No longer invisible....
Dec. 6th, 2018 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaAs a gay man of a certain age, having lived through the massive social change that began in earnest with Stonewall, I’m still struck by how often we turn up in casual representations.
In my own childhood I felt invisible. Role models for gay people were few & far between, & those that were visible, were far from good. I was already a college sophomore when the APA removed homosexuality per se from the DSM-II. Up until then, we were de facto mentally ill.
When well known individuals started coming out (whether intentionally or not), it seemed like forever that anytime they were mentioned in the news, some mention of their sexuality had to be made. Terms like “lesbian tennis star“, “gay congressman”, “lesbian writer” & my favorite, “gay activist”, were labels applied by the media de rigeur Just about anytime that individual appeared in the news, whether their appearance had anything to do with their sexuality or not. Those labels were both crucial and yet wrankling. On one hand it was, “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, while on the other, the sudden attention paid to our orientation made us mono-dimensional. I still bristle at the term “gay marriage”. The addition of that descriptor sets it apart from the word marriage, suggesting it’s something else. Yes, for those of us who are LGBT, it’s an enormous factor that effects our lives and colors how we view the world, but it remains one facet of many.
Imagine a news broadcaster using the term “white male congressman“, “Christian governor“, or “heterosexual author”. Jarring, isn’t it? However, in reality, part of why it's so jarring, is because socially, that’s still the default setting. Can we say, “privilege”? I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a newscaster say during the lead up to the last election, “If she wins her race, Stacy Abrams will be the nation’s first black female governor”, rather than “she will be the first black woman to be elected governor”. The difference, while for many in the “majority” remains subtle, is there. When we challenge societal norms that grant privilege to some and not all, those that are granted privilege don’t usually recognize the the foot up they got by default. As King said, he dreamt of a time when his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It is clear to me that we ain’t there yet. Not when admonishments like, “don’t monkey this up” don’t disqualify people from winning an election over an exceptional candidate who is also a man of color, as happened in Florida last month.
Why this diatribe? The impetus oddly enough were the spate of tv ads over the past few years where minority folks appear, where their minority status is both evident and incidental. Mixed race families now pop up in ads routinely, just doing routine things. As a gay man, seeing my community popping up in ads, warms my heart. The Über commercial which in a 3 second moment showed two men in the back seat of the vehicle, with the voice over that said “meeting the parents” as a reason why you might Über. It went by so fast you could have missed it, but it normalizes that couple in the eyes of the larger community. Or the ad a couple of years ago, that showed a younger gay male couple arriving at the home of what we’re meant to assume are relatives with a newborn child in their arms. That one brought a tear to my eye. On some levels corny, but not. While Madison Ave uses images like these to sell products and services, they go a step further in putting all of us in front of, well, all of us, or at least many of us, and that’s progress. It becomes harder to hate something when it moves from the abstract to concrete.
In my own childhood I felt invisible. Role models for gay people were few & far between, & those that were visible, were far from good. I was already a college sophomore when the APA removed homosexuality per se from the DSM-II. Up until then, we were de facto mentally ill.
When well known individuals started coming out (whether intentionally or not), it seemed like forever that anytime they were mentioned in the news, some mention of their sexuality had to be made. Terms like “lesbian tennis star“, “gay congressman”, “lesbian writer” & my favorite, “gay activist”, were labels applied by the media de rigeur Just about anytime that individual appeared in the news, whether their appearance had anything to do with their sexuality or not. Those labels were both crucial and yet wrankling. On one hand it was, “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, while on the other, the sudden attention paid to our orientation made us mono-dimensional. I still bristle at the term “gay marriage”. The addition of that descriptor sets it apart from the word marriage, suggesting it’s something else. Yes, for those of us who are LGBT, it’s an enormous factor that effects our lives and colors how we view the world, but it remains one facet of many.
Imagine a news broadcaster using the term “white male congressman“, “Christian governor“, or “heterosexual author”. Jarring, isn’t it? However, in reality, part of why it's so jarring, is because socially, that’s still the default setting. Can we say, “privilege”? I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a newscaster say during the lead up to the last election, “If she wins her race, Stacy Abrams will be the nation’s first black female governor”, rather than “she will be the first black woman to be elected governor”. The difference, while for many in the “majority” remains subtle, is there. When we challenge societal norms that grant privilege to some and not all, those that are granted privilege don’t usually recognize the the foot up they got by default. As King said, he dreamt of a time when his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It is clear to me that we ain’t there yet. Not when admonishments like, “don’t monkey this up” don’t disqualify people from winning an election over an exceptional candidate who is also a man of color, as happened in Florida last month.
Why this diatribe? The impetus oddly enough were the spate of tv ads over the past few years where minority folks appear, where their minority status is both evident and incidental. Mixed race families now pop up in ads routinely, just doing routine things. As a gay man, seeing my community popping up in ads, warms my heart. The Über commercial which in a 3 second moment showed two men in the back seat of the vehicle, with the voice over that said “meeting the parents” as a reason why you might Über. It went by so fast you could have missed it, but it normalizes that couple in the eyes of the larger community. Or the ad a couple of years ago, that showed a younger gay male couple arriving at the home of what we’re meant to assume are relatives with a newborn child in their arms. That one brought a tear to my eye. On some levels corny, but not. While Madison Ave uses images like these to sell products and services, they go a step further in putting all of us in front of, well, all of us, or at least many of us, and that’s progress. It becomes harder to hate something when it moves from the abstract to concrete.
