Like so much of the queer world, I freaked the fuck out when Ellen Page came out this past Friday. And not because I was in any way surprised that Ellen Page is gay. I wasn't. Like so many other people, gay or straight (or anywhere else on any spectrum), I was about 99.999% sure that Ellen Page is gay. And yet, as much as there may be a decent sized list of people who the queer community (especially the online queer feminist community to which I belong) "knows" is queer, every single time one of them actually takes their own affirmative steps to come out of their closets, to declare their own truths, we all cheer and freak out so loud and for so long that we start to forget there was ever a time when that person actually wasn't out.
For days after I saw the internet explode with Ellen Page's announcement, I carried on my life with a huge, probably incredibly goofy-looking grin on my face. And at first I couldn't figure out why this one person's coming out was making me so incredibly happy. I mean, I cheered and celebrated when Raven-Symone and Michelle Rodriguez came out last year. I was happy. But neither Raven's gay marriage celebrating tweet nor M-Rod's bisexual rumour confirming interview made me this ecstatic for days on end. At first I thought it was just because of how much I love Ellen Page's movies or how much I crush on her, but, let's be honest, Michelle Rodriguez definitely falls more into the latter category for me than Ellen Page does.
And then I thought maybe it's because Raven and Michelle Rodriguez both have histories of awkwardly, defensively, and at times destructively denying rumours of their respective queerness. And Ellen Page just avoided the subject (or even tongue-in-cheek poked fun at in that 2008 SNL skit). Or it could be because Ellen Page is still a huge, and likely still rising star, while M-Rod has a long-term and at times messy career of always playing the same bad-ass type of character and Raven's claim to fame rises mostly out her career as a kid on the "Cosby Show" and a teen in Disney's "That's So Raven."
But I think the real reason behind my joyous reaction to Ellen Page coming out is simply because of the way that she came out. As the icon of gay Ellens would put it, she owned her own truth. Ellen Page got on that stage and didn't just say, "hey world, I'm gay, now explode!" (even though that's pretty much all that got reported/tweeted in the immediate aftermath). Instead, she stood up there and slowly built up to her announcement through an exposition of Hollywood culture and societal pressure, both on gender presentation and sexuality. And, yeah, Ellen Page said those three words "I am gay," and those may forever be the most memorable words from her speech (and after those seemingly simple words, you could see her entire body sigh). But I truly hope that those words are not the only ones remembered from her speech on Friday. Because that wasn't the pinnacle of her speech, not by a long shot. Instead, she went on to explain her own coming out (and why she hadn't until this point), acknowledged her own privilege in being able to come out in such an accepting setting, and ended by saying "thank you" to everyone who enables young people to find the strength to claim their own truth.
Now, while most of the response to Ellen Page coming out was positive and supportive, and I honestly didn't see much hateful or negative backlash, I did see way too many dismissive comments, as Riese over at Autostraddle so beautifully dissects:
Ellen Page said she’d been scared to reveal her truth, and in response way too many people responded with, ”In other news, the sky is blue.” The fact that so many felt comfortable being that rude to someone who’d just publicly shared a private struggle speaks volumes about how important they consider the issues of gay women to be. We should be wary of these people. People like them are why so many believe this country is post-racial or post-feminist when this country is racist as fuck and hates women. This country loves to pass a few laws and then declare everything officially fixed forever. This country has a short memory.When people respond to a high profile celebrity coming out with some variation of "so what?" or "well duh! who cares?" they perpetuate the notion that the fight is over. That gay youth don't still face rejection, homelessness, drug addictions, depression, and suicide at exponentially higher rates than non-queer youth. And the vast majority of these issues stem from familial or communal rejection of them once they come out or are outed.
It can be soul-crushing for a queer person who is struggling with the possibility of coming out of the closet to less than supportive family and friends to see those types of responses to the beautifully eloquent coming out of someone like Ellen Page. When you are sitting in the darkness of your own closet, having just felt a little bit of warmth and light shine on you because of the encouragement of Ellen Page, and then you see so many self-proclaimed "allies" shun the idea that there is any bravery at all (or even any point for that matter) in someone like Ellen Page ever publicly declaring her label, her truth, you want to slam yourself so tightly back into that closet, nearly forgetting to take note of the incredible support that Ellen Page and her true supporters and community have to offer.
