Flip The Media’s Elizabeth Hunter interviews Dan Savage to Find Out
Dan Savage
In response to a recent spate of suicides of gay youth, Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller developed It Gets Better, a video project that has inspired tens of thousands of LGBT people to post short, positive videos to YouTube with the hope that questioning teens will view the videos and realize life can “get better”. It Gets Better has garnered over 10 million views and has drawn national media attention.
It Gets Better is just one example of digital media providing a support network for LGBT youth. Other websites like The Trevor Project, Matthew’s Place, and GLAAD provide resources, forums, and counseling to gay youth who may be living in intolerant or unequipped regions, communities, or families. Social media provides an outlet for making queer friends and straight allies, and allows organizations like the University of Washington’s Q-Center—an on-campus safe haven, resource, and activism center—to reach enormous numbers of people for rallies, petitions, and events.
The internet is so profound in queer youth lives, Savage says, that the first thing intolerant parents often do when they find out their child is gay is ban them from the internet—not only because they could find gay porn or predators, but because they realize that the internet can provide support, affirmation, and therapy.
But, like all new media before it, digital media and social networks also pose difficulties for queer youth—issues that may never be apparent to a straight person navigating the digital media revolution.
The tragic “outing” of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, in which two classmates secretly livestreamed his sexual encounter with another male, resulting in his suicide, was made possible by digital media. A Facebook page dedicated to Tyler Clementi’s memory was swarmed with anti-gay slurs soon after the family created it, prompting Facebook to intervene by erasing the comments and developing a company-sponsored resources page for kids being bullied.
Rutgers student Tyler Clementi’s memorial Facebook page
In a phone interview with Flip The Media last week, Savage spoke candidly about the benefits of digital media and the effects of bullying on queer youth as a result of new digital platforms. He discussed how the closest thing LGBT youth once had to the support social media platforms now offered were phone chains. Now, there are countless websites and news outlets documenting the lives and experiences of LGBT people.
Savage pointed out that online bullying is just the latest extension of the offline harassment LGBT kids have long faced.
“They’re very familiar with 24/7 bullying. They’re bullied at school by their classmates, they get home and all too often they’re bullied by their parents, they’re brought to church on Sunday’s to be bullied by God, they’re bullied by their siblings, their neighbors—its nothing new for queer kids,” said Savage.
Savage also believes that bullying that results in physical harm, or worse, needs to be brought to the justice system, and bullies need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“Parents need to stop going to teachers and administrators and trying to handle this [bullying] inside,” he said, “They need to go to the police.”
Savage added that the UW has a role to play by requiring every freshman to take a Human Sexuality course that makes clear that bullying queer kids will not be tolerated.
Kyle Rapinan, a UW student and member of the Q-Center, has seen first hand the complexities of digital media in the lives of queer youth. Often, queer freshman come out at college and not at home. Since the Q-Center uses social media to promote their events, it must be diligent in protecting these students’ privacy. Tagging photos, for example, becomes tricky.
Rapinan says that numerous students have visited the Q-Center for advice after their parents or guardians began questioning the content on their Facebook pages. The proliferation of social networks has forced some queer youth to lead dual lives, monitoring every comment and “like” on their Facebook pages for fear of being inadvertently “outed.”
But above all, Rapinan sees digital media as a tool for better community organizing. While anonymous bullying though MySpace or on hate-filled websites is a problem, Rapinan also sees the amazing numbers that can be reached at the click of a mouse.
Thanks to advances in digital media, there is a vast number of students learning that they are not alone. Despite potential bullying and untimely “outing,” it’s clear the digital media revolution will continue to play a key role in the lives of LGBT youth.
But Rapinan wants to see work like Savage’s go even farther, “We need to make it better. We need to engage young people and also do intergenerational work, using digital media to convey diverse story lines [and] connect with young people.”
14 Comments
Agreed. We do not live on a tolerant planet. The very tools and forums used to combat hate and terror are those also employed to spread them. We must never falter in the fight against intolerance, always working to promote acceptance and peace. Like the “it gets better” campaign has figured out, the role of Social media in this fight might be best as a platform to help transition LGBT youth into healthy adulthood and out of intolerant places. Ignorance and hatred prefer a good shouting match, and the internet provides an anonymous setting for such. Forgetting them (for a moment), and instead connecting with those needing help and connection seems the best use of the “web”.
