It gets better
Dan Savage has started a new project, prompted by the suicide of a bullied gay teenager, Billy Lucas, in Indiana. So they’re trying to get the word out: It gets better. Don’t despair. And they’re collecting other people’s stories, too.
This particular project is specifically about giving queer kids the strength to carry on, but it’s not just gays who are made miserable by schools and religion and other agents of the enforcement of artificial norms but also for all you geeks and nerds and oddballs who are or were outsiders in school.
Another good essay to read is The disease called "Perfection". We all face ridiculous expectations from our culture, and we all face these pressures to conform with the boring mundanes with their distressingly unrealistic and uninteresting ideals. I didn’t have the stigma of being gay, but I was the homely, unathletic, four-eyed weirdo no girl would look at twice…and I can say that it got better for me, and it can also get better for everyone.
By the way, Dan Savage also talks about the unenlightened oppression of a Catholic upbringing. If that’s your burden, rest assured that that can get better, too—you can become an ex-Catholic, and while the world may still be tinted in shades of sin and guilt for a long time to come, you’ll get better.
Hang in there.
Found at Pharyngula
+1
about 2 years ago
Billy’s family have said often that Billy should not, please, be remembered as a gay teenager. He was, simply a bullied teenager. He was of mixed race and had also been bullied for being a “Nigger” (a word I do not apologise for using in the context of his bullying, and one applied not only ignorantly but not in the context of his race in any case).
Billy may or may not have been gay. The importance is not his sexuality, but instead the fact that school was not a safe place for him to be and yet he had to be there.
Please would you edit the article to remove the gay label for him and just to leave him as a kid whose life was made unbearable by verbal and physical violence at school every day? His mother even moved school to escape one set of bullies and Billy met another set at once. And those bullies have been active on his facebook memorial page, too.
about 2 years ago
Then it wouldn’t be relevant to this blog…
about 2 years ago
Perhaps you should note that the bullying was because of unfounded accusations of homosexuality.
about 2 years ago
Usually ‘getting better’ means for the many non-perfect, ‘different’ students is that you grow up painfully and leave the area. But hell yeah, any program/project like this that can bring awareness, will make inroads into the ignorant and uninformed.
about 2 years ago
Indeed, getting better means just getting away in this case. I think this great idea is intended to be a palliative measure, because for actual changes to be perceived in schools maybe years or decades will be needed and maybe it will just be too late for a lot of kids.
I very much like the attention people are giving to bullying in school lately, but I must reveal that this is a sensitive matter for me as it brings back so many bad memories. I would throw up every day at the school parking after my mom drove me there and never told anybody about this (which relates to the perfection article). But yeah, things got a lot better for me in so many ways I could never imagine!
Josh, thanks for the amazing content you bring us!
about 2 years ago
But the thing about young adults is that it’s not enough to tell them ‘someday, it will get better’. Many young people live day to day with drama and crisis….telling them that ‘someday it will get better’, just doesn’t have the impact it needs by itself.
However, showing two dudes like this very much in love and co-fathering a boy, CAN have impact as virtual role models. The flip side to this is that many, gay young adults won’t make it long enough to see ‘someday it will get better’, as suicide will take its ugly toll.
about 2 years ago
As a teen who made two attempts on my life during the 1960′s, I must say that this video would have made a difference for me.
about 2 years ago
Me too, but that was in a different context. By that I mean a video like this for us would have been a virtual Godsend back then…just because there was virtually nothing out there. Young adults today are virtually bombarded with information-so much so, that it’s often confusing and lacks real punch.
However, manage to put something like this in actual school curriculum and you will see great effect.
about 2 years ago
You were there and now you are still here. You are so right, there was nothing out there. So where do we go from here.
about 2 years ago
“We’ become role models like the two dudes in the video…..
While gay teens live in the day, they also don’t totally ignore at least the ‘prospect’ of getting older with someone they love. If they have no hope that things will ever get better, then they have nothing to look forward to.
The major reason I kept trying to reject my sexuality for so many yrs, was that all the prospects of living a gay ‘life’ looked so bad to me, at the time.
about 2 years ago
Teens by their very biology, are not adept at seeing the long view. It is up to the adults around them to nurture the sense that even the worst storm can be weathered.
