Does it really get better?

I will concede that the It Gets Better campaign has garnered a lot of sympathy for the plight of LGBT teens and mainstreamed awareness of the social ill that is the suicide of LGBT youth. Judging it by those parameters, it is a fantastic campaign. It went global, it was all the rage and political leaders, and other VIPs recorded their own It Gets Better YouTube couture.

Reminiscent of the NOH8 campaign it was about visibility and popular appeal. It somehow made an extremely emotive issue a rallying point. It was easy to paint any detractors of equality as simply callous (which they are in any case, one need not parade human suffering to get that point across).

Sure, being LGB and T gets more tolerable as one ages, but tolerance is far from "better". Acceptance is also a word thrown around. Acceptance is nice, won't deny, but it's not enough.

Methinks in our attempt at mainstreaming we might have settled for second best. Tolerance and acceptance aren’t issues we have to work on (from a progressive perspective), these are things that should be the bare minimum.

Sure, it gets better, but is “better” enough? Moreover, by whose standards would we measure this hypothetical “better”? Tolerable is also better than intolerable but I bet you won’t settle for that.

Are suicides in our community so rife and such a social ill that we need to present any form of positivity and encouragement no matter how lacklustre it might be to those radical activists?

I thought a lot about this topic, wrote, and erased, a close friend even suggested that I do the right thing and self-censor, and not publish the most morbid parts. I was awfully melancholy I must admit, but like the weather that changes too. Maybe this change gives us some fragment of hope.

We somehow know from experience that we are not our inflictions and that they are evanescing. I have dealt with the concept of suicide to an extreme extent. I have seen the undiluted desperation that chafes chronically. I suspect the intervention is about as desperate as the inflicted.

So, yes, we tell people that it gets better, because in a sense that is true. One’s circumstances change over time. One’s mood changes over time and so the impetus for execution is temporary but the execution has long-term consequences.

Before you make that final decision, stop and think, and if you cannot think contact someone, anyone. Speak or interact with someone, they will most probably not tell you cheesy lines but it will divert your attention.

Bertrand Russell must have been in a flippant mood, who knows, but he said one important thing that speaks to this topic too: “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

Think about that.

No Straights Allowed

Please keep out of gay bars and clubs appeared in The Independent to my immense dismay (admittedly quite a while ago, but it did the rounds on Facebook recently). The author very short-sightedly makes the case for segregation of nightlife on the basis of sexual orientation. Apparently the scene in England is such that gay people are restricted to so-called gay villages (a concept I could never really understand). I previously wrote about the ghettoization of the gay community and how deplorable I find it, but I digress.

The author maintains that there are so few gay establishments out there that they should be somehow protected from the tyranny of the majority. In a constitutional democracy the minority is protected from the tyranny of the majority but in this instance the concept of segregation for the sake of preservation is taken way too far. It becomes awfully reminiscent of apartheid. We are not equal in our segregation. The social segregation of the sexes by itself should be done away with, and there is no place for segregation on any basis when it comes to something as inconsequential as phuza-ing.

I remember distinctly the night after 2008 Joburg Pride. There was a trendy lesbian-only nightclub in Rosebank that made a concession especially for Joburg Pride. It would allow gay men in, that night only. So I went there with my (lesbian) friend, my brother and his girlfriend. As we got to the door an officious lady looked at me and my lesbian friend and said “you two can go in,” and with a slight tone of derision said to my brother “you two cannot go in, we are a lesbian establishment.”

I immediately interjected. I was horribly offended and equally embarrassed. The pink community complains of being discriminated against on a daily basis, of being side-lined. How can we perpetrate and perpetuate the same thing we fight against? I looked at the officious lady and said “look, it’s my brother and his girlfriend and they will not bother anyone here.” The words fell on deaf ears, I wasted my breath.

On another night my brother, one of his friends and I went to a well-known gay club in Centurion. The doorman immediately spotted the straights and gave them a self-righteous pep talk. I once again felt betrayed by the pink community establishments for their “admissions” policy. I often look at those Right of Admission Reserved signs while shaking my head. Those signs perpetuate inequity by virtue of their existence.

I bet your bottom dollar when a prime Sandton hotspot implements a new policy of straights only there would be a very loud and very shrill outcry from the queers. Emails to pink rights activists would pour in. It is unfair discrimination and unconstitutional, most complainants would argue. Some might foam at the mouth failing to see the hypocrisy.

Every single time a straight person is turned away from a “gay” establishment, every time a straight person is treated with contempt by the club mafia the pink community loses sympathy. We will scream “equal rights not special rights” till we are blue in the face but the plea would be worthless because we made it worthless with our little gay ghetto.

Sorry ladies equality cuts both ways.