Thank you so much for this post. My misguided hope was always that we “geeks, freaks and queers” really could find community and belonging in the big world through digital media. As a mom of a child who is often bullied, the recent tragic deaths of the children mentioned here really hits home. In fact, I’m crying right now…
How and where do we create a safe place for our children? – whether they be our children because they were born to us or because we as adults are lucky enough to have the children seek us out as they find their footing in the world. Thanks to Dan Savage for keeping so many important and often not discussed issues on the forefront.
I diverge a bit, however, from the thinking on solutions. I believe that the entire community needs to help in this issue or anytime a child needs help. The school, parents and community (police as mentioned in this article – but I include neighbors, professionals, businesses) all need to be involved. Compassion and tolerance are something that should be taught beginning in pre-school and focused on in elementary school. Counselors should be a part of the everyday curriculum at schools…not just for those who aren’t coping well or not behaving properly. I’d venture to guess that if the entire classroom had adequate tools for expressing compassion (or any emotion for that matter), the incidence of bullying and violence would drop dramatically.
This is a systemic problem that needs to be dealt with on many fronts. Keeping community safe is paramount – online and off. Hats off to FB for monitoring. Here’s a call to all adults to help create safe places for all children.
Intolerant parents are the roots of all evil. Their children are insecure, straight or queer.
Thanks to these intolerant parents, their straight children will likely bully queer children and grow up to be intolerant people.
Thanks to these intolerant parents, their queer children live in fear: fearing of losing their parents’ love if exposed, and knowing that their parents haven’t got their backs when bullied.
Like ALIFIORIA said, we must teach children to be compassionate in school. But I also believe education that happens at home is much more effective, and we need to actively reach out to parents to help them be empathetic role models.
In my ideal world, though, we don’t need tolerance because we mind only things that are not other people’s business.
I agree completely that social media has the potential to support and organize queer youth like nothing before. The recent suicides due to bullying and cyber bullying are tragic and my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones and to those who are still in pain and wondering if suicide is their only option to escape persecution. The “It Gets Better” project is just one of many initiatives in the digital world that aims to show kids they are loved and accepted by a community, whether or not that community includes their parents or their school.
There has been some backlash against digital media for providing new channels for bullying. I work for a non-profit dedicated to the prevention of bullying and violence and I spend my days communicating with educators, counselors, and parents about how they can decrease bullying in schools. Many of these individuals blame access to the internet for cyber bullying. They think that the answer is to restrict the technology.
My work in child advocacy and a recent course I took in Evolution and Trends in Digital Media have brought me to the conclusion that there is a better way to approach this issue than by reacting with fear and anger. Our class read a fascinating report from the MacArthur Foundation titled “Confronting Challenges in Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.” This work supported my view that we need comprehensive media education. It is no longer adequate for our children to be literate in terms of the written word. We need to boost media literacy. We need to teach children and young adults how to navigate the digital world safely and wisely.
I don’t think the importance of media literacy for youth can be overstated at this time. Digital media gives young adults a place to feel at home and a platform to speak their minds, but allowing them to maneuver in this space blindly is a mistake. It prevents us from teaching them to engage with one another respectfully and to build safe, healthy communities online. Educating children that ethics should extend to the digital realm and that there are consequences to heinous acts of electronic aggression just as there are consequences to physical aggression is essential!
This article brings to light a very nasty issue. Several of members of my family are in education and have expressed the increase in “cyber-bullying” through social media. We have this wonderful tool that allows us to create communities and interact with each other and yet the flip side can be this ugly behavior spreading like wild fire.
One of my son’s closest friends is a trans-gender child. I am terribly afraid of what he may face as they approach middle school. I would like to think that social media will give him an opportunity to connect to other trans-gender children and gain support from each other. Middle school is hard enough for any child but a trans-gender or gay/lesbian child have incredible hurdles to overcome.
I believe cyber-bullying all starts from the top down. Parents, administrators and teachers need to set the example of how our children should behave and attitudes around acceptance. Several cases that my brother has dealt with as a Vice Principal at a local high school have involved a parent justifying their child’s cyber bullying as “kids just being kids”. This makes me sick. We need to approach sexual orientation tolerance in the same way we approach race tolerance. People need to be be educated on this subject and our leaders, administrators, teachers and parents need to start implementing harsh consequences for this intolerable behavior.