I know what it's like to live for years in a closet. I've been there. I spent so much of my life refusing to even let myself face my own truth, the reality of my own attractions and desires. I wouldn't even acknowledge it in my head because I knew (or thought I knew) that as long as I never faced it myself, I would never have to face even the slightest possibility of sharing that truth with anyone around me. And I had the vast majority of these frightened and denial-ridden conversations with myself while attending American University, a place so imbued with support and pride for LGBT issues that Westboro Baptist Church (ahem...cult, not church) came to protest us. And while I felt (and still feel) so much pride at how incredible my school was at embracing and encouraging queers, I still engaged in this circular, internalized-homophobic thought process. I didn't come out to myself until a good year after I left American. And, yes, there are many other personal reasons behind the timing of my own journey, but what I know is this: having an immediately supportive community doesn't make it somehow magically easy to come out of the closet. Sure, on some surface level, would it have been easier for me to face my own truth, to come out as queer, while still at AU? Of course, without a doubt. But I also know that if I had come out publicly while at AU, chances are I never would've moved home, never would've put in the work, the sweat and tears, to rebuild my relationship with my family. Instead, I waited until my family and I were on solid ground for the first time in years before I felt I could even face my own truth for myself. And then I came out to my family. And then to the rest of my world. Now, from a distance, this might seem like I waited until my family and I were on solid ground only to rip the metaphorical rug out from under us by coming out. I've had people, family members even, say this very thing to me. But what I know is that I put far too much blood, sweat, and tears into rebuilding my relationship with my parents to allow even a portion of that relationship to be built on the lie that I was perpetuating, by omission if nothing else, that I was straight. I needed to rebuild that relationship, and then I had to reveal my whole truth, before we could ever be on truly solid ground. That's my journey. That's my story.
So when people try to make the argument that coming out in front of an overwhelmingly supportive community like the Human Rights Campaign isn't brave at all, they are flat out wrong. Because coming out, declaring the truth of your queerness, involves so much more than just needing an immediate pat on the back by those in close proximity to you. Coming out is a process of finally facing yourself, acknowledging your own truth, and then figuring out where that leaves you in the many different worlds that you navigate.
Some people think that, because they aren't actively spewing hate at a gay person, they don't pull the trigger when a black person makes them nervous (or do but justify it by claiming stand-your-ground), and they don't intentionally try to treat the women in their workplace as less important/intelligent/etc. than their male colleagues, they are not in any way perpetuating the institutions of homophobia, racism, and sexism, respectively. But for anyone who really takes the time to dig into any of these issues, they have to at some point come to the realization that these oppressive institutions are still very much alive and well. And once you reach that conclusion, but look around and don't see public lynchings, anti-sodomy laws, or lack of women's suffrage, at some point you also have to realize that it's not just the faceless, nameless "other" that perpetuates these institutions. It's us. It's you and me. Every day we let our own apathy lull us into contentment, every time we let ourselves believe that we don't play a role in perpetuating these oppressive institutions, we are, by that very act of apathy, perpetuating them.
For the past couple months I've been wrestling with the idea of how to fight against the pull of my own apathy, to truly fight for the things for which my heart breaks. There's this poem, "Etiquette Leash," by the amazing queer spoken word artist and activist, Andrea Gibson, that has opened my eyes and challenged me so much that I find myself repeating it to myself over and over again each day. As I was editing this post, I kept trying to figure out which section of the poem I wanted to include, but I don't think it carries nearly the same weight in snippets. So here's the whole thing:
It's so very easy for me to rest in my own privileged apathy, to not do that hard work of opening the eyes of those around me. To know and feel the pain and the heartache caused by so many different problems in the world, but to justify my own silence, my own lack of action by claiming that I'm not actively perpetuating any of these institutions (at least not purposefully). But this shuffling of blame and responsibility is precisely what allows these institutions to remain so active.
