American Dream My Ass

Public settings can be traumatic for many LGBT individuals, as there is no safe way to be sure that where you are going is hate-free. There were many places I have had to avoid when walking my dog in my own neighborhood for fear of my own safety. I can't recall how many times neighboring kids/teens followed me/yelled hateful slurs at me simply because I walked past them. However, for so many LGBT young adults, they face severe discrimination and hatred in their own homes in addition to the outside world.

Heterosexual Privilege #5: I will not be kicked out of my own home due to my sexual orientation.

This is not to say that heterosexual teens are not kicked out of their households, indeed they are. However, being non-heterosexual drastically increases the likelihood that teens will face discrimination in their own households. Unlike households of families who are racial minorities and can talk to their children about discrimination based on race, so many LGBT young adults/children do not have LGBT parents they can look up to/confide in when they are experiencing inordinate amounts of stress from the discrimination and hatred they experience in school/in their neighborhoods based on their sexual orientation. LGBT youth often feel quite alone in their struggles, as their family units, with whom they are expected to turn to in times of trouble, show absolutely no sympathy for their struggles. In fact, mere disclosure of one's non-heterosexual orientation is far too often seen as a burden for other family members, as they must "deal with" with fact that their sibling/child/other family member is "different".

 So many parents feel so uncomfortable with a departure from a 1950's image of the Cleaver family that they ultimately disown their LGBT children instead of working on their own prejudices/hatred. So many of these people cannot deal with their own discomfort in discussing sexuality in general that they instead choose to stop loving their children (or perhaps these parents were never even fully human enough to love them in the first place, as one could argue).

It's difficult to estimate what proportion of homeless youth identify as LGBT, but the few studies that actually address this issue reveal rates of 11-35% (which is enormous, considering the small percentage of LGBT youth in this country). As these adolescents are turned out onto the streets with immensely limited opportunity for financial gain (given that many of them don't even have high school diplomas), they often turn to prostitution, drug use, and drug dealing to actually survive. Moral elitists often argue that these "choices" are never acceptable, but I would wager that those who make those privileged arguments were never disowned by their parents at age 13. It is difficult to  land a job when you don't have a place to shower or clean clothes to wear to your job interview. What choice do you have when you are forced to sleep in a park?

Ultimately, the high rates of LGBT homeless youth further oppress non-heterosexuals as a group, as being disowned at a young age essentially prevents you from getting an education, thus blockading you from entering a career with social power (such as a judge, doctor, business owner, etc.). Preventing LGBT youth from getting an education keeps them out of the realm of public policy/law/scientific research (because apparently you must have $40,000 in order to prove that you're "smart enough" to go to college), which perpetuates heteronormativity in fields that wield social power to create change. Yes, we must all do our part to change society, but a supreme court justice unfortunately has more social power than a sex worker.

Due to the "American Dream" (or nightmare, as I like to call it), we all think we have an equal opportunity to change the world/make a fortune/do whatever the fuck we want to do. We don't. Period. If you disagree, please explain how a wealthy white straight boy with family connections ino every high-paying field has a more difficult time making ends meet than a homeless lesbian latina. I'm serious-- try and explain it to me, because I don't understand the logic. In our society, we tend to hate the poor. We love to blame individuals in this country, because it prevents any real social change (i.e., effort on our part) from occuring. If someone is poor, we say that they should work harder.

Tell me, how can this make sense when in 2005 the average compensation for CEO's of the 350 largest public companies  9.2 million (which often evades taxation, as these are compensations and not official salaries)? If these CEO's happen to be making more than you, is it because they are working harder? I'd like to see what kind of hard work they are doing to earn that much, because so many people in this country perform back-breaking labor to live below the poverty level (or less than a dollar a day, in many places across the world).

Anyway, I digress. To close, I would like to show this image of Pope Benedict sporting major bling, while preaching about living like the poor.

G'night folks!

-Harvs

Tuesday Bloggaround

New York becomes the first state to pass legislation that will allow trafficking victims to clear their criminal records of prostitution charges.


A teacher is fired from a Christian school for having premarital sex.

[Trigger Warning] Everyday, at least 5 children in the U.S. have their healthy genitals mutilated, including at Cornell University. Liss over at Shakesville covers the story and starts a discussion thread.

See if you can spot the threat to moral values.


A French Trans-woman is mandated to enlarge her breasts before she can legally be considered a woman. Carrie Polansky over at Gender Across Borders gives us the story.

Link Love

We also have exciting news! Two of my pieces were accepted for Blog Carnivals:

My Controversial piece appeared in the June edition of the Carnival of Progressive Politics and is available over at My Political Side, run by the fabulous S. Gaissert. 

My True Blood piece appeared over at the June 20th edition of the Bobo Carnival of Politics and is available over at The Bobo Files.

-Harvey

Semantics

Heterosexual privilege #4: I am not identified by my sexual orientation.

One fine summer evening after finals had ended last year, I went to a friend's house to celebrate the end of the semester. We were on her back porch sipping limoncello, discussing the music video for "I'm on a Boat", feeling free and young and buzzed while bathing in the rare glow that is the indirect Ithaca, NY sunlight. We we're having a gay ol' time...

