Brody's Scribbles... LGBT Education - Is It Our Road To Equality?

Editor's Note:

BL Freelance News Service welcomes Linsey Pecikonis back into our fold as a contributor and part-time consultant. As part of her recent academic scholarship programme for attending NETROOTS Nation last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Linsey wrote a series of articles which will be published here over the next week.

Linsey Pecikonis is the Co-founder of Beyond the Hill Strategies, a consulting firm that works with non-profits, candidates, and campaigns finding unique strategies that win. Before founding BHS, Linsey served as the Communications Director for Equality Maryland, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy organization in Maryland.

Her previous experience includes serving as the Director of Communications and Online Organizing for the National Stonewall Democrats. Before joining NSD, she worked as a campaign and communications consultant, advising leading Immigration organizations on messaging, online strategy, and youth turnout. Before that, she served as the Communications Director at Lambda Rising, Washington DC’s historic LGBT bookstore, and as a Marketing Director and Conference Planner for a leading DC Immigration Law Firm. Currently, Linsey runs her own marketing consulting firm for non-profits, volunteers for the Presidential Correspondence Office at the White House, and is a member of Burgundy Crescent Volunteers- the leading source of LGBT volunteers for gay and gay-friendly non-profit organizations in DC. She has organized for a number of Democratic candidates, progressive organizations, and pro-equality ballot measures.

Linsey graduated from Ohio University, where she received a degree in Public Policy and Administration and minor in Communications and Marketing. While serving on the Student Government as the Women’s Affairs Commissioner, she organized the Take Back the Night March on campus and was integral in establishing the Women’s Center at OU.

By Linsey Pecikonis | BALTIMORE, MARYLAND -- All of us in the LGBT movement often forget that we're all on one team. As someone who's worked in the movement for a while, I feel as though it's gays vs. lesbians vs. bisexuals vs. transgender vs. gender queers, vs. the world.

There's this idea that If you support marriage for gay and lesbian couples, then you truly don't support the rights of the transgender community. For example, if you were say a Gay or Lesbian resident of Maryland, and you supported HB235 this year, a bill that was woefully short of full gender identity protections, you're transphobic. If you use the word gay to describe our entire queer community, then you just perpetuate the idea that our community is only full of upper-middle class elitist gay men. Instead of this us v. them mentality, when we're fighting for our rights, it's time for us to take a different approach. It's time we really rallied behind education.

As a community we've not done the best job advocating against images and stereotypes that continue to harm our community. These stereotypes, perpetuated by characters on TV and in the movies, only encourage a misunderstanding of who we are, how we live, and how we associate. While we've come very far in the acceptance of these funny side kick gay male characters, we're not using this forum as a way to educate. [Sidebar: Unless you look at Curt's character on FOX's TV show, GLEE. Curt's character does a wonderful job challenging more Americans to look at the gay and lesbian community in a different light and calling out homophobia in the process]. We need to do a better job not only educating potential allies, but also better educating our community fully on our issues so that we can become better advocates for our own rights.

For far too long we've placed educating our community on the back burner for equality. It's time that education takes center stage. It's an important step in bridging our community and our allies. It allows our movement to create a stronger coalition of allies and advocates. We must stop expecting everyone to come out and immediately know the entire queer history, and to support and understand all of the struggles our community faces. We're a community of various races, religions, nationalities, creeds, genders, and abilities just to mention a few of our differences. Every issue that is for the good of our community will never gain the full support from everyone under the LGBT umbrella; we must stop pretending that it will.

By expecting those of us in the community to automatically understand the full effect of how issues and politics fit into our movement, we lose sight of the long lasting way to create social change - by education.

I remember when I first came out - I won't deny it, I was a late bloomer and didn't come out until my 4th year in college (when I was 23). I didn't have a total understanding on my identity, and what it meant for me to be a lesbian. For the first six months of my coming out process, I didn't even identify as a lesbian (I now identify as gender queer). If it hadn't been for the queer household that took me under its collective wing, and went through the tough process of reeducating me-  I might not be in the place I am today.

Had I not had a supportive community surrounding me, where I was able to explore my sexuality, along with what it meant to be a member of the LGBT community, I would not have been able to accept my identity and become a community member as quickly as I did. Without this education, and a better understanding of the struggles that queers faced before I came out, I can't even image who I'd be, or how I'd understand the historical struggles of our community. I know that I wouldn't have fully been able to accept my sexuality, stand up to the homophobia my parents threw at me, understanding the complexities of LGBT issues and our struggles for equality, and eventually become the strong advocate for equal rights I am.

How can our community educate the rest of us? How can we bring in our younger counterparts, or new additions to the community, and give them the queer education they deserve? Obviously, my perspective is unique, and a bit biased because not everyone comes from a community where they're supported, they're accepted, and they have resources around them to allow for a complete reeducation. To be fair, others might not want to be reeducated.  Not everyone was born wanting to be an advocate, and to speak out for our collective injustice.

While we all have different opinions, politics, and viewpoints, we're all on the same team. As members of the LGBT movement, we've all had to face accepting and understanding our own identity. Nothing more, nothing less. If we feel that we're capable of becoming activists - it's important that we have the support and education to make us the most effective possible advocates. If we run across allies who want to know and understand more - it's important that we share with them the resources they need to move forward; to be better advocates on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in their own communities.

This education will not happen over night. It won't happen without the resources and commitment from within our community. But creating social change can happen - we can end the injustice that LGBT people face, but it must start with education. We must speak out, share our stories, and know our community's history before we can advance any of our rights.
Where will you begin?