((whichsarah)) I feel ya. Lots of love going your way.
It's been getting me down, too. At least queer adults are finally catching on to the fact that it still forking sucks to be a queer youth (even as it also can be really forking awesome, just like it could be for us)
I feel like over the years I've heard a lot of, "oh, god, I can't even imagine being able to be out in high school/take my girlfriend to prom/have a GSA. Wow, it's just so much better now." from queer adult friends who have no real contact with youth.
No, actually it just sucks in a new and different way. Queer kids are more visible now. That doesn't make them safer, often the opposite.
I have really mixed feelings about the it gets better project, too. I don't know how much having successful, happy gay adults reach out really helps. I know in general that when teenagers are feeling really oppressed and miserable because they're teenagers, telling them adults have it better does
not help. I know that's not what anyone is trying to say, but it makes me wonder if we're really talking to kids now, or to our own younger selves. I don't want to diss a good intention, and at least it cuts through isolation, but I'm happy that this project popped up, too.
http://makeitbetterproject.org/I don't even know how much I believe we are making progress, or even ever have, or just that homophobia mutates and takes different forms in different eras, and the ways you are allowed to be queer do, too. I sometimes think the idea that we're making so much progress erases our past joys and our current pain. But I guess the positive spin on that is the hate is always there but so is the love, the community, the activism, the discovery of self and others. There've always been haters and there've always been happy, healthy queer people. We can love and take care of each other, we just have to step up and do it.
Or as panda said, queer on.
But you are so much more eloquent.
