pissed off I get.
I want to start off by providing some context -- or actually, allowing Dan Savage to provide his own context, as well as a reality check for what comes later in this post:
Keep his comments in mind.
My own reaction started with this post by Jason Teng at Bilerico. In my own humble opinion, Teng takes a wrong turn right at the beginning:
What I question is this seeming meta-narrative that many in the gay mainstream are pushing: Get out of high school; flee your biggoted [sic] small town and move to an urban gay enclave; join the gay community as a card carrying member of the League of Fashionable Culture Generators; Enlightened, Accepting Queers versus Ignorant, Biggoted Straights; Urban versus Rural; Us versus Them.
Frankly, I've watched a number of the videos, and read a lot of the commentaries on our recent wave of teen suicides, and I haven't seen this. What I do see is an attitude that I reflected in my comments on the post: It's a valuable project because these kids need something to hold on to now. No one's promising the world with sprinkles on top. They're just saying "Hold on -- this is not forever."
I think what horrified me the most about Teng's post is the way commenters fell right in with the identity politics, without ever stopping to think what Savage's project is actually about.
I found this comment by Teng particularly instructive, in its conflation of "white=privilege."
Brian, thank you thank you thank you for your comment. Thank you for checking and owning your privilege. This is a perfect example of how white/cis/privileged folk can and should engage in these conversations in a meaningful way without being dismissive of people's experiences. way to be.
Think for a moment about the assumption here: white gay men are the "Other." Yeah, way to be, Jason.
My final comment on that post was:
Lets try a little empathy here -- not for us, but for these kids. Try looking at it from their viewpoint, and leave out the identity politics.
Which was the nicest way I could think of to say "It's not all about you."
I found a strange resonance between Teng's post and this one by Daniel W. K. Lee at MetroWeekly. Lee lost me right at the beginning:
Perhaps it was inevitable that the gay community's commitment to New Left principles would splinter as gays became more mainstream.
Excuse me? Frankly, I remember the '60s and early '70s, when the New Left didn't want to have anything to do with the nascent gay movement -- they were a bunch of freaking homophobes. When they did move in, it was to hijack us for their own agenda, converting what had been a fairly focused civil rights movement into an anti-everything movement, so that suddenly I'm supposed to be out working for the benefit of people who spit on me every chance they get.
I guess what got me was the inherent and thinly disguised racism in both these posts: the enemy is not homophobes of any color, but "rich, privileged white gays." (As an interesting sidebar to the second piece, has Mr. Lee considered that most of us aren't attracted to racial stereotypes, but rather to individual people? Another flaw in PC leftist thinking.)
Teng's criticism is, believe it or not, relatively mild, if somewhat childish. I happened on another via Evan Hurst at Truth Wins Out that really takes the cake. The commentary he's referring to, at Femmephane, is a case study in everything that's wrong with the gay left. Hurst does a good take-down, as does Matthew at Boy Culture.
Sady Doyle, another critic, managed to find a soapbox at The Atlantic, with more of the same. Note the reliance on the word "privilege":
"There is actually no path to change in this vision," alleges blogger Zoe Melisa, in a post from her personal blog which was re-published at Queerwatch. "Promoting the illusion that things just 'get better,' enables privileged folks to do nothing and just rely on the imaginary mechanics of the American Dream to fix the world."
Melisa's post presents a long list of criticisms, and you probably won't agree with every single one. But others have noted that privilege does play a large and unspoken role in many of the project's narratives; especially for GLBT folks who are also facing other forms of oppression, leaving their home towns and entering an accepting GLBT community may be much harder and more complicated than it looks.
One thing I noted about the "critical" posts: they all use the initial video, done by Dan Savage and his husband Terry. Well, yes, they're two white guys who've managed some success. (Be sure to hate them for it. I mean, one of them is even -- gasp! -- blond!) I've actually surveyed these videos, and watched a number of them, and you know what? They're coming from all sorts of people, white, black, brown, femme, butch, male, female, gays and allies. (Full disclosure: I'm male and, for the most part, white. This to some people automatically translates as "privileged." These are people who, I suspect, really don't have a clear idea of how the world works, or how many ways the haves can find to dismiss the have-nots. I've never been rich, although sometimes I've been financially secure, and I've never been fully accepted by those who should be my peers until just recently, partly because I've finally grown into myself, and partly because the world has grown up a little. My self-esteem has, for most of my life, been fairly fragile. I got over it.)
