Social Change Project Rough Draft

            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.”