OutCasting Overtime; Gatekeeping within the LGBTQ community

This is outcasting overtime from media for the public good, creator of public radios LGBTQ youth programs. Hi, I'm Carol, an outcasting youth participant. Imagine with me a high school student named Jonathan. He's 17 and he's new in town. In his previous school, someone found out he was gay and within a week everyone in the school had heard. Most kids were indifferent and his friends were generally pretty accepting, but there was a small crowd of kids who stole his phone, called him the effort, and scrolled it on his locker, teamed up against him in gym class, and abused him in the locker room. The school didn't do enough to help and eventually things got so bad that his parents moved the whole family to a new town so he could start over. So obviously he's hesitant about coming out in his new school. He's worried that if people find out all the bullying could start up again, but after a few years of pretending to notice

girls the way most of his friends do and censoring himself so that he doesn't give himself away. He wants to try being honest and coming out a bit, but he wants to be careful. Like everyone else in a new school, Jonathan wants to find a circle of friends he can be a part of. He's looking for something that's at least friendly to our LGBTQ people so he tries out for the high school musical and he gets a part. Obviously theater isn't exclusively gay, but a certainly gay family, and Jonathan figures to probably make friends with at least a few other LGBTQ students. When you're doing theater, friendships can develop quickly and intensely, and during rehearsals he makes friends with a group of other kids who have known each other for years. Some of them are straight and some are LGBTQ, including a few who are very open about being LGBTQ. He slowly lets his new friends know that he's gay but has never dated anyone and he tries

not to be busily gay in how he comes across. After the opening night performance, there's a cast party. People are posting for pictures and some of the kids have kept their stage makeup on. It looks as if everyone's having a lot of fun, but Jonathan keeps himself on the edge. Victor, one of the kids still wearing makeup, tries to pull Jonathan into the photo, but Jonathan says no. Victor tries again a little more aggressively. Come on Jonathan, everyone knows you're gay. Don't be so uptight. Try to have some fun. Jonathan pulls back even more and Victor gets mad and says, you didn't even leave your makeup on. You never even dated anyone. I don't think you're really gay. Over the next couple of weeks, the group pulls away from Jonathan. He tries to connect with people, but Victor keeps giving him sarcastic looks, and the rest of the group seems to be

following Victor's lead. And in the end, Jonathan is left on the outside looking in. How does a group of friends just evaporate like that? What's Victor's problem? Jonathan was already being bullied for being gay at his previous school. Did Victor think Jonathan was somehow not gay enough? Is there a middle ground? And what does any of this have to do with how Jonathan feels most comfortable with himself? Some people may think the LGBTQ community is a welcoming and tolerant community because of common experiences, including the often shared experiences of oppression. But there's actually a lot of conflict within the community. Sometimes the reasons for conflicts are understandable, but other times it seems as if what's going on is gay keeping, looking for reasons to exclude people, which is what happened when Victor implied that Jonathan wasn't gay enough. So why does some LGBTQ people feel the need to exclude

others? It can partially be generational. There are some older LGBTQ people, probably not many, but some who may feel that they came out and started living their authentic lives in earlier times. When it was harder to do that, then it is now. And that younger people are sort of freeloading on the hard work they did to try to gain equality and acceptance. These older people may think, I fought through the difficulty and it made me a better, stronger person. And now I get to live my life fully. And from there, it doesn't seem like a very big leap in logic to think that people who didn't have to fight those fights are somehow less deserving. But what is this about the serving? Is membership in the LGBTQ community something you have to earn? If you identify as trans, is there a requirement that you have to undergo hormone therapy and surgery so that you can earn the right to call yourself trans? Are

people going to think your less trans if you decide not to? And what about bisexuality? Some gay people say that bisexuality isn't even real. That is just a stepping stone on the way to coming out as a 100% gay. And that you're just a gay person in denial. Some might even challenge your bisexuality if you've only ever dated people of the opposite sex. Some of this may seem trivial. After all, the LGBTQ community isn't an exclusive club you have to be chosen for. But this gay keeping can have serious effects on LGBTQ youth. Let's say you're a teenager. Are you start becoming aware of having same sex attractions? You spend time thinking about what that means. Maybe you go online to talk about these feelings with other people. The internet makes it safe to do that. You can be anonymous and not have to risk coming out to people you know in real

