laurenfelton: While I appreciate the It Gets Better campaign, I cannot respect Dan Savage.

laurenfelton:

In my opinion, it doesn’t just get better. Through the tools of social action, political organizing, and community building, we have the power to make our society better, and in the process, we get better. But as long as there is racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of prejudice in the world, no member of our community is free, and “it” hasn’t gotten better. Queer liberation will not happen until we see human liberation — until we stop meeting homophobia with racism and classism, until women are no loger blamed for being sexually assaulted, until our country stops fighting these endless wars, until Palestinians have stood at their very last checkpoint, until trans people are no longer cheated by organizations HRC, until intersex infants are no longer mutilated, until queer youth stop turning up dead… this campaign doesn’t address any of that. It simply suggests that somehow, magically, it gets better all on its own, despite the fact that we continue to live in an unequal society. 

Here’s one of my favorite “it gets better” videos — from a woman of color who points out that the campaign videos are well-intentioned, but problematic:

Thanks for the very informative response! I agree that it won’t get better automatically because of some kind of magic - you will have to make it better for yourself, and for our community. But I don’t really agree that it isn’t getting better at all so far.
I think that even though the progress is slow, there is progress, and yes, that if it doesn’t speed up, we won’t really see the progress we would like to see, in our lifetime. But this kind of social movement always goes slowly. I’m not saying we should give up the fight and just let it go its course; of course we should fight for this change, as much as we can. But we can’t expect everything to change overnight either.

(Source: bi-in-alberta)