Psychology Today on "It Gets Better"

12-16-10 Update: Psychology Today article on It's Get Better and Make It Better campaigns

10-13-10: Faith and Religion on Bullying -- Update Oct. 13. In my original post on the It Gets Better and Make It Better YouTube projects, I began to ask questions about faith, bullying, and gay teen suicide. Change.org has published a blog on how religions are reacting to bullying, several weeks after the suicides in Sept. and not quite two weeks after the YouTube projects.

Oct. 6, 2010 "GLEE" UPDATE: This week's episode of Glee struck a nerve because of the spate of real-life teen gay suicides in Sept., and because it focused on faith. I believe it portrays what I've been feeling about the "It Gets Better" and "Make It Better" campaigns. The character of Kurt embodies both of them. And both are holy.

In the show, Kurt's anger and pain erupt when he learns his father might unexpectedly die. His peers insist on praying for his dad. He rejects the prayers and insistently objects to his friends thrusting God on him. “God is Santa Claus for adults,” he snaps.
They pray over his father in the hospital anyway. This violation of boundaries adds a variable of torment to the frightening situation. His anger at unwelcome evangelism threatens his integrity. (This is the button trigger for me personally) It also prevents him from accepting well-intentioned loving kindness and support.
He turns to a classic Beatles song to unleash his despair at facing the loss of his dad - the one person who loves him unconditionally and who fully embraces Kurt's identity.
His voice floats over flashbacks of his father reaching for his son's hand as they approach his dead mother's grave. In a slow, tearjerker rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," he cries for what he needs - what we all need if life becomes unbearable: Accompaniment and Unconditional Love.
The teen knows how precious that hand is. He knows that life is better, the future is better if that grasp is there rather than not. Kurt's father showed him that life got better after they grieved the loss of his mother. His father showed him that life is what you make of it. Kurt lives his glam identity in the face of bullying at school because of it. He has friends who accept him, he marches on, and things get better. "Why else would I continue to come here (the school) when I'm harassed daily," he says to underscore the conscious choices he's made.
The reach; the father-son grasp; the holding fast and not letting go, are acts of mutual faith.
Thinking about the episode and the news brings me to these questions:
What does faith mean in the context of bullying and teen pain? Is it the following? "I trust in God or the Universe and that things will get better?"
Or, what about this? "I have faith that together we will see things through, and in this act of accompaniment, you are not alone. And, that with my presence, because of my life experience, you can take comfort and muster the resources to make life better. And in the identity of "we", at the very least, things will get better." I believe in the latter.

(Another blog post this week: Who Am I?)

First "It Gets Better post," Oct. 4:

My two eldest nieces led SLGBTQ student alliances when they were in high school. One of them is now a sophomore at Columbia, where she's an outspoken feminist, and the other is an abortion rights activist and clinic worker. My sophomore niece proclaimed on facebook that she thinks the It Gets Better campaign invalidates the feelings of LGBTQ teens. She says the campaign doesn't offer LGBTQ teens anything to help them develop the self confidence to stand up for their right to exist and love. To explain, she cited a blog, Why I don’t like Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project, as a response to bullying, which is written by someone else and getting a lot of attention. The girls are also advocates of a site that launched this week, the Make It Better project (MIB). Its purpose is to empower kids to make their lives better now. (The last video at the bottom of this blog is from the MIB campaign.) We've had a lively discussion on facebook. Of course, I agree that we need to work to end bullying and rid our culture of that which cultivates it. The Make It Better project is very good but there will still be teens who do not feel strong enough or who need more.
For those of you who don't know, two gay men launched a campaign on YouTube for LGBTQ people to record their stories and experience from when they were teens. (The video is at the end of this blog) The hope is that, by example, those who are suicidal will see that others persevered. The stories of multiple gay teen suicides of the last several weeks prompted the two gay men to start the campaign. I wish there had been a YouTube to connect millions of people like me to me when I was a teen. Even though I was outspoken and resourceful, there were times when that wasn't enough. I needed to hear that things would get better. That life was worth living. But I didn't, at least not for being lesbian. My outspokenness put me in harm's way and I got caught. Had I had the kind of support that is pouring out on YouTube now, I would have recovered sooner and stronger. What adults are offering on YouTube is not a panacea. It's just one of many tactics to help LGBTQ teens get through darkness. But the enormity of the outpouring, IMHO, takes on a life of its own that is more than just "It Gets Better." It's causing discussion in religious institutions, at schools, in the media and at community centers. It prompted leaders of the Gay Straight Student Alliance to create the Make It Better project. I don't know if my life experience makes a difference to my nieces. I don't understand the "my way" is better than "your way" dichotomy. The adults on YouTube are not therapists. The title of the campaign means something different to everyone who is responding with a video of their own stories. To many it means, things get better when the teen takes action to better his or her life. To others it does mean that they waited out the high school years, even though their school had an alliance of SLGBTQ. They could not bring themselves to join it. I've wondered if my nieces are willing to see the love that is implicit in the act of sharing one's story to help others. They and their friends say that if adults want to help there are better ways and that the videos on YouTube are harmful. But does that mean we should not accept that many kids, in the teen years, don't have a voice and can't muster one? When people worldwide make the effort to connect to these kids, they are reinforcing the interconnectedness of life and sharing a part of themselves. They are extending their presence. They are extending a hand.
I'm still stumped by their reaction to the It Gets Better campaign. Maybe their approach reflects a healthy desire to live in the now and make now better. But I do not share their dismissal of future possibilities. It's those possibilities that help make the journey of life worthwhile. When the opportunity is right, I'm going to offer that our ability to see truth improves when we open our hearts to recognize and understand acts of love. Isn't that our new (UU of Arlington's revised 10 Commandments) First Commandment, the one that prompts us to keep our hearts open to the holy. Here's the original video that started the campaign. Underneath are more responses that I happen to like. From the Make it Better campaign:

