If your facebook feed is like mine, these It Gets Better videos have been all over it all weekend. A project started by saucy gay advice columnist/memoirist/whatever Dan Savage, the idea behind the videos is to give depressed gay teenagers an idea of how much life improves for a gay man as soon as he grows up and finds his tribe. Gays all over the internet have followed Savage’s example, submitting their own testimonies to the Gods of Youtube.
In a nutshell the message is: don’t worry, you’ll get laid someday. Which, crass as it may sound, really would have made me feel way better as a 14-year-old gay hatchling. What these optimistic gays leave out of their videos: you’ll also have to pay rent. Which, you know, pretty much ruins everything. :'( :'( :'(. Now who’s going to make a video to cheer me up?!
[It Gets Better]
I’m with Drew. I, too, grew up in Mid-Michigan and had no trouble in school. I was actually surprised that it was a non-issue for the most part.
Well maybe I am alone in this but High School was great for me. I lived in a small farming town in Michigan, was out of the closet, dating (in secret until he pissed me off (yeah i was that kind of guy)) a guy on the swim team and voted ‘everybody’s best friend’.
There was only ever one homophobic incident with a kid and i gave him a ‘smack-down’ and after that I never had a problem.
Still I had a lot of emotional problems dealing with being gay but i seemed to be the only one with a problem with it.
Actually, just re-read the post and now understand why Jeremy wrote what he did. But I’m still with ya Bmad. I’m completely inappropriate at the worst times, so I get your humor.
I’m not sure how this can be viewed negatively. It’s a great video…everything about it is great. The fact that they have such a calm demeanor and talk naturally shows how genuine they are and how real their love is. It doesn’t appear contrived at all. I love that they did this. Thanks for posting, Bmad.
actually, jeremy, yeah– i think it’s important and positive to remind lonely teenagers (whose heterosexual peers are all starting to date) that they’ll someday join the club of people who are allowed to experience love and sex. this is pretty obviously why savage and others chose to appear in their videos with their partners. but go ahead and kill me for it!
Do you really think the overall message was “Don’t worry, you’ll get laid some day”? Maybe you can explain that to parents of the kids killing themselves over being bullied. “You know, Mrs. Smith, it’s really too bad that Billy didn’t realize that he would get laid some day”. Christ. Way to undermine a positive message. I think my days of reading this blog are swiftly coming to an end.