Questioning

Given that it’s difficult to be optimistic at the moment, what with all of *this* – please picture me madly twirling around, pointing at literally everything – I thought I’d try to put old Donny Dumpalump on one side for a moment, keep our collective chin up, and write a blog about the reasons we have to be cheerful.

It feels like the rights of LGBTQ+ people (not to mention women, people of colour, non-Christians, immigrants etc. etc.) are under attack and that we’re backsliding dangerously, but one starting point in our quest for optimism is to consider the point that we’re sliding from.  One of the reasons why the worst people in the world are so intent on making the lives of LGBTQ+ people miserable right now is that those people are used to being at the top of the pile, and while they undoubtedly still are, our upward trajectory has been fast.  I mean, it really has.  Compare where we were thirty, twenty, even ten years ago, and it’s undeniable that LGBTQ+ people are in a better position than we’ve been in before. We might be taking a temporary tumble back down the slope, but let’s take the opportunity to look down our metaphorical hill into the valley of the not-so-distant past and see how much better things have got.

It’s only a small piece of the picture, but take representation of LGBTQ+ characters: we are now being depicted on screen and in literature in a way that we never have been before.  Like a lot of people, I fell in love with Schitt’s Creek during the pandemic (primarily because it’s hysterical) but a friend of mine pointed out that the really great thing about it is that it features two queer characters in a storyline that’s properly happy and heart-warming.  Not so long ago, gay characters either had to be the victims of sustained homophobic violence, dying of AIDS or at the very least disowned by one or both parents.  Nowadays gay characters are allowed just to be.

As part of that, trans representation is also improving; you can now see trans characters on the screen for whom being trans isn’t the main storyline (or, as it has been far too many times in the past, the punchline) and I think we are seeing an increasing understanding and acceptance of trans people that we’ve not seen before.  Before you start hurling things at me, I know there’s still an awful lot of horrible transphobes out there, many of them at the most dizzying heights of power and becoming increasingly vocal and empowered, but I feel that this is leading to a stronger and more vocal movement to protect trans people and stand up to the Rowlings and Glinners of the world (two people who, by the way, are appearing increasingly unhinged even to those who may once have seen them as voices of reason).  I realise there is still a lot of work to be done and a lot more fight to be fought, but I think there’s also a growing number of people who are feeling more strongly allied to the cause and willing to help fight that fight.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the current generation of school kids really do give me hope.  I’m not saying that they’re not ever annoying or lazy or rude or thoughtless or any of those things that make teenagers what they are and our lives as teachers occasionally excruciating, but when I look at them as a whole and see how they interact with each other, accepting one another’s differences and rolling with them in a way that my own generation never did, I feel that whatever is happening in the grubby adult world of politics, at a more fundamental level things are improving.  The increasing number of kids now comfortable to come out as trans has led to a generation that sees their trans peers as a normal feature of everyday life, and it’s not long before these kids become voters who aren’t going to be susceptible to the same scaremongering that their parents and grandparents are.  Schoolkids now are part of a generation that’s grown up into a world where Black Lives Matter, Love Is Love and Some People Are Gay, Get Over It and weren’t around for the shit that came before, and honestly, it shows.  I do kind of get it when the Mail and Telegraph talk about left-wing brainwashing in schools and to some extent I think they’re right, only what they call left-wing brainwashing I would call a fostering of tolerance and acceptance, and I can only view it as a beautiful thing.

In my school, among the attendees of my LGBTQ+ group and further afield, I see wonderful tiny little acts of rebellion: the pride/bi/trans flags on the blazer lapels, the doodled androgynous manga characters in the margins of exercise books, the fierce look in the eye of the year 8 girl as she strides around town holding her girlfriend’s hand.  It might only be a small pocket of the school population, but it’s there and has far more righteous adolescent strength and fury than anything that the wet Andrew Tate fanboys can muster.

I really hope I’m not going to look back in this post in a few years’ time and see it as naïve.  I know not every school in the world will be as welcoming to LGBTQ+ kids as mine, and I know there’s some bad shit up ahead for a lot of people.  But we got this far, and we’ve created a world where lots of special things can happen that seemed unthinkable not so long ago, and if we hold onto that and don’t despair and fight to defend that good stuff, I do think there’s enough decent people on our side to see us through to the other end of whatever sick wave the shitty people of the world are riding high on right now. 

As has happened before when I’ve gone to write a post like this, someone with more knowledge and experience has gone and written a similar and better post than mine.  This time it was Michael Bronski in the Guardian, writing about what we can learn about past activism and how it can help in the fight against Trump and his allies.