Friday, October 21, 2011

Just wait for it

Last weekend a gay teenager in Ottawa committed suicide. In his suicide note, he referenced the 'It Gets Better' campaign, saying that he just couldn't wait.

I think his comment points to one of the biggest failures of the 'It Gets Better' campaign. Its central message is:

Hey, we know high school is tough - we've been there! But hold on because after you graduate life is going to get a whole lot better. Look, you could have partners and cool jobs and live around other queers. Just wait out that difficult high school period and it will get better!

Certainly, the notion that life gets better after high school, especially for those who are bullied, is an important part of the message. However, especially for those who are bullied, that cannot be the whole message.

Focusing on the idea of 'it gets better' is neglecting the very concrete concerns of the present. Right now there are queer teenagers who are dealing with real hatred, hostility, and violence. Why should they wait for it to get better? They've done nothing wrong. They need it better now. We need to make it better now.

Moreover, when a whole litany of successful queer people say 'yeah, high school was hard for me too, but look at me now!' it unintentionally sends the message that if they can do it, you should be able to do it. No one's high school experience is the same. No one experiences bullying the same way. No queer teenager who is dealing with bullying needs to worry, what's wrong with me? All those queer adults were able to handle it, why can't I? That is an unproductive discourse for a struggling teenager.

The 'It Gets Better' campaign may have been a good way to start having a national conversation about bullying, but the campaign itself is neglecting core issues in favor of having teenagers 'wait it out'. Where does bullying come from? This is about gender, sexism, sexuality, racism, classism. This is about hatred and violence. Real change needs to happen now to address how kids learn about difference. No one should have to wait for there to be less violence in their life.

Check out this video from a group in Seattle called Reteaching Gender and Sexuality. They posted this in response to the 'It Gets Better' campaign when it first started.



8 comments:

  1. The kickball tournament that Ellie and I played in last weekend was a fundraiser for this group! And the girl in this video with the curly black hair and the shirt with Arabic writing on it was a captain and omg I have suuuuch a crush on her. What a babe. Also, using the Gossip as background music....FUCK YES.

    Also, I really really agree on your critique of IGB. I have several problems, not the least of which is that it's giving fat-phobic Dan Savage sooo much attention right now (he was recently voted Seattle's most influential person). But more fundamentally, I think that the idea for it comes from this place of perspective that is really, really hard to have or understand as a youth. I remember being miserable in middle school and having a bunch of adults say things like "Oh, middle school is really hard for everyone", or "It's just a phase." While I appreciated hearing that I wasn't the only one going through such pain, I also felt belittled and not listened to. And it contributed to me ignoring a very real mental illness that I convinced myself was "just a phase" for 10 years. I think it's a very real, very ageist tendency for adults to try to minimize the pain of young folks, and that's exactly what this campaign does.

    ReplyDelete
  2. me too... this is something that has bothered me, but i've never been able to articulate it as well as you and amy did here!

    i think the "tough it out, it gets better" message can make people feel like the pain they are experiencing is not really being appreciated/acknowledged, when sometimes just that simple recognition on someone else's part can really help someone who is feeling isolated and alone.

    in other news, i miss you and have been enjoying your blog! i hope vancouver and school are treating you well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh Liz B., I miss you too!

    You both make excellent points. Validation is really lacking in this campaign. One of the first steps, a very powerful step, in dealing with this type of hatred is to recognize that it's happening and that it's a real issue. The 'tough it out, it gets better' message does not really do that, which results in teenagers feeling isolated and alone (to quote Liz B.). There are clearly lasting negative effects of this strategy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think that my only exposure to the IGB campaign came through something that Larissa posted somewhere (facebook?) a long time ago. Or maybe it was someone else. Who it was doesn't matter. What I've noticed from the comments posted here though is that the "rest of the message" that the IGB campaign leaves out seems primarily to be about educating communities, teachers, school administrators, students in general, etc. rather than about something else that needs to be conveyed to the individual queer teen experiencing the bullying. My thought is that maybe the IGB campaign had identified the need for education, but decided instead to focus its efforts on a message to victims.

    That being said, I appreciate what Larissa and Amy Marie said about how the message of IGB, if left in isolation, can actually have damaging effects, such as making queer teens wonder why they can't "handle it" if so many others were able to. Those were really insightful points that I had not considered.

    So my question then, is what would you add? What is/are the other part(s) of the message that the victims of this type of bullying need to hear? I realize that it is difficult to sum it up in a few words or a catchy phrase, but I think that it's only fair that your answer be something relatively succinct, since that's what the IGB campaign had to do. (Conventional wisdom says that teens have short attention spans, after all).

    Bonus points if you set your reply to catchy music or incorporate a celebrity cameo.

    ReplyDelete
  6. hey sam! sorry i took so long to respond to your comment (long week). anyway, i want to add this video that was recently done by a canadian comedian on the topic. check it out.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh1jNAZHKIw&feature=share

    also, i guess i don't see the dichotomy of the message exactly as you put it, namely that IGB is addressing the victims, your word, and amy, liz b, and i were advocating for a campaign that addressed education. one of my main concerns is the way in which IGB is addressing teenagers. choices around language and speakers, for instance, have a big impact on the type of message that gets transmitted. it is not just that IGB does not address the origins of bullying and hate or what to do about it, they normalize its existence through discourse.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AND THEN THIS HAPPENED:

    http://feministing.com/2011/04/08/friday-feel-good-video-of-the-day/

    ReplyDelete