Many people seem to think that we
have reached a point, at least in some places, in which queer people enjoy the
same level of societal acceptance and inclusion as straight people. I will be
frank in stating that this is most certainly not the case. This assumption—namely,
that just because queer people are no longer being openly hated by the majority
of mainstream society means that they enjoy the same social and political
comfort that straight people do—seems to follow a common trend in American
society of failing to see current problematic trends because they pale in
comparison with what they used to be. This is manifested in a number of ways:
we commonly think that just because there are no longer “whites only” signs in
restaurants and on water fountains we no longer have systematic oppression of people
of color (African American people, in particular), that just because there are
no longer advertisements that feature women lying at a man’s feet with the
tagline “Keep Her Where She Belongs” misogyny is no longer existent, and that
just because Laverne Cox is a widely known and loved celebrity transphobia is
no longer a systematic and highly worrying problem. In this manner, while
systematic oppression in America has certainly become milder over the past century,
it is still there and still extremely potent in many people’s lives.
Although there are many problems in
addition to the continued marginalization of queer people and the problems that
I listed above, I believe that the issue of continuing to marginalize queer
people has one of the simplest solutions of all of them. The problem with it is
that it is difficult to see, for both those who are queer and those who are
not. This seemingly invisible problem that remarkably few people seem to talk
about is the fact that queer people are consistently locked out of mainstream
society, continually isolated from what everyone thinks of as “normal.” Queer
people might no longer be the targets of many hate crimes, but they are still
decidedly excluded from many aspects of modern society. This is an enormous
aspect of the continued marginalization of queer people.
An example of a significant aspect
of society that continues to lock queer people out of its inclusion in it is
mainstream television. Although many queer people celebrate the victory of
their inclusion in television shows, they fail to recognize that the majority
of these characters exist only as the brunt of jokes; that is, they are there
only to be stereotypically “gay” and for everyone to have a good laugh at
before returning to the actual plot of the show. Even worse than this is when
there are no actual queer people featured in the show, but rather there are
jokes about a character being queer that are only perpetuated for a couple of
minutes before the writer of the show oh-so-eagerly rushes to assure us that
the character is straight, like a normal person, just like you and me, right?
Wrong. Beyond the screen, there are millions of queer people that briefly—and
perhaps misguidedly—that get their hopes up that maybe, just maybe, a character
on their favorite television show will be like them for once, only to have
those hopes quickly dashed by systematic heteronormativity.
Another problem that contributes to
the issue is one that is arguably more significant. In most public school
systems, sex education does not include anything relevant to queer people
outside of simply telling students that such people exist. My own high school
health class—that took place in the heart of Blue Liberal America—did not
include any education about queer sexuality or gender identity outside of
telling the students in my class not to be hateful of such people and bully
them, because they’re “just like you and me.” Are queer people really “just
like you and me?” The answer is no. Queer people will never be the same as
everybody else in the world until everybody else starts treating them like they
are. And right now, the majority of high school health classes are utterly
failing to do so. Queer people throughout my high school and probably
throughout almost all high schools in the country are allowed to listen to a
teacher explain heterosexuality and ignore everything else, sitting in the back
of the classroom and feeling like there is something wrong with them, no matter
how many times the teachers tell the other kids not to bully them or how many
“safe space” stickers are attached to their doors. High school is a key time in
the development of many people’s lives, and attending a sex education class in
which your sexuality is completely excluded is not a good way to begin one’s
journey into adulthood. Altering the content of high school health classes is
absolutely essential to the continued integration of queer people into society,
and the end of their exclusion and being treated as obviously “other.”
