Savage Love writer Dan Savage and his husband have started the most wonderful movement called the It Gets Better Project (as well as the Make It Better Project). It all started with this amazing video of Dan and his husband talking about their experiences growing up and facing adversity and bullying as teens. In their sample video they send the simple message of “It gets better” to young LGBT kids out there contemplating suicide and encourage others to make videos of their own.
Other celebrities as well as members of the LGBT community posted an overwhelming amount of response videos, most of them heartwarming or heartbreaking. Here is a heartbreaking video from Tim Gunn:
A few even put out videos addressing the bullies or the bullies parents in particular. Here is Sarah Silverman’s short but sweet statement to the politicians and parents:
If you browse around a lot of the videos you may notice that many people had a secret message in their “It gets better” videos: “Move the hell away from your small conservative town and get thee to a major city!” Which was more or less confirmed by the city of San Francisco’s “It gets better” video:
I am so proud of where I live! I am also so happy that the LGBT community is finally getting the word out there to the youth of America that it’s okay to be the way they are. I want to applaud Dan Savage for deciding that enough is enough and coming up with this idea that will reach so many in need!
But then of course you can’t please everyone… A blogger, “Femmephane” writes about why she doesn’t like Dan Savage’s It gets better project in her article Why I don’t like Dan Savage’s it gets better project as a response to bullying. While she had a few good points I found her response to be full of unconstructive criticism that got to the point of being offensive as she threw terms around like “classist” when referring to Savage’s video. Furthermore she only offered vague generalizations as far as solutions were concerned. The only two that I really got out of there were that people should listen to these teens (something that “It gets better” offers readily) and that there needs to be change. No real specifications on what that change should be, just change.
I feel like Femmephane missed the point.
The “It gets better” project is all about listening. It’s about speaking to these kids about how things may be awful now but it will eventually get better if they just hang in there. And at the end of almost all of these videos they include their own personal contact information so that the teens can communicate with someone who has been where they are. If the gay community in San Francisco or New York (for example) wants to listen to a teenager in a small town in the midwest they would have really no way to do this. So they are reaching out first through a medium that is easily accessed and inviting these kids to contact them so that they can listen and help them through a bad time.
But what about this nebulous change that is being asked for?
Well change can be a pretty slow process, look how long it took for equal rights to happen for anyone else that was not a White-Christian-Heterosexual-Male? Heck, we still aren’t all the way there with women’s rights! We have to take many steps to get there and the the first step to any big change is awareness.
Dan Savage and the hundreds of others who have joined his cause are raising truck loads of awareness! And I personally feel like they are starting that real change. People are becoming very aware, and the ones who were already aware are getting more verbal. Anti-gay communities and politicians, bullies, and the parents of bullies are being held accountable for the suicides of these teens. I’m hoping that that message gets through to some of them and they learn that any kind of prejudice is just wrong no matter what they think religion or their favorite politicians says.
Sorry to go off on such a serious rant just now, this is just something I feel rather passionate about. You don’t have to agree with me, I’m just one person with a very small blog all based on my own opinions. I just wanted to spread the word about something that I think is beautiful. And Dan Savage, if you happen to ever read this I just wanted to say Thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much! You are helping a lot of people and hopefully bringing us one step closer to ending a big problem.
Sinister Fingers 