Just fucking get over yourself.
Right. Now.
It’s 2012, not 1962, or 1972 even 1982. It is 2012, where Lawrence v. Texas has been the law of the land for 9 years. Not only are we no longer criminals, we actually have near-full civil rights in a few states. No one is going to throw you in jail for being queer, no one is going to hook you up to an ECT machine to “fry away teh gay,” and increasingly, no one is going to urge that you pray away the gay either.
So, why do you hide in terror? Or is it that you don’t want to go through the “hassle” of coming out to friends who will be totally floored that you’re a big old queer? Not likely. Non-queer people who care about us have remarkably good “gay-dar.” Or is that you’re just comfortable and don’t want to risk your economic and/or social status by coming out as something “less than a non-queer white?”
Ah…. That’s it. You don’t want to lose your social and economic status as non-queer white person. To be blunt–poop baby. Most of the world doesn’t’ have non-queer white privilege and you can join the ever-growing club. You have a right to your private life, but you do NOT have a right to lie or deceive people into thinking that you are a non-queer. Given your economic, educational and social status, it’s not likely that you’ll be exiled to toil forever at a manual labor job, living in a down rent-trailer park off of I-80 in central Pennsylvania, picking up empty beer cans for extra cash. So, stop being stuck in an adolescent freak out and join the rest of the adult world.
What is the *worst* that will happen? Your family of origin dumps you, your friends dessert you, and you get fired from your job. Now, if your family of origin runs away, I bet beans to dollars there is more dysfunction going on than just homophobia–though the homophobia is real. If your friends run away, well, you needed better friends anyway. The job? It’s a big country and white folks of privilege have weathered this horrible economy better than anyone else. You’ll survive, you always have, right?
Yes, there will be times where homophobia intrudes upon your life. But that happens now, doesn’t it? What you don’t realize is that it’s easier for homophobes to kick someone who’s cowed than someone who doesn’t take any of their crap–ever.
So, take a deep breath and stop your lies. In homophobic and heterosexist world, you are presumed to be non-queer until you say PUBLICLY that you’re not. Take a lesson from Frank Ocean, who is probably much younger than you, who is not a child of privilege–white or otherwise, and who is currently living more authentically than you could dream about. He has so much more to lose than you do, and yet, he’s honest. You are not.
The bottom line is that the queer kids need us–all of us–flawed as we all are. They are being bullied, beaten and killed by a world that hates them and wants them dead. They desperately need us to tell the truth, to be visible, so they can understand that there are all sorts of queer people from all sorts of backgrounds who have very real lives. That queers can be quite heroic.
White queers of privilege, it’s time to get out of your well decorated closets and use that privilege for someone else besides you. In doing so, you’ll be making you a far more honorable person and you will build a much better world.
I promise.
*The announcement that the late Sally Ride was not only the first US woman into space, but the first lesbian into space, has me positively unhinged. Think about it. She was more worried about being a public queer than being roasted alive either after launch–see Challenger disaster, or coming down from space–see Columbia disaster. She could only be a public queer when she was safely dead. Now, that’s pitiful and enraging. She could have done a LOT of good, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when professional homophobes and gutless pols were making our queer lives hellish in the US. Instead, there she sat in her privilege and her closet. Feh!
I’m usually pretty sympathetic to such folks, including Sally Ride (I figure she could have kept it from us so as not to tarnish her legacy even after her death), but you make some really excellent points here that even this old softie can appreciate.
By: Dafina Lazarus Stewart on July 24, 2012
at 3:00 pm
Catherine – I’m curious whether this would be your advice to public school teachers. I’m doing some research for my region (NW Ohio) that shows very few districts have END policies for GLBT teachers, and my interviews with school board members and superintendents found clear discomfort with “out” teachers. NJ has state-level protections for sexual orientation and gender identity; Ohio has none. Do you think it’s “safe” for public school teachers, particularly outside of the coastal areas where there are few to no legal protections?
By: Christopher Frey on July 24, 2012
at 3:22 pm
Christopher–You pose a really good question. I think white queer public school teachers and administrators are in exquisitely vulnerable positions (and queer educators of color even more so). Also, they aren’t exactly leading “privileged” lives, since they’re the current political punching bag for all that is wrong in the US. That said, where one has the legal and collective bargaining protections (see PA–the legal protections are in the union contract), yes, be out. The kids need you, both the queer and non-queer kids.
I also want to turn things around with your question: In some public school districts, to this day, the board is loathe to hire and retain Jewish, Catholic, atheist, and Muslim educators (*cough, South Carolina, cough*). So, do we recommend that these colleagues hide their religious orientations? They have constitutional protections, and yet….they do experience levels of bias and discrimination.
We need to be careful about encouraging people to “hide” to get and/or keep their jobs. If we would never make that recommendation to a colleague who belongs to a religious minority (“Just take off your skull cap”–yuck!), we need to do the same for our queer colleagues. Instead, we might recommend that our queer colleagues seek employment elsewhere. It’s NOT easy, it’s NEVER easy, but if districts and states are going to be hateful, they need to pay a price via the talent pool.
Thanks for your comment!
By: Catherine Lugg on July 24, 2012
at 3:36 pm
Thanks Catherine. I understand your comment about public school teachers not being “privileged”, but the case could be made that in many places – particularly rural environments, that teachers are generally respected because they have decent, stable jobs, and are among the more educated people in the community, but these same teachers are more likely to lack legal protections and face a hostile community should they transgress their gender norms.
I completely, completely agree that kids need GLBT teachers – particularly students who are LGBTQ. If we make an argument that students need a variety of teachers – and teachers who look/are like them – then LGBT teachers are a part of that equation – particularly for LGBTQ kids who have few other adults who are supportive, caring and KNOWLEDGEABLE about being LGBT.
What I’ve found so far is that few teachers, teacher candidates, or administrators are aware of the weird legal terrain when there aren’t statewide protections- they mostly assume that there’s a federal law protecting them, or, on the other side, that the can’t whisper a word about their orientation(s) for fear of “political backlash” – likely from a local church or ten. Those churches remain quite powerful in this part of the country! Thanks again -
By: Christopher Frey on July 24, 2012
at 3:53 pm