"...does it get better?" Panel

On Thursday night at the invitation of one of my students, Ryan L., I participated in "...does it get better?," a panel discussion examining the widely known It Gets Better series of videos and sponsored by Project ShoutOUT, an undergraduate student group. The panel also included Tony Alvarado-Rivera, former director of the mentorship program at the Broadway Youth Center in Chicago; and Bonnie Wade and Malaundja Gayles, both community organizers from the Uhlich Children's Advantage Network Home Host Program.

 

The university's student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, covered the event quite well, so I'll only note that the all of the panelists pressed the question of whether it "gets better," and for whom, and how, especially given the multiple challenges many LGBTQ people, especially young, working-class and poor, gender variant and queer, and geographically and cultural isolated young people, may face. The other three panelists spoke primarily about their experiences working with young people, and they emphasized the necessity of listening to them and taking into account their needs rather than imposing or predesigning systems and structures into which they might be fit. We all called into question the American myth of individualism, the ethnocentrism and hidden classism, and the myth of a particularly narrow kind of adolescence that the "It Gets Better" videos promote. For my part I read a version of the piece I wrote and posted on this blog back in October 2010, in which I suggested how people might grow stronger, and thus perhaps things might get better. The questions from the students and faculty in the audience were thoughtful and productive, and it cheered me to see how many of them really do want to make the world a better place for all of us.

Let me offer my deep thanks to the organizers and my fellow panelists, as well as to all the students who showed up to listen to and engage us in a conversation. 

It Gets Better/You Grow Stronger Project

"Only difficulty is stimulating..." - José Lezama Lima

While I as an out, black, gay man strongly endorse the general idea behind and the creation of the "It Gets Better" project and series of videos initiated by Dan Savage* to address the recent slew of suicides by bullied, harassed and violated queer and questioning youth, such as Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi, I have been slow in posting one, despite my acknowledging that it might prove helpful to the very few who might view it (which is why I very likely will soon post one). I feel this way in part because, based on my own life and the lives of those queer people whom I've known, I believe it isn't so much that things get better--especially if you are black, and working-class or poor, and a woman or a transgender person, and differently abled, and geographically isolated, etc.,--as it is that you get stronger. (Gukira discusses this with his inimitable brilliance on his blog.)

It's that you learn to address, rather than adapt or mould yourself to, the world's disdain for you, your invisibility and objectification, how little so many people, including loved ones who are not LGBT and some who are, really do see you or care about your existence. You learn to raise your innate antennae, sharpen and clarify your senses, develop new spiritual, psychological and emotional muscles, through your experiences, thereby allowing you then to move through the world with increasing self-awareness, resistance, confidence, joy. It may not always seem better or easier, but often it may. You can become stronger and more knowledgeable about yourself, and about others like you; you can come to see that the despair you have felt may sometimes place you right back on the edge--of something, some place, including life itself--but now you realize you are able to take a step back and turn in a different direction that will include reflection and affirmation, self-reflection and self-affirmation: and you keep on going, keep going on.

And as you keep going, you can increasingly create a life and enjoy it, shape the world around you such that you are able to experience it fully, to be present in it, connect with, understand, and love people like you and unlike you, including even people who cannot possibly imagine the worlds you're moving in, your complexities and nuances, because they cannot and do not want to see them. Because sometimes, as a result of their own limitations, they want to erase them--and you. Because you are stronger you can drop the armor you often have had to wear to protect yourself--not toss it aside, but at least step out into the world without all of it. You do not have to cry yourself to sleep. You do not have to wake worrying that, with a parent or sibling refusing to offer you the sort of unconditional love they claim they're capable of, or that the God they believe in is capable of, you are utterly alone. You do not have to feel that whenever you speak it's as if you are speaking into a void. You do not have to hide who you are, for fear of the repercussions of being yourself.

Because your strength and self-knowledge and broader knowledge have deepened, have grown richer and firmer, are available to you at all times, and will keep on becoming more so, not despite but as a result of the vicissitudes, the pain, and yes, the victories, and happinesses you experience. All of it will make you stronger if you let it, if you act upon them and make yourself stronger. Perhaps you might see this as better, and that is wonderful. But stronger, definitely, is something you can achieve, and thus, live and thrive.