What's missing from most of these commentaries is empathy. That's also what's missing from a lot of the bullies, most glaringly in death of Tyler Clementi: Ravi and Wei never seem to have thought about Clementi at all, as other than an object for their amusement. This post by Toby Wollin at Firedoglake puts that aspect under a microscope:
According to experts, the current crop of students are least likely to agree with statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,” or, “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective."
These sentiments are widely acknowledged as markers of empathy but sadly are found lacking in youngsters today….
Surprisingly enough, I find more empathy from Dr. Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical Christian who, apparently, is better able to think about these things clearly, and more humanely, than many in our community. As quoted in Box Turtle Bulletin:
As a traditional evangelical, I may have some differences of opinion with my gay friends. However, such ideological differences don’t matter to a middle school child who is afraid to go to school.
There are many such children who need adults to care more about their well being than about religious differences. Adults need to focus on common values of respect and civility and take the culture war off the school campus.
The point here, as I noted in my comments at Teng's post and as I've stressed above, is that Savage is trying to reach out to kids in crisis. When you're thinking of killing yourself, do you really need to hear from someone who's walking around with the kind of baggage that's only going to convince you to go ahead and do it?
There's another area of criticism toward this project -- call it "shame on you for jumping on the bandwagon." This seems to be directed mainly at high-profile allies -- celebrities -- who are trying to help. I guess if you're famous, you should just shut up and sit in the corner.
Let's start with this one from Bil Browning at Bilerico:
I really struggled with the title with this post. First I considered, "Celebrities jump on the bandwagon stuffed with our dead kids' bodies," or "Celebrities get warm fuzzy publicity on our bullied youths' backs." Those seemed a little harsh, but I still wonder how many of these videos come backed by a publicist shouting, "Get out there and prove you love dead gay kids!"
Does that seem just the least little bit cynical to you? (I'm happy to report that Browning got some flak in the comments to that post.) It's particularly egregious since a number of the videos he posted were done by celebities who are gay themselves -- Ellen DeGeneres, Lance Bass -- or long-time allies such as Cyndi Lauper.
What disturbs me the most about Browning's post and others I've seen along the same lines is the closeness of fit, so to speak, with some commentaries from outside the community -- from our enemies, in fact.
I don't know if I'd call the Daily Targum, Rutgers's student paper, an outright enemy, but take a look at this:
The death of University student Tyler Clementi might have been properly mourned if it were not for the massive rallies and aggressive news coverage that altered the nature of the situation. The truth is that an 18-year-old boy killed himself - he was a student just like the rest of us, someone just trying to receive an education. Yet people's relentless agendas took his death and turned it into a cause based on false pretenses.
Or how about this one from Matt Barber, via Joe.My.God.:
As Rahm Emanuel famously said: 'You never let a serious crisis go to waste. It's an opportunity to do things you could not do before.' It makes me physically ill to watch as the HRC and other ‘gay' militants lick their chops and rub their hands together over the tragic suicides of these troubled, sexually confused young men. Before they were even laid to rest, the radical homosexual lobby pounced leveraging these suicides to demand that government codify each of their extremist, social engineering demands. This is political exploitation at its slimiest and it pours salt on the wounds of loved ones.
Sadly, there's too much resonance there to make me comfortable.
Savage, no shrinking violet, has come back at his critics:
I admit that IGBP doesn't do the impossible. It doesn't solve the problem of anti-gay bullying, everywhere, all at once, forever. The point of the videos is to give despairing kids in impossible situations a little thing called hope. The point is to let them know that things do get better. For some people things get better once they get out of high school, for others things get better while they're still in high school. And some kids, like the kid above, are helping to make things better for other kids who are in still high school. But things do get better and kids who are thinking about suicide need to hear that.
And to those who insist that all the videos are just oldies speaking from a place of adult privilege: have you watched the videos? There are tons from teenagers, many still in high school, many who are already out of the closet. And there are tons of videos from people who came out while they were still in middle or high school talking about their experiences good and bad and unimaginable.
Be sure to read the comments on this post.
And in case you haven't checked it out yourself, here's the It Gets Better Project at YouTube. (I've heard that the submissions have reached the 650 video limit. Perhaps Savage will start a Part 2.)
Perhaps the best summation comes from Joe Jervis, commenting on Femmephane's atrocious screed:
And the far left continues to eat its progressive own in the cause of some mythical gaytopia.
And for myself, just remember one thing: it's not about you, it's about the kids.
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