Brody's Scribbles... Reflecting on "It Gets Better"

From The Bilerico Project's regulars, a compiled outlook on Dan Savage's 'It Gets Better' project on YouTube:

"I've spent a lot of time looking at videos from the "It Gets Better" project and I don't see a specific promise the LGBTQ community is making about how life will be. I also don't get the sense of a "bill of goods" that LGBTQ kids are being sold that rainbows and unicorns will appear once they make it past some arbitrary moment in their lives.

I do get a sense of what is possible if LGBTQ kids hang in there until they get control of their own lives and can make their own decisions. As with all things in life, we are each responsible for what we do with the challenges and the time that is given to us. "It gets better (and it can get great)" is a modest message to build on.

The "It Gets Better" Project isn't a monolithic effort with a defined promise, it's an evolving community project saying that a better life, and even a great life, is possible and told through many voices, with many different experiences. I saw videos echoing your own experience about college and after, that things can still be hard, and how and why kids should hang in there.

We can't let the ache of present and past pains blind us to the goal of this project. The whole point is to give kids hope at a time when it's hard to see or feel it. To do that we have to talk about our lives and struggles, as so many already have, but also about the strength we've found and how they can find it too.

I think the critical point missing in the "It Gets Better" message is that ONCE YOU ARE AN ADULT, [ high school teen ], you will have more freedom to direct your life than you do now. You will have a stronger say in what you choose to believe, who you hang with, what information you can gather about yourself and the LGBTQ community, and where you will spend your money and time. For the first time in your life, you will really be stepping out from under your family's wings and directing your life in the direction you want to go.

And you will need what Hemingway called a shock-proof shit detector. Not everything your family taught you about love and relationships and human sexuality was true; not everything the mainstream lesbian and gay community tells you about sexuality and gender is true. Particularly if you are bi and trans, you're going to need your SPSD to guide you through all the bad advice you can get from both the straight and the gay sides.

If there's a message about surviving our culture's fear and hatred of fluid sexuality and gender, it's that you become better at sorting out the bullshit from the real thing. You become better at defending yourself psychologically and physically against people who look down on you. You become better at gathering around you the people who really are your friends. You become stronger at demanding what it is that you really need to succeed.

Plus, even if Mom and Dad homophobically reject you when you first come out--years of openness can melt away their opposition. Continue on with your life and they will see the child they raised to adulthood who is a decent, caring person who brings great things to the world. They might also stop listening to the clergy who told them that queer is evil and that your queerness is all their fault."