Tag Archives: homophobia

Support for Teen Sexual Experimentation — Inside and Outside the Current Context

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Debbie says:

Melissa Kravitz’s informative article in Teen Vogue addresses “Why LGBTQ Inclusive Sex Education Is So Important, Experts Say.”

Nearly half of sexually active New York City high school girls could be hooking up with other girls, according to a sample survey in a new study. … The study, published in August in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, found that of 4,643 female public school students surveyed, almost half of the sexually active students reported “some same-sex experience.” One in four of these girls can be classified as women seeking women. With only 4.1% of Americans identifying as LGBT in 2016 according to Gallup, these numbers are huge.

In case you don’t click internal links, this study population was about 4600 New York city high school females.

Let’s start with not slut-shaming teens. From Kravitz’s article:

“It’s a reality that many young people are sexually active, and it’s important to not stigmatize sexual behavior or the idea that young people are having sex,” Brittany McBride, senior program manager of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, said in a phone interview. “Sexuality is a normal, natural part of adolescent development,” McBride said.

But what happens when teenagers experiment within their identified gender?

Regardless of how girls identify, the study found that girls engaging in same-sex activity are at higher risk for suicidal ideation, substance use, intimate partner violence, pregnancy and STIs. Girls who were “not sure” of their sexual orientation reported “engaging in more high-risk sexual and social behaviors” which may lead to girls questioning their sexuality being “particularly vulnerable.”

The rest of the article is spent discussing the barriers to inclusive sex education, the emotional/psychological/social risks of coming out, and a good basic list of resources for supportive information for LGBTQ or questioning teens.

By sticking to New York City and not addressing the national climate, Kravitz is able to close on an optimistic note. And yet, I recently read an unrelated article by the reliably thoughtful Binary This, which quotes Gayle Rubin from “Thinking Sex,” which she wrote 1984: “…it is precisely at times such as these, when we live with the possibility of unthinkable destruction, that people are likely to become dangerously crazy about sexuality.”

Binary This is writing about marriage equality, not teen sexuality. But they make the clear, unambiguous point that we have to confront homophobia and transphobia to move forward. I know how tiresome it can feel to always be confronting the opposition. At the same time, Kravitz’s article is not obviously different than it would have been a year ago, when we didn’t have active hatred for queer sexualities and particularly transpeople as a national position. That feels incomplete to me.

Thanks to @scarleteen on Twitter for the pointer to the Kravitz article.

 

LGBT and Muslim: Doubly Suppressed Intersectionality

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Debbie says:

Hannah Allam’s BuzzFeed article titled “It’s Pride. It’s Ramadan. And It Still Isn’t Easy To Be An LGBT Muslim” seems to me to have an extra word in the title. “Still.” Except in some bubbles, and special places, it isn’t easy to be LGBT (and of course it depends which of those initials apply to you, and how you live out that portion of your life). And today in America, it certainly isn’t easy to be Islamic.

Nothing we know about intersectionality tells us that having two challenged identities makes having either one of them easier. And if you have two (or more) challenged identities which actively disrespect or disdain another of your identities, that’s going to make everything harder still.

Here’s Allam:

When organizers of the Minneapolis [LGBT] iftar [the meal when Muslims break their daily fast during Ramadan] hit up clubs and cafés to pass out flyers for the event, they met resistance from both Muslim and LGBT invitees. One volunteer tried to give a flyer to a Pakistani man who was a regular at his favorite café; he said the man rejected the event and warned that no one would come. Other volunteers said they’d been similarly rebuffed at gay bars.

A Mexican-American activist from Caravan of Love, who asked that his name not be included, said he realized what Muslims were up against when he was passing out iftar flyers at a club, telling LGBT patrons that “right now, given the political climate, we have to unite.” A non-Muslim guy snapped at him.

“He’s like, ‘They just want to kill us all. Why would you ever want to volunteer for Muslim people when they want you dead?’” the activist said.

Earlier this month, seven protesters were arrested at the Minnesota State Capitol during so-called anti-Sharia marches. Gay critics of Islam were among the top organizers of the nationwide marches, which largely fizzled due to poor attendance.

I certainly knew that many Islamic people (but by no means all) are opposed to gay rights. I did not know until I read this article that a significant number of prominent gay Americans have allied themselves with anti-Muslim causes. Along with her Twin Cities examples, Allam also cites a gay organizer in Atlanta, Arch Kennedy, who has allied himself with “by far the leading anti-Muslim grassroots organization in America.”

So many people seem to gravitate to finding a group they can hate, or oppose, or try to shut down. Any gay activist should know that a statement as simple as “They want to kill us all,” is automatically and obviously wrong, because it simplifies all Muslims into one opinion, just as “they want to destroy heterosexual marriage” or “they want to convert our children into homosexuals” does.

While it’s chilling to see the opposition that LGBT Muslims face, I am also inspired by the work they are doing:

The groups have seen results when activists are on the same page. In May, for example, Trump’s pick for Army secretary, a Republican state senator from Tennessee named Mark Green, withdrew from consideration amid criticism of his anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments. News reports said that Green opposes same-sex marriage and has described being transgender as a disease. Green also has urged public schools to fight “the indoctrination of Islam” and has made reference to a “Muslim horde.”

I salute the bravery of these people who claim two identities both of which are targets of hate. And I hope more people notice that haters like Mark Green are, unintentionally, pushing all of us with such identities to draw together; when people work together, we learn how much individual differences there are in groups seen from the outside as one simple thing, and we also learn to keep our eyes on who the real enemies are.