My daughter continues to ask for access to social media. I remember the recent tragedies, people being outed on facebook causing their suicides, videos of girls beating up other girls and posted on myspace or youtube. And I think – there’s no way I’m going to give her permission to put herself and her self esteem on the line. There’s no way I’m letting my daughter have access to social media. It’s just another venue for kids to tease and be teased. Social media has a place but I don’t believe it is for children. I am friends with Justin Bieber on facebook so that my daughter and I can watch what he is up to together. Kids find ways to tease and bully kids al over the place, this is just another avenue. What confuses me is that parents don’t monitor their children’s behavior – especially on line. Not only is it an open place for kids to bully and be bullied, it’s also a place for predators to lurk and attack. We as parents have to be more on top of what is going on – all the time – on line and off.
While I applaud and encourage efforts to provide support to the persecuted, misunderstood, and underrepresented, society’s tendency to focus on the tool as opposed to the issue is misguided. In this case, digital and social media are neither cause nor cure for LGBT intolerance and prejudice. It comes down to the fact that people are both the cause and cure – digital and social media are simply tools.
As with the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement in the 1970, it only makes sense to fight with every tool available and expect to be opposed with the same tools.
My heart goes to all those families and children who have suffered any form of bullying or abuse online or offline. Unfortunately, it took several deaths/suicide events before families, police, media and schools began to pay real attention to the seriousness of bullying. For years, a boy I know suffered verbal and physical bullying at his neighborhood school, and the only response his parents received from the school’s administration and principal was that “It [bullying] is normal” and that “It [bullying] happens to everyone”! I find this mind-boggling since this boy is now suffering from consequences such as lack of self-esteem, declining academic performance, and most important, loneliness. I’ve never been an advocate of homeschooling, but as a mom of 2 lovely, kind-hearted, passive children, I cannot ignore the following stats released in 2009 by the Bureau of Justice http://how-to-stop-bullying.com/bullyingstatistics.html :
• 1 out of 4 kids in the US is bullied
• 77% of students are bullied mentally, verbally, & physically (14% of which suffered severe reactions)
• Each day 160,000 students miss school for fear of being bullied
• 282,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools each month
• 43% of students fear harassment in the bathroom at school
• 100,000 students carry a gun to school
And the list goes on.
So whether social media is another tool, outlet, or cause for cyber-bullying, I too bellieve the core of the problem lies within parents and schools.
Lizzy,
Thanks for researching and posting this. traditionally one of the difficulties for LGBT communities (of all ages) has been their relative invisibility.
The “Stonewall” generation of gay and lesbian activists were relatively successful in raising the profile of lesbian and gay rights throughout the 1970’s. That generation’s biggest triumph might have been Harvey Milk’s election as a San Francisco Supervisor in 1977. Its biggest disappointment might have been Milk’s assassination the following year.
While Milk marked a highpoint in LGBT visibility in the 1970’s, the 1980’s saw a resurgent conservative coalition in both American politics and culture. This rightward shift coupled with the stigma of the AIDS epidemic might have marked a return to the closet for American GLBT communities, but a new generation of activists rallied around the plight of gay men dealing with the AIDS crisis.
As a result of much of their work, Gays and Lesbians moved a little further into national visibility (albeit often in protest) –particularly in the culture industries. How much of that visibility translated beyond the affluent and well healed of the Castro and the West Village is debatable.
Many of the activists of the 1980’s and 90’s benefited from the visibility of the Stonewall generation and were inspired by their efforts. One of the questions for today’s youth (gay and straight) are were are the role models?
As GLBT visibility has increased in many areas of American life, the crises that inspired the activists of previous generations have mellowed. But hatred and bigotry towards GLBT has never gone away and we ignore anti-gay sentiment at our collective peril. The recent examples of cyber and real-life bullying are tragic reminders that we need to do more as a society to combat anti-gay sentiments.
Dan Savage is a wonderful example for all of us in carrying the torch for visibility and acceptance. A torch once carried by others before us. Thanks Dan!
I really enjoyed this post and thought some great points were made. I love the proposal of requiring students to take a Human Sexuality course, and think a similar lesson should start as early as middle or high school. I like that the “It Gets Better” campaign was highlighted, as I watched the plea by Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax96cghOnY4, and thought that YouTube was a great way to get that message out there. I saw it posted on many Facebook and Twitter accounts which not only increased the likelihood that it would be viewed by gay and lesbian youth, but also demonstrated the support by those who shared it.
