Glee rant about queer teens and PDAs, again

[rm]

People,

As much as I, too, would like to think Kurt and Blaine kissed in that hall, at that moment:

- Blaine is still freaked out because when he last tried to go to a dance with another guy he got the crap beat out of him
- Kurt has just realized that things at McKinley are as bad as they ever were.
- The school is NOT a safe space, especially when the rest of it is empty -- what seems to give them privacy also puts them at risk if they run into someone else who might be feeling violent.


I cannot emphasize enough how complicated PDAs are for gay teens and gay people in general. I cannot emphasize enough that even though things may seem, and even be, perfectly safe they won't necessarily feel that way to people because of their own experiences with violence or being warned about violence or whatever.

I am 38-years-old. I live in New York City. I have let go of same-sex lovers' hands in public places within the last ten years when I wasn't entirely sure it was safe for us to be holding hands because I didn't know the neighborhood or it was late at night and drunk people make me more wary or whatever. And dudes, New York Fucking City, not a high school in Lima, Ohio.

This is huge mileage may vary territory for everyone. I'm totally okay with your "they kissed in the hall" head-cannon, but really worn out from the "Blaine sucks for not touching Kurt at x, y, or z moment" stuff and the "it's totally safe for them to be kissing!" assumptions and the "it must be evil FOX not giving us more gay kisses" theories.

This is complicated. This is complicated for gay people. This is complicated for US television. It's just complicated.

Please just let it be complicated.

And particularly for my straight readers, please, please, please take a moment to think about what it would be like to always be doing the math and then imagine what it would be like to do that math at 16. When you've already experienced assault. And you have one good thing and you're terrified that if you show affection for that thing in public, it will get it destroyed (and to be extremely fucking clear, by destroyed I mean murdered).

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math.

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

How do people not get this?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

For the same reason that they believe since they themselves are "colorblind" that the whole damned world is "postracial". Privilege is about seeing oneself as an individual first, foremost, and perhaps not as a member of a group at all. Disprivilege is being aware of the boxes one is shoved into.

Because they don't look at the very real gay people in their worlds, and talk to them. Because the only gay people they know are the slash characters in their heads, in a slash-friendly, happy jolly kumbaya queer accepting AU - so if it's *canon*...

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

And the world is "postfeminist" too. Yeah. I mean, I understand that there are many people who lack the ability to critically assess the real world (or who purposefully don't, because the real world harshes their squee) and put themselves into the shoes of those who aren't part of the straight white power center. But periodically, it just boggles me utterly.

I'd like to live in a happy jolly kumbaya queer-accepting AU. Though many of those AUs only accept pretty young men getting it on; as a fat middle-aged lesbian, I suspect I'd be less acceptable. :P

[eac.livejournal.com]

Because it's never happened to them or someone they love.

(RM, thanks for this post.)

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. Sigh.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

It's really easy, actually. Do you remember the classic SF story, The Cold Equations? Humans have a tendency to be able to convince ourselves that the world is the way we want it to be - and we are bad at doing the math, when that means applying logic in ways that take us where we don't want to go.

I can make it concrete and personal: I had an uncle I was very close to, who didn't come out of the closet until he was 60, and dying. (He's gone now, so I can tell the story without violating privacy). It's easy for me to say "He should have come out sooner! My family would have been supportive! *I* would have been supportive!" But on the other hand I know my uncle was as smart as I am, and knew our family as well. He made his decisions for reasons that seemed good to him, and I dis-respect him if I think he could have possibly been less qualified to judge his own life than I am. But even so, it's a really easy thing to think.

"We're all supportive here! People should be free to do what they want to do" ... except when we're not, and it isn't. It's a bitter pill to swallow, and those of us who haven't been personally forced into taking it find it all too easy to just keep our mouths (and minds) closed.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Goodness this.

It made me both sad and proud to read about actor David Ogden Stiers finally coming out at about age 65 or so. He stayed hidden for so long because much of his more recent work has been voice-over for Disney animated films, and he was afraid being out would adversely affect his career working on "family-oriented" films.

And on the outside, it might be easy to say "Oh, Hollywood has gotten much more tolerant and all," but it's not YOU being directly affected by making that decision.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Yes. And people in the mix of Hollywood have a much better perspective on how much more tolerant (or not) Hollywood has gotten. And people forget that Hollywood is not some immense monolith; it's got its subcultures like any other cultural entity.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I know it's easy. It just never fails to baffle me sometimes, when my cynicism and other defenses are low and I'd really like to believe that the world is full of people who have compassion and sympathy and the ability and willingness to see the world from the perspectives of other people.

I apparently don't do enough social justice work, since that would rip that pollyanna tendency right on out of me by the roots.

I'm sorry for your uncle. I spent six years mostly closeted and passing for straight, and didn't come out to my parents for almost nine years after getting together with my now-wife, and every moment of it was like sitting in a bonfire, for fear that something worse was waiting outside for me. But choices on this are very personal things, and one tends to err on the side of catastrophizing for sheer survival purposes if nothing else.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

One thing there is that compassion and sympathy are ont thing, and the ability to see others' perspectives is a whole different one and they don't always go together. There are a lot of good but clueless people in the world! (Not sure about clueful but uncompassionate people; I would think that being able to walk in someone else's shoes would drive compassion.)