Every time a celebrity comes our or there's a story of a young gay kid committing suicide, and so many self-proclaimed "allies" respond with "so what?" to the former and "I would never bully a gay kid" to the latter, the institution of homophobia rolls on. Every time we see stories of black boys like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis being killed and either refuse to acknowledge the role racism plays in their deaths or separate ourselves from it by saying that we don't shoot every black kid we see walking down the street in a hoodie, we are turning our eyes from the overwhelming racism that is ravaging this supposedly great nation.
How do we not see that I, a cisgender, upper class, well-educated white woman, will never have to justify wearing a hoodie, listening to headphones and walking home alone at night to the man with a gun. That man with a gun isn't going to assume that I'm casing every house I walk by trying to figure out which one I should break into. But if I were a young black man walking home alone with my hood up and my headphones in, that's what people assume. That's what George Zimmerman assumed.
I drive around in my economy car blaring my music, mostly alternative but sometimes hip hop, and even at gas stations, sometimes I'll let it blare while I run inside to grab a snack. I have never once had to worry that if I don't turn my music down when someone asks, that person may pull a gun on me because my music in combination with my skin tone made him "justifiably" afraid. But that's exactly what happened when Michael Dunn saw Jordan Davis blaring his music at a gas station. I'll never have to face that.
My parents have never once had to instruct me on how to act when I'm around a police officer. They've never had to tell me to be constantly aware of how fast my hands move to my pocket for ID in connection with how quickly the cop's hand can move to unbuckle his gun holster. I've never had those conversations. I never will. Because I am white.
My criminal procedure professor from last semester told us that her African-American husband, an Ivy-educated, powerful attorney, would never feel comfortable saying "no" to a cop who asks to search his car. Not because of the law. This man knows the law and knows he has every right to deny a consent-search. But because his skin colour immediately makes most cops suspicious. It doesn't matter that this man drives a really nice car, is well-educated, articulate and upper class. His skin is black, so he does not feel safe exercising his full Constitutional rights.
That is the world that we live in. That is a society that we perpetuate.
For years, I've wanted to be a prosecutor. I still do. I clerk at a local State's Attorney's Office and I'm earning my Criminal Litigation certificate along with my J.D. But increasingly I find myself wondering how I'm going to operate within the modern criminal justice system when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the modern criminal justice system operates as a new slave system, a modern Jim Crow. Is it my own apathy towards these heart-wrenching truths that keeps me on this path? Or am I simply allowing myself to prioritize the feminist struggle over the anti-racist struggle? Is that prioritization in itself a form of apathy?
These are my digressions, my internal struggles. And I will likely wrestle with these issues for years to come. Finding intersectional answers to the intertwining problems of this worlds is never easy. But what I do know is that I refuse to remain silent about these issues. I won't stand by and let people claim that Ellen Page's courage doesn't matter. I won't stand still when I hear those around me, subtly or otherwise, perpetuating racism and sexism. I have to speak up. I have to give voice to the screams inside my chest.
Right before Ellen Page uttered those simple words "I'm here today because I am gay," those words that shattered the internet for a little while, she said that she drew on the "strength and support" of the people at the conference. Likewise, people like me and other queer youth, whether out or still in the closet, draw on the strength of high profile and courageous people like Ellen Page. And like Ellen Page, "maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility." This blog is a part of that speaking up and fighting back. But I know that I have to do more. I'm constantly learning and trying to figure out how to keep fighting, to figure out the balance. What I've realized over the last couple years though, what has become increasingly clear to me, is that I cannot afford, this world cannot afford, for me or anyone else to remain politely silent, waiting our turn to speak or holding our tongues to allow those around us to remain apathetic and comfortable. We must speak up. We must fight back. We must do the work to make each other see, to not rest, to not be afraid.
To end, I will quote Andrea Gibson once more:
I don't believe we're hateful
I think mostly we're just asleep
But the math adds up the same
You can't call up the dead and say,
"Sorry, we were looking the other way."
There are names and faces behind our apathy
eulogies beneath our choices
There are voices deep as roots
thundering unquestionable truth
through the white noise that pacifies our ears.
Don't tell me we don't hear
Don't tell me we don't hear
When the moon is slain
when the constellations disperse like shrapnel
don't you think it's time
something changed?
