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Originally Posted by Corranged Justamom made a great point that I would like to reiterate. There are straight, white people all over TV. As a lesbian, I love seeing relationships on TV that "look" like my relationships, even though the specifics may be very different. This was even more important when I was younger since I didn't know other gay people. Seeing gay people on TV who had accepting families, friends, and healthy relationships was very valuable to me. |
Thank you also, corranged -- I know from talking to my son that he feels the same way. I always find it a bit astonishing that straight people, who already have approximately 95% of the cultural "pie," can get so outraged that they don't have 100%. I dug up something I wrote earlier this year on another message board, trying to explain what he feels like:
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Originally Posted by Donna I've always been aware of the overwhelming heterocentricity of virtually every aspect of our culture. But not in so immediate a way as I have in the years since my son came out to me. What made me think of it again tonight was a commercial on the Oscars for some new line of clothing at J.C. Penney called "American Living" or something similar. All sorts of homey scenes, one after another, of male-female couples, young and old, holding hands and staring at each other lovingly and romping in slow motion through fields of clover; families with mothers and fathers and children sitting down at the trestle table in front of the the farmhouse, etc, etc. OK, a slight exaggeration, but not much.
Wow, nothing really there for my son, was there? And it's like that all the time, every single day, in every medium, and in life. I know very well how much this kind of thing bothers [my son], and how painful it's been for him to grow up feeling that way. |
How terribly selfish and ungenerous it is for people to act as if they're "persecuted" when there's any positive portrayal of anyone who isn't straight, as if it's the product of an evil "agenda." And as if the "straight agenda" doesn't permeate every aspect of society. I've talked often with my son about the inherent sense of alienation one develops growing up gay in this world. Which has its benefits, I suppose, in creating the so-called "gay sensibility" and all the creativity and brilliance it entails, in art and literature and so many other areas. Just as the sense of alienation that (at least in the past) came from being Jewish in a Christian society played a similar role.
But that kind of alienation has its costs, huge ones, costs that have broken my heart when I've seen my wonderful son feel so alone in so many ways throughout his high school years -- the confidante of all the girls he's friends with, who can talk about their first loves and crushes, and first tentative efforts at being adults in that way, and know that they have societal approval and encouragement ("isn't that sweet!" "isn't that cute"). And see themselves reflected in innumerable movies and television shows about adolescence, and coming of age, and young love. While my son has had to grow up knowing that a good part of society not only fails to encourage, but condemns, his identical feelings. Feelings he's never acted on, or had the opportunity to do so (other than in developing a series of hopeless secret crushes on straight boys), but that I so very much hope he's able to now that he's in college.
Why doesn't he deserve the same chance at happiness, in being himself, as anyone else's child?
And anything that can be done to lessen that alienation, at least a little bit, for young gay people, is the farthest thing from a sin. It's a mitzvah!
Donna