Not Gay As In Happy

In the wake of the deaths of over 12 queer students in the last few weeks—one as young as 13 years old—I was struck by how these tragedies could possibly be called deaths. A teenage suicide is not a death—it is a catastrophe. Too many teenagers committing suicide because of their sexual-orientation extends beyond the world of catastrophe into a dystopic nightmare that entraps us all, queer, straight, and asexual alike.

It is a nightmare that we are actively enabling by continuing to let students feel unsafe. We justify this because we offer no alternatives. Our daily vernacular is so predominantly heteronormative that we make “queer” mean, well, queer. Our resources are so limited that we do not reach those who see every moment as a struggle. Our public spaces are so unsafe that we are hyper-aware of the gender non-conforming individual in our bathroom. In “Female Masculinity” J. Halberstam writes about a “bathroom problem” where gender non-conforming individuals are policed in the bathrooms because their gender is not immediately decipherable. That is, gender non-conforming people are punished “as a result of having violated a cardinal rule of gender: one must be readable at a glance.” We have taken this “bathroom problem” that Halberstam writes about and dragged it into each facet of life where gender and sexuality policing happens in every public arena, measuring people up by their gender/sexual identifications.

And we are surprised that youth and teens cannot bear the immense weight of waking up each day and living through the horror of peers’ ostracization, the unbearable loneliness of being even a little bit different, the devastation of being called a “faggot” or a “dyke” or an “it.” There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that ignores the pain of queer youth and is subsequently troubled by devastating yet causal outcomes.

Dan Savage’s “Things Will Get Better” Campaign only makes me sadder. While I appreciate the value in queer people and straight allies affirming the value of life—that yes, for them, things did get better—things just won’t get better unless we take action. We cannot remain stagnant, our fingers in our ears and our eyes clenched shut thinking that tomorrow, someone else will fix constructs of homophobia, transphobia, and hate. This message implies that it is simply time that alleviates bullying and torment. Yet the root of this—hate—is not something that simply ceases after high school graduation. Nine arrests have been made in connection with the anti-queer sodomizing and torture of two gay teens and a  30-year-old man in New York. Hate is not simply locker room banter—and anyone who tells you that it gets better is far too optimistic.

While we can and ought mourn Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, Felix Sacco, Harrison Chase Brown, Caleb Nolt, Zach Harrington—we must ask ourselves how we can protect and celebrate those living: How we can create secure spaces for students of all ages, races, gender expressions, sexual identities, and religions? Addressing this epidemic of imposing normativity on those too fabulous to conform ought to be at the forefront of our concerns.

Maybe the tragedy of recent events is that they can happen anywhere, at any time. Harvard is not so uniquely cast off in our ivory tower that we are immune to similar disaster. Recently, hate crimes on campus have drawn attention to the problem of a lack of queer advocacy. The slow and inadequate response of Harvard as an institution suggests that this type of behavior is to be tolerated. For many on campus, this reaffirms a collective fear and alienation, a suggestion that Harvard is not as welcoming as we thought. On Tuesday night a vigil in front of Memorial Church brought out many queer students, professors, tutors, proctors, and allies. People shared messages of pain, hope, struggle, and optimism. While seeing this response from students and tutors was wonderful—I could not help but wonder why President Faust, Dean Hammonds, or Dean Dingman, were not speaking out to show their support.

In the wake of horrible tragedies, there remain stable pockets of hope. There are resources on campus that do so much good—Contact Peer Counseling, The Bureau of Study Council, and Mental Health Services. But resources are of no use unless they are actively partnered with the community to assure the safety of all members, promising to advocate and protect.

Students should be actively encouraged to seek out these resources—but we must also mobilize to bring these resources to them, fortifying their efficacy and our resolve as a community. Not only do we need to remove stigma associated with seeking help—but we must also raise awareness that no one should have to struggle silently or alone. Because ultimately, a Facebook group made post-catastrophe is a terrible elegy for something so intrinsically beautiful as a life.

Rachael L. Goldberg ’12 is an English concentrator who lives in the Dudley House Co-op.