I feel the emphasis on punishing or stopping bullying is upside-down. There will always be bullies. If we can somehow better empower our children to give no quarter to them, their influence and impact will be minimized. There is no greater poison for a bully than being made irrelevant.
about 2 years ago
As always, you offer an intelligent comment. I enjoy your posts.
about 2 years ago
Thanks!
about 2 years ago
read Savage Love yesterday, and Dan continues his impressive contributions to society: he is truly The Man.
about 2 years ago
If they could show this in EVERY parochial, middle and high school in the country.
about 2 years ago
Simply a great post, Josh. Thank you and all of those whose efforts you mention.
about 2 years ago
I cannot help but think everone on this site can appreciate this post. As Dashiell posted above “There will always be bullies.” We need to impower ‘our kids.’
about 2 years ago
While I agree that young adults can certainly empower themselves to de-throne the most ardent bullies, you need a administration and ALL teachers onboard to make any substantial difference.
If you don’t have positive, adult role models and follow-through, then it just cycles back to the same system it’s basically been since the 50′s……’boys will be boys’……and ‘good ol’ boys’ running that system. It’s the notion/reality that so many things stay the same and that makes change so elusive.
about 2 years ago
This was one of the best posts on here ever. Every gay teen should watch this vid.
about 2 years ago
Great post. Thank you <3
about 2 years ago
I found out recently that a good friend of mine tried to commit suicide because of bullying, by swallowing a handful of pills with boiling water. Thankfully, it didn’t came out as planned. I always wanted to make a youtbe video about that, but I am kinda shy to expose myself to the world…
about 2 years ago
Just give your friend all the support you can and that will mean more to him than you will ever know.
about 2 years ago
Why do I feel a lurking taboo, scary subject no one wants to mention here?
Teens, as post above explained, are not living for the future but for the present.
Does this video help? Maybe. But only a little.
What would REALLY help a teen on the verge of pulling the plug on his life?
Come on, what is the only thing that would help?
Loving him.
For him to be loved by another male, if he wants to.
But those experienced enough can’t offer that to a teen, because he’d be put in jail.
Loving, helping, showing the path, offering experience to a teen has now been defined as being ‘perverted’.
That is where the REAL problem is.
These videos are no cure for suicides. Love is.
about 2 years ago
If you mean to suggest imposing a sexual relationship into an already volatile mix of hormonally driven teen-angst and suicidal depression, I could not disagree with you more. IMHO, the love he needs is the patient, understanding, supportive, parental kind; that fosters a sense of his own value. I think the videos are exactly the sort of grassroots effort that is needed to connect with these kids right where they live.
about 2 years ago
Really inspiring video; definitely relevant to me as an American youth and many others, I’m sure…Great couple. I love their enthusiasm for life. Thanks for introducing us to this project!
about 2 years ago
realize that this article was written by a comedian who makes fun of it exactly?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Single-Dad-Laughing/139472446076911
Basic Info
.Affiliation:The world’s #1 fastest growing new humor blog!
Personal Information:One single dad. One awesome kid. A whole lot of funny. Danoah.com (Single Dad Laughing) has become the fastest growing new humor blog in the blogosphere! Visit today for some of the funniest stuff you’ll ever read, see, or watch.
Dan and Noah Pearce (father and son) take you on some of life’s lamest yet most exciting adventures. With a twist on life that only somebody truly insane can have, Dan writes about their adventures as a family, raising a child as a single dad, dating, reminiscing about past events, and the craziness of relationships of all kinds.
Dan also started a new comic strip on the blog called Single Dad Laughing. Visit the site (www.danoah.com) and click on the comics tab at the top of the page. It’s unrighteously hilarious.
More than anything, people love Danoah.com because they can come and laugh about all the crap they usually don’t stop to think how funny it is. With Dan’s daily updates, you have all the bathroom reading material you’ll ever need. (read less)
One single dad. One awesome kid. A whole lot of funny. Danoah.com (Single Dad Laughing) has become the fastest growing new humor blog in the blogosphere! Visit today for some of the funniest stuff you’ll ever read, see, or watch.
Dan and Noah Pearce (father and son) take you on some of life’s lamest yet most exciting adventures. With a twist on life that only somebody truly insane can have, Dan writes about their adventures as a family, raising a child as a single dad, dating, reminiscing… (read more)Personal Interests:We make the funny funny.