National Coming Out Day

[julesjones]

It's National Coming Out Day in the US; this year is a particularly poignant one in light of the recent wave of suicides amongst teens bullied for being gay.

Dan Savage started the "It gets better" project. His video is now up to half a million viewings. There are other projects as well; one dear to my heart is Dear Author's week of Gay Writes posts celebrating LGBT romance. There are over 125 GLBT romance books up for grabs in a prize draw, and a week-long programme of reviewing GLBT romances.

I'm Kinsey 0 and cis-gendered. I can't say "it gets better" from personal experience. What I can say is that I see my GLBT friends and acquaintances who made it through high school and out the other side. They're living proof that it does get better. The end of school seems like forever away when you're scared and lonely, but it does get closer each day. And it gets better in another way as well -- I'm old enough now to have seen the slow change in attitudes, the way it's become easier for adults to find safe spaces. When I first started reading slash fanfic in 1996, gay marriage was a distant dream. Less than ten years later, civil partnerships were a reality in the UK -- and in the UK, at least, civil partnerships really are equal to marriage when it comes to legal protection. It's against the law in the UK to discriminate against people in the workplace because of their orientation or because they're trans-gendered, and that law has teeth. That law is needed, but at least it's there.

Given my readership I'm not really expecting anyone reading this to need to hear this, and I hope nobody reading this does need to hear it. But it needs saying anyway.

It gets better.

Comments

[irinarempt.pip.verisignlabs.com]

We now have the possibility of gay marriage in the Netherlands, after decades of only civil partnerships (and a civil partnership is still possible, too, same or opposite sex without a legal difference). Also, we have vocal nay-sayers, as everywhere. But still: it gets better.

(and for the record: cis-gendered and Kinsey 3)

[kalypso]

The depressing aspect of recent reports is that there seems to be so much homophobic bullying from young peers. What can we do to change them?

[mishalak]

Speaking as a child of the 1980s I am not surprised that there is homophobic bullying by peers. I was not out and I was bullied based on perceptions of me back then and I almost committed suicide several times. The only difference between then and now is that today our lives are much more documented so now people have a higher chance of knowing the whys of a suicide. Plus it is the flavor of the month since the bullying leading up to one of them was so lurid.

As for changing them... As I see it this won't change. Not ever. Children are not little angels, they're little monsters that will beat up on any perceived difference when given the approval by not doing anything about it from the adults. This is not a gay problem. This is a problem for all juveniles. The suicide from my graduating class was by a nice young man who was slightly learning disabled. This is a generalized problem and as such it will never be solved anymore than the problem of beggars can be solved.