It’ll Get Better
by Jeff Weinstein
OCTOBER 8, 2010 TAGS:
Aside from the misery and grief it makes us feel, suicide confuses us, because we know deep down that taking one’s life is a mystery, a paradox. Those of us who remain can’t really imagine why anyone would erase their selfhood and leave this world – leave us. Did our dearest friends, sons and daughters, spouses and lovers find themselves in such a deep black cave that they couldn’t even think to cry for help?
Yes. That is why they’re gone.
And no. We know that some suicides can be reasonable decisions, especially for the irredeemably ill. But suicides of the young are never tolerable, and not only because we are left with the automatic, wrenching guilt that we could have done something, anything, to save our girls and boys.
Well, maybe, maybe not. But we certainly could have saved those gay youngsters recently in the news whom others urged to their deaths: Asher Brown, 13, who shot himself; Raymond Chase, 19, Billy Lucas, 15, and Seth Walsh, 13, who hung themselves, and Tyler Clementi, 18, who jumped from the George Washington Bridge.
Gay suicide is not exactly a trend. Miserable, rejected, viciously bullied gay kids and adults have offed themselves for centuries -- if they weren’t murdered first. According to the Trevor Project, almost a third of teen suicides are GLBT youth, and they are four times more likely than their nongay peers to try. Why? Almost 85 percent of these students, a poll indicates, were harassed or worse in high school because of who they are.
But we can’t put the blame just on what some have called bad-boy “pranks.” These infuriating deaths and the inevitable ones to come will stop only when we stop the hatred we allow to fill our schools, places of worship, government, business, and too many of our own homes.
That is why writer and editor Dan Savage, best known for his “Savage Love” sex-advice column and the heartening scorn he spews on all manner of church and state, began an It Gets Better YouTube channel.
Sobbing gay teens frequently phone him on his podcast, and his advice almost always suggests that, if you can get over the adolescent “hump,” you can leave your scornful parents, sadistic classmates, and loveless life to make a new world for yourself in some civilized, gay-welcoming place. Hide your tears, bide your time. Please, sweet young man, he says, hold on.
So in late September, Dan and his husband, Terry, made a video in which they both talk about growing up gay. Terry especially was “picked on mercilessly at school, people were really cruel to me, I was bullied a lot, beat up, thrown against walls and lockers and windows.…” It goes on, an awful tale, but they each make it clear by their words and vital presence on the screen that they more than got through their trials: they won.
Hundreds more It Gets Better videos soon appeared, posted by media figures and anyone else. Normally, this would be the place for a list of prominent names and a few quotes. But the ultimate value of It Gets Better is the detailed, random richness of all the personal tales of survival. Click on any, and be surprised.
I hope these posts will keep someone from dying. But the earnest stories should also galvanize a lazy public to command that the underlying reasons for gay suicides disappear.
Still, in case you need your star fix, here’s Tim Gunn, the former fashion professor from Parsons who is now the wise and genial mother hen of TV’s Project Runway. In a wavering voice that blends adroit authority with teenage pain, he admits he tried to kill himself at age 17.
Jeff Weinstein, deputy director of the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program, writes about culture and gay issues for artsjournal.com/outthere.
Yes. That is why they’re gone. And no. We know that some suicides can be reasonable decisions, especially for the irredeemably ill. But suicides of the young are never tolerable, and not only because we are left with the automatic, wrenching guilt that we could have done something, anything, to save our girls and boys.
Well, maybe, maybe not. But we certainly could have saved those gay youngsters recently in the news whom others urged to their deaths: Asher Brown, 13, who shot himself; Raymond Chase, 19, Billy Lucas, 15, and Seth Walsh, 13, who hung themselves, and Tyler Clementi, 18, who jumped from the George Washington Bridge.
Gay suicide is not exactly a trend. Miserable, rejected, viciously bullied gay kids and adults have offed themselves for centuries -- if they weren’t murdered first. According to the Trevor Project, almost a third of teen suicides are GLBT youth, and they are four times more likely than their nongay peers to try. Why? Almost 85 percent of these students, a poll indicates, were harassed or worse in high school because of who they are.
But we can’t put the blame just on what some have called bad-boy “pranks.” These infuriating deaths and the inevitable ones to come will stop only when we stop the hatred we allow to fill our schools, places of worship, government, business, and too many of our own homes.
That is why writer and editor Dan Savage, best known for his “Savage Love” sex-advice column and the heartening scorn he spews on all manner of church and state, began an It Gets Better YouTube channel.
Sobbing gay teens frequently phone him on his podcast, and his advice almost always suggests that, if you can get over the adolescent “hump,” you can leave your scornful parents, sadistic classmates, and loveless life to make a new world for yourself in some civilized, gay-welcoming place. Hide your tears, bide your time. Please, sweet young man, he says, hold on.
So in late September, Dan and his husband, Terry, made a video in which they both talk about growing up gay. Terry especially was “picked on mercilessly at school, people were really cruel to me, I was bullied a lot, beat up, thrown against walls and lockers and windows.…” It goes on, an awful tale, but they each make it clear by their words and vital presence on the screen that they more than got through their trials: they won.
Hundreds more It Gets Better videos soon appeared, posted by media figures and anyone else. Normally, this would be the place for a list of prominent names and a few quotes. But the ultimate value of It Gets Better is the detailed, random richness of all the personal tales of survival. Click on any, and be surprised.
I hope these posts will keep someone from dying. But the earnest stories should also galvanize a lazy public to command that the underlying reasons for gay suicides disappear.
Still, in case you need your star fix, here’s Tim Gunn, the former fashion professor from Parsons who is now the wise and genial mother hen of TV’s Project Runway. In a wavering voice that blends adroit authority with teenage pain, he admits he tried to kill himself at age 17.
Jeff Weinstein, deputy director of the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program, writes about culture and gay issues for artsjournal.com/outthere.
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