When Pride is Necessary

An op-ed on Wednesday, “When Gay Pride Backfires,” took issue with the existence of separate institutions for people of gender and sexual minorities. In what was undoubtedly a very well-meaning piece, Ian Van Wye claimed that it is self-evident that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folk are exactly like straight, cisgender people, and that we should just stop talking about these differences already. In fact, Van Wye feels that “the sexual and gender identities of the people we love are of so little import that we must ultimately discard what strikes me as an outmoded, disjointed way of looking at the world,” though he does think that “we all owe the gay pride movement our thanks for helping to bring our laws into the modern era.”

Unfortunately, he is wrong on both counts.

Strictly in terms of the law, we have a long way to go. In 29 states, a person may be fired because of their sexual orientation. In 33, the same is true of gender identity. Transgender individuals are often sentenced to prisons that do not match their gender identities. And even though we are apparently approaching “the threshold of marriage equality and full legal rights for gay folks” in his words, even marriage equality is only a reality for less than half of states.

The statistics surrounding the social acceptance of people identifying as LGBTQ are far worse: Of homeless youth, 40 percent are LGBTQ. Nine out of 10 LGBTQ students report facing harassment at school. More than one-third of LGBTQ kids and 41 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide. Transgender people also experience twice the national level of unemployment, with the rate for transgender people of color rising to four times the national average. Transgender people who are unemployed experience four times the average homeless rate, 85 percent more than the average incarceration rate, and more than double the average HIV infection rate.

Last year in Harlem, Islan Nettles, a transgender woman of color, was recognized as transgender by a group of men on the street and subsequently beaten into a coma; she died several days later. This violence had nothing to do with Nettles’s “pride.” She was just walking down the street; it was the perception of her identity and status as an “other” that caused a perfect stranger to murder her. This was not an isolated incident, nor was it a sign of a society that just needs to move on from imaginary prejudices. Tellingly, the one day a year that most of the transgender community comes together is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day dedicated to those community members who have been killed in the past year, victims of transphobia. The list maintained by the TDoR website cites over 500 victims from 2000 to 2012.

So I must disagree with Van Wye, who makes the mistake of conflating “equality” with marriage equality and media representation. I do not think that the “gay rights” movement has been won or has even come close. I likewise do not think that the Office of BGLTQ Student Life is responsible for all of the problems in the world. The office and other similar resources allow students whose identities are often questioned and rejected by society to feel a sense of belonging.

As a straight, white, cisgender man, Van Wye moves through the world in the most privileged of circles, from which it is easy to succumb to the tempting idea that social equality already exists. Each statistic of discrimination, though, has hundreds or thousands of stories behind it, none of which support this unbridled optimism. Even those statistics and stories don’t capture the myriad of microaggressions that can take an equal toll on the life of someone who identifies as a gender or sexual minority.

Even assuming Harvard is the perfect LGBTQ paradise that it probably is not, this campus is not the entire world. Students come to Harvard at various stages of coming out or being out, with different levels of acceptance from their families, having experienced diverse levels of harassment in their hometowns, feeling all sorts of levels of pride in their identities. The resources here on campus aim to help every LGBTQ person who wants it. For some, the Office of BGLTQ Student Life might be redundant, but for others it is all too necessary. In a world where the message to LGBTQ youth is so clearly one of hatred that one-third of them attempt suicide, I hope Van Wye would agree that we should allow queer organizations on campus a little pride.

Julia R. Geiger ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House.