Tags: Better, Gets, It, gay, lgbtq, suicide, teen

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Comment by UUCAVA on October 5, 2010 at 12:37pm: The url that Liz cites below as coming from her daughter isn't working. But this one is: http://girlvanized.tumblr.com/

Comment by June Herold on October 5, 2010 at 12:28pm: Hi Elizabeth. Thanks for your thoughts. I was one of those kids in the 1970s. I know the feelings, and I agree if all that is said is "It Gets Better" that it's not enough. Most of the videos that people are uploading to this campaign are providing information on where individuals can find help. Watching one video isn't enough, and after all that wasn't the intent of the campaign. It's intent is to use life experience of others to help those who need it help themselves. The "suffer through it" advice is what appears to be the only thing that is being heard. In general, I think telling kids that "it" gets better in any difficult situation can be problematic. Empowering them to make their own lives better is critical. But I will say this: In my experience, I went looking for the stories of gays and lesbians to help me through those years. And those stories helped tremendously. They told me that others protested, wrote newsletters, opened bars, and stood up for themselves. And so I did as well. What strikes me about my nieces comments is that they see zero value in the It Gets Better campaign. And I think that's unfortunate. I agree it has to be up to us to support these kids and stop bullying. And I think both of the YouTube campaigns will help all of us do that.

Comment by Elizabeth Fogarty on October 5, 2010 at 11:27am: June, My older daughter posted this, from http://girlvanized.tumbler.com, which might be what your nieces are expressing:

It’s not enough to tell kids that “it gets better.”

In response to all the suicides of young men who were bullied because of their sexuality, a lot of people have been advocating Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign. While I seriously love Dan, and that campaign has a necessary and valid message, it is not enough and it should not be our main solution to this problem.

Most of the messages I’ve seen related to that campaign deal with coming to terms with one’s sexuality while feeling isolated and excluded in communities where being a “fag” is heralded as a negative, undesirable thing, but not about dealing with the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse and trauma of severe, long-term bullying and harassment.

Trust me, I know from personal experience, and I’m starting to cry just thinking about it. Your life becomes a constant fear, never at ease, rarely feeling safe, always on edge worrying about the next attack and from where it might come; being targeted and victimized again and again, day after day, year after year, until you cannot imagine life any other way, until you cannot conceive of a future for yourself, until you just need this to end. It gets so bad that it doesn’t matter if one day it’s going to get better because the right now becomes too terrible to bear any longer.

So telling these kids, “these are just your teenage years, tough it out because it gets better” does absolutely nothing to ease their suffering, and (again, trust me, it’s what parents and school administrators told me) just feels like you are dismissing their pain as something that can and should be tolerated.

Telling these kids, “just suck it up because it gets better” puts ALL of the responsibility on them, when they’re already carrying the overwhelming burden of their constant, repeated victimization.

Telling them to hold on should be the temporary panacea, and not a focused solution. The focus should be on preventing the bullying in the first place. On schools having no tolerance policies. On parents taking responsibility for their children’s bullying behavior, and not dismissing it because they don’t want to feel like they raised an a******. On stepping in and speaking up if you see someone, anyone, being bullied. On volunteering in after-school programs in your community so you can help raise a more tolerant generation. On calling your state representatives and telling them you want anti-bullying legislation that forces the school districts to take action, and calling them, emailing them, telling them again and again and again until it gets done.

It should not solely be up to the victims to survive their trauma. It has to be up to us. We have to take care of them now, which we won’t do only by telling them to wait. They’ve waited as long as they could already.

Comment by Sue Browning on October 4, 2010 at 11:25pm: Thanks for this posting. I too saw the YouTube videos this weekend. I was impressed by the outreach, and grateful for the video. From my much older vantage, I hoped it might provide some critical reassurance. Having these two slightly older adults speak out authentically of their experience appears to be powerful testimony. Your niece’s views that the approach could invalidate the feelings of LGBTQ youth does have me thinking. Is your niece, at least in part, saying that messages of reassurance (it gets better after high school) shouldn’t in any way reduce the urgency of working against the climate of hatred and injustice? If so, I agree. I hope LGBTQ youth will be able to the clear actions of many supporting an immediate change in environment. And I hope LGBTQ adolescents will feel safer and more empowered if they can feel love and compassion coming their way from many directions. Tough last few weeks.