Since when did the term homosexual become so humiliating and offensive? It's opposition, heterosexuality, wasn't even coined as a term until at least the 1860's (Katz, pg. 51). So when did this divide and change begin to occur? Although it is difficult to point out exactly where and when labeling one's sexuality became imperative, it seems that today's society has developed the notion that being part of one sexual orientation is "normal" and being part of another is "abnormal". People today have furthered this notion with the usage of the words "homo" and "gay", which have derived from their original definitions and now can be used to describe something that is stupid or wrong.
With this modern notion of labels and words, it comes as no surprise that so many gay men and women are afraid to be a "homosexual." Furthermore, tn light of the recent suicides, its obvious that labeling one's sexual orientation is now offensive when used with what society believes is a derogatory connotation. The creation of heterosexuality as a term and its definition today has created a particular set of norms that exclude a significant portion of the population, and creates a hostile environment for anyone who considers themselves not heterosexual.
Why are these suicides happening now? Are these suicides part of a long established trend that the media has just decided to cover now, or are kids in high schools getting increasingly bullied over sexual orientation?
ReplyDeleteMarcus describes how in the Victorian era sexual relationships in the couple were taken for granted, yet were not openly discussed. In the case of the female marriages, she claims, the use of the Word “marriage” implies that Victorian contemporaries assumed this women were having sexual intercourse. However, direct references to sexual intercourse were almost completely absent from letters and journals. (49) This private intimacy is not the case today. Sexual life, both in marriage and outside it has passed from a private realm to a more public one. Sex is now more openly discussed than it used to be.
In the same way, the LGBTQ community has become more public through the LGBTQ rights movement; the discussion around gay marriages has been widely publicized, there are more references to queer people in popular media. Going public and growing political has increased the amount of positive and negative discourse and reflection about the LGBTQ, which might explain why the media has decided to share light on gay teen suicides.
Young people have equally been exposed to this publicity, and although a lot of what we see in the media today tries to represent the diversity of the queer community, a lot of the stereotypes that haunt LGBTQ people are still widely represented. For example, using “gay” and “homo” as synonyms with “stupid” and “wrong,” might go back to the stereotype of gay men being “feminine:” being a failure to live up masculinity.
The increasing discourse around LGBTQ can create mixed results. There is increasing comprehension, yet stereotypes are maintained, and reinforced. The question that arises is whether these gay teens are a casualty of longstanding homophobia or if they also are collateral damage of the fight towards equality.
I noticed also that all these recent suicides were young men, though media reports tend to reinforce the idea that men are ungendered, and that this is therefore an issue of sexuality and not gender.
ReplyDeleteWe need to talk more about men's relationships. Marcus argues in Between Women that women's relationships were much less repressed than Victorian stereotypes would suggest. Women could express playfulness, competition, love, even desire between women. What were the norms for men's relationship? When are men allowed to show affection?
It's clear that in many time periods, and many cultures of the world today, men comfortably hold hands and show affection without social stigma. Can we illuminate these times and places, so that men today feel less afraid of being soft?
Not all the boys who killed themselves recently after homophobic bullying identified as gay, but they may have acted outside the norm of how a boy or a man is supposed to act.
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