life if you're not ready. So you come out to yourself and acknowledge in your own mind that you're gay. Maybe you even come out privately to a few carefully selected friends. But what if you run into someone like Victor whose outward presentation is more visibly LGBTQ than you're comfortable with? What if he criticizes you? It makes it feel less than because of your more traditional gender presentation. And what if you've never actually dated anyone? Or even what if you only dated people of the opposite sex because you're too worried about being perceived as gay? If someone like Victor comes along, is he going to make you feel that you're not even legitimately gay? Does that make you feel that you don't belong? And what if it costs you your friends? When you're cisgender and heterosexual or cishead, you never need to think about it because that's what most people around you are because that's what most people think is quote-unquote normal.

cishead identities are what society is arranged around. Just think of gender segregated restrooms and locker rooms and the fact that straight couples have always been able to get married. Something gay couples couldn't do in all of the US until just seven years ago. When your LGBTQ society doesn't really fit your identity, amid the best of circumstances. And it often seeks to exclude you. We hear almost every week about the don't say gay bills around the country. Are the laws seeking to ban trans kids from playing school sports? Are the lawsuits in which cake shop owners or florist or website designers cite their religious beliefs to justify this discrimination against LGBTQ people that will never be allowed against other minorities? Stereotypes about LGBTQ people contribute a lot to how we're perceived. And if you're young and don't fit the stereotypes,

or the stereotypes don't fit you, you may feel unsure of who you really are. So labels like gay and bi and trans can help you figure yourself out. It's really convenient to store people into categories because the house makes sense of the world. And if you find a community of other LGBTQ people, it can feel like you finally found a home for the first time. But labels simplify things that are usually a lot more complex. We're learning that even the basic categories of male and female don't apply to everyone. And completely aside from your internal feelings and how you act on them, or don't, there are a lot of ways to express your identity to the people around you. You can be traditionally masculine or feminine in a way that's consistent with your gender identity, or inconsistent with it. You can present yourself as non-binary or androgynous or even non-gendered. Also really important is how you feel about

yourself. It can take a lot of time, experimentation, and self-examination to figure out who you are. And the Q and LGBTQ can stand for questioning. Are gay keepers going to prolong that questioning phase or even make you think that you're less trans if you don't want to transition medically? If you haven't ever dated anyone of the same sex, may you begin to doubt that you're really gay. If you don't present yourself in a way that people see as obviously gay, my other LGBTQ people accuse you of trying to pass for straight and thus not have the burden of being at defiable as LGBTQ. Is your internal identity tied up with how much you conform to stereotypes? And if you don't conform, are you risking rejection from the very community you're trying to become part of? As young people, we're often vulnerable as we try to make our identities come into focus

at the same time that we're dealing with the general challenges and uncertainties of being a teenager. We need to feel that we belong somewhere and getting accepted and validated by our friends can be really important. So when someone tells you that this by your own feelings, you're not gay enough as Victor did to Jonathan or you're not trans enough or by enough or whatever, that can undermine both your sense of being accepted by your friends and your own involving internal understanding of your identity. We can hope that Jonathan ended up okay, but LGBTQ youth can have a hard time talking about themselves or even admitting to themselves that they're LGBTQ. And this can lead to thoughts of self-harm. So we hope that Victor's rejection wasn't a tipping point for Jonathan at the very time he was tentatively coming out and seeking acceptance from a new group of friends. There are enough challenges from society at large, what we don't need is to have people in our own community

making things even more difficult. So to the handful of LGBTQ people who are still gay keeping, instead of looking for reasons to exclude people, recognize that there isn't just one way to be LGBTQ. And if you came out earlier join the majority and be glad that you helped pave the way for younger people to have an easier time than you did. Along with your own freedom, wasn't that why you were finding for anyway? Thanks for listening to outcasting over time. From outcasting media, creator of public radios, LGBTQ youth programs. Outcasting media is a production of media for the public good based in New York. This piece was created by the outcasting team including Isha, Tim, Tomas, and Mikero. Our executive producer is Mark Sofis. Visit us at outcastingmedia.org to get information about outcasting. Watch outcasting videos,

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