Then our of nowhere, it happened. The hostess's boyfriend let it slip: "THAT IS SO GAY". No, he was not talking about an Elton John album or a meadow filled with unicorns. He was talking about something that he clearly did not like: a book, film, mixed drink, whatever. The subject of his accusation could have been any number of things. It was how he used the adjective 'gay' in his sentence. He did not use it to mean "Bad Ass" or "Something I want to be someday". He used it to mean '"vapid, uncool, or stupid". His girlfriend did what any good ally would do: publicly chastise him. However, the manner in which it was done was a rather curious event. Instead of telling him that she personally did not like that use of language, she merely pointed over to me and Legally Gay (who was sitting next to me) as if to say, "Look! Can't you see we have a corner of queers present?!" Suddenly, everyone looked at us... and I felt 200% more gay than usual (which is nearly impossible), as if we were an exhibit in a zoo. Did everyone expect our gayness to jump out and bite him? Maybe. That would have been entertaining. I tried to brush off the awkwardness by making some comment about the council of gays not approving, and people seemed to forget about it.

I didn't, though. Admittedly, I'm making this whole ordeal seem very dramatic. In reality, it was over as soon as it happened and I don't think many other people even noticed. Still, I remember that feeling. The sensation that everyone noticed the elephant in the room at the exact same time, and the elephant was composed of me and my friend. I do appreciate the fact that the hostess corrected her boyfriend, but drawing attention to my queerness made me feel... well, queer. Not in the gay sense, but as in the sense that I was the "other".

This situation brings up an interesting idea, though. She chastised him because we were there. Perhaps to pass as an ally in our eyes? I find myself thinking, would she have admonished him had we not been there? Who knows. What I do know is that I don't want people to monitor themselves and others because I am in their presence. This makes me a burden, which is not a title I want to embrace with open arms. I would prefer that people not use this kind of language because it's wrong. Period. I don't care if you're at a pride parade or an evangelical megachurch (although I'd wager that there would be more gays there than one would think), using the title of a sexual orientation to signify that something is of lesser worth is not exactly kind.

Bringing sexual identities to people's attention is an interesting phenomenon. Many times, it can be a great thing. Like, when I'm discussing gay rights with someone and I find out that they too, are non-heterosexual: there's a sense of solidarity. We can relate shared experiences with one another and commiserate.

Then again, it can be limiting and painful. Michael Pakaluk, regular columnist for The Pilot, "America's Oldest Catholic Newspaper", argues in a recent column that Children of same-sex couples should be banned from Catholic Schools because the children might bring pornography into school or advocate for the gay agenda. Yeah, seriously. Dana Rudolph, founder and publisher of Mombian (a blog for lesbian parents), covers the story over at Change.Org and explains pretty succinctly that when she chaperons her first-grade son's class trips, she isn't trying to advocate for same-sex marriage. When caring for a gaggle of 6-year-olds, there isn't exactly time for protesting and activism amidst snack time and making sure they don't run off by themselves, let alone pornography distribution.

Pakaluk's argument that children of same-sex parents would bring pornography into school is the epitome of the tired stereotype that gay = sex. My theory of why gay rights progress has been slow in this country (as compared to other industrialized western nations) is due to the country's puritanical roots. As a rule, the United States is fairly tight-lipped about sexuality and sex education. This isn't to say that sexual objectification and commodification don't exist in out culture. They most certainly do, in droves nonetheless. But, as a country we have a rather difficult time having an open and honest discussion about real sexualities. Instead, anything sex-related is seen as dirty and wrong... and the porn industry capitalizes on this fact. Do you think if young women were actually taught to be open about their sex lives that the porn industry would flourish? Probs not. The insanely lucrative pornography industry depends upon "chastity" of most young women who are taught to fight against their sexual desire. If we stopped slut-shaming women and allowed them to pursue their sex lives, the "Girls Gone Wild" Empire would no longer be so "naughty" or "devious". Given that the industry has built it's image upon being "dirty", if we no longer view sex as "dirty", or a "moral ill", the porn empire would collapse.

I'm not saying this can happen overnight. There are so many factions in this country working against having an open and honest discussion about sexuality and sexual health, such as the National Association of Evangelicals (surprise!). Rev. Ted Haggard was the president of this incredibly influential organization (he met with George Bush once a week when he was still in office)(26% of United States Citizens are Evangelical Christian), who was a vehemently anti-choice/anti-gay leader... until he was caught snorting coke with gay male prostitutes. Whoops! Don't you hate it when you're late to your Stone-the-Gays/Destroy-Women's-Health rally because your gay male prostitute is taking forever to snort his coke? I sure do.

Anywayz, back to semantics. When you limit your definition of someone's identity to one detail (that is often stigmatized in this country), it's so easy to see them as "the other". Before African Americans gained the right to vote in the United States, so many people in power viewed this entire segment of the population based on only one characteristic: skin color. Anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriage (which was only lifted in 1967, BTW) sought to keep people in distinct, easy-to-see racial categories so as to make discrimination easier. Opponents of progressive politics at these time periods did not see African Americans as complex individuals who cannot be generalized. Similarly, opponents to progressive politics today do not see non-heterosexuals as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, lawyers, doctors, artists, janitors, students, teachers, or street-sweepers. They see non-heterosexuals as one thing: deviant, and because of their inability to work through their own discomfort, they ignore any contrary pieces of evidence. They merely keep their eyes and ears open for when one non-heterosexual commits a sexual felony (as if no heterosexual has ever done so), and then generalizes this to the entire LGBT segment of the population.

We are not merely our race, class, gender, sex, body shape, disability status, immigration status, religion, or our sexual orientations. All of these things and more make up who we are, but no single factor defines us as a person.

Okay, gotta go hand out butt-plugs to first-graders. Tata!

-Harvs