This week, in celebration of National Coming Out Day, MTV and Logo will air an hour-long follow-up to its February "It Gets Better" special, and I will groan in irritation.
Ever since it’s inception in 2010, I’ve disliked “It Gets Better”, a trying-so-hard-not-to-be-a-vanity-project for Dan Savage, the supposed patron saint of tell-it-like-it-is liberalism. Stating my distaste is generally met with eye-rolls and indignation; “Why must you find fault with everything?” one of my less sympathetic companions asked me. “This project is trying to help people.”
But it is not merely my deep-seated cynicism at work here. Sure, I'm partially turned off by the treacly and self-indulgent ramblings of upper-middle class white men whose “betterness” tends to amount to the fact that they have found a relationship with a person who looks and acts remarkably like themselves. And yes, it does annoy me that for most of the celebrity contributors, "it" got a lot more “better” than the average viewer's life ever will.
No, my dissatisfaction with "It Gets Better" actually stems from its genesis. As most will recall, "It Gets Better" was founded in reaction to the rash of gay teen suicides that occurred in 2010. These stories were lumped together and labeled as the stories of teens who were “bullied to death.”
Let me state outright that I am in no way underestimating the horror of bullying, which is inarguably a serious and very real issue. However, I think these stories create a dangerous and misleading narrative about what I'll call the "fragile faggot."
The narrative of the fragile faggot goes like this: gay individuals (but usually gay men) are psychologically defenseless and without resources. They are helpless lambs in the woods, and they need your (read: heterosexual) help. These stories are pitying, and essentially a gay equivalent to the damsel-in-distress.
This may not ostensibly seem like an issue, but its consequences are hugely problematic. First, it allows for scapegoating. In the "bullied to death" example, the bullies are painted as unambiguous villains: deviant, misanthropic youths senselessly tormenting defenseless victims. All of a sudden, the wider social problem is excused or omitted. Instead of prompting us to question the biased institutions and unsupportive communities that created and maintained an environment where such bullies could even be allowed to reign, this narrative merely asks us to pity the victim and demonize the bully. It's the bully who is the problem, it says, not you.
But we are all indicted in these stories. It is not enough to condemn bullies, we must condemn the institutions that permit such behavior and our unwillingness to challenge them. This oversimplified narrative largely obscures the fact that individuals with supportive peers, teachers, families and communities are hugely less likely to attempt suicide. The fact is that if these support systems regularly existed, the bullies would not have been so powerful.
The second major issue is that the concept of the fragile faggot leaves no room for queer empowerment. Just like the princess who must wait for her hero to rescue her, so is the fragile faggot depicted as lacking any self-sufficient resources. This is a form oppression that has historically been used present women as naturally possessing inferiorities, and it's now being used on queer and LGBT people in the same way.
"It Gets Better" contributes to this. Its message essentially amounts to "Don't worry! Help is on its way". It leaves no possibility for self-efficacy or empowerment. “Wait it out, you’ll escape” is not the same as saying “you are strong and you will overcome this.” Rather than encouraging LGBT youth to challenge, resist and overcome, it asks them to sit tight and wait for things to change. This is essentially analogous to telling queers to wait patiently for those in power to generously grant us rights rather than us demand them. This is ridiculously passive and panders to unjust hegemonies.
It is essential to empower LGBT youth to agitate for change. Instead of telling them that it gets better (which, realistically, we cannot promise), we need to be providing resources to MAKE it better. Whether this is something as large as establishing a support network in schools or as small as encouraging the personal belief that this treatment is fundamentally wrong, resistance to heterosexism should always be a goal.
LGBT history is filled with powerful, subversive and brave individuals who fought for their independence against the odds. LGBT people possess a tremendous amount of resilience and courage, and we deserve to acknowledge this as a reality. Instead of “It Gets Better”, why not “Make It Better”?