Social media platforms are a great way for minority groups to connect and share feelings and support for others who are just like them – people they would have never connected with if such digital communications did not exist. My uncle was gay (he passed away many years ago) and left behind candid journals about how alone he felt in a world that was not accepting of his lifestyle. He was depressed, isolated, and confused, and his only outlet of expression was his written journal. I only wish that he could have had social media to connect with others and share those feelings to realize that he was not alone. I think it would have benefited him a great deal.
I understand that there are negative aspects of social media, in that they offer a platform for intolerant people to also voice their ignorant opinions. I see a lot about “It gets better” but what about a campaign that aims to educate the ignorant ones too? I almost get the impression that the current consensus is that “kids will be kids” but “it gets better.” I feel like there should be a similar campaign that targets ignorance, much like the H8 campaign, but more focused on bullying than voting.
In general, I think that social media can have a positive impact on gay youth. If profiles are not left open to free commenting gays shouldn’t have to worry about combating ignorance within their own safe zone (i.e. a Facebook profile). I think what it really comes down to here is education, education on how to use social media, as well as education on tolerance and bullying.
I came across this website about digital harassment today and thought I’d share: http://www.athinline.org/ It looks like a great campaign targeted at educating everyone on the effects of social media bullying.
It’s sad to think that social media, a tool that has revolutionized communication, could also be used to harm people in the worst way. It’s like high school all over again but now these bullies have a virtual platform reaching millions via the web. I know what it is like to have been teased and picked on as a youth and somehow, it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as what teens experience today.
As always, it boils down to the job the parents are doing (or not doing) in raising them. Some parents have worked so hard to try and stay afloat financially that they may have not been around as much as they would have liked to have been and the kids are acting out. Maybe teaching kids to respect everyone is quickly becoming a thing of the past. In fact, I recently read a Rasmussen Report survey reporting that “69% of Americans think their fellow countrymen are becoming more rude and less civilized” (Rasmussen Reports, 2010). Essentially, civility is dead and I can see it coming if we don’t make a change in society.
I have raised my girls to have respect for their self and to also have respect for others regardless of what anyone may think. Although they are still considered young (ages 10 and 12), I am confident that my efforts will prove to be successful in raising RESPECTFUL children. I, like Rachel, have kept my girls away from the vacuum of social media even though many of their friends have had pages for several years. C’mon parents, wake up. Is a Facebook page for a six year old really necessary? Really?
My heart goes out to any teen that has experienced cyber bulling. Hang in there…IT DOES GET BETTER, I promise!
Link to the Rasmussen Report:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/august_2010/69_say_americans_are_becoming_more_rude_less_civilized
I agree with many of the commenters above that tolerance and understanding begins with teachable lessons from the parent, siblings and others in a child’s life. Sadly, not enough children get these lessons in their homes and instead take on the life of a bully.
While I was working for Stanwood-Camano School District a few years ago, I had the pleasure of participating as a mentor at Stanwood High School’s first ever Challenge Day, a national program that comes to schools and breaks down barriers so students can openly share their answer to the statement, “If you really knew me…”
The transformations from 8am to what I saw at 3pm were absolutely incredible. Students were talking face-to-face with their peers about their personal experiences with homosexuality, abuse, divorce, depression, bullying, alcoholism and the plea that they never go back to the way things were at school before. They found out exactly how much they all had in common at a pivotal age in their lives. It was very emotional and effective.
Being part of Challenge Day and seeing how truly inspired these teens were to make change happen in their community after this experience really drove my desire to learn more about storytelling and join MCDM. Real understanding and acceptance begins with the power of storytelling – something that proved incredibly effective with 100 students and 25 mentors in one room, but how can this transfer to other platforms to have an even greater reach? I give MTV props for recently making this into a tv show and as I read through the Challenge Day blog, it looks like teens are posting how they want to “Be the Change” as a result of watching the show.
And while these anti-bullying messages are also available online, it broke my heart to hear that people were posting anti-gay comments on Tyler Clementi’s memorial Facebook page. While digital media can be a wonderful outlet for support for queer teens, bullying is still an issue, and I hope that the number of people displaying tolerance and understanding can provide the comfort that teens need to tell their story and their desires for bullies to stop. Thank you so much to Dan Savage for telling his story so others can relate.
[…] Flip the Media, various sources. The original post that I saved on my Safari Reading List was Is the Rise of Digital Media Helping, or Hurting, Queer Youth? Flip the Media’s Elizabeth Hunt… I need to read the article more closely, but my initial response is: That’s the wrong […]