Why the LGBT storylines in Glee mean so much to me.
I have struggled writing up a post about this topic for a while now. It's very dear to me, and I don't want negativity around it. Our fandom can be so desperately negative. But I was compelled to put words to the page, and I'm daring to share them.
Assumed spoilers through Glee 3x14 ("On My Way").
WARNINGS for non-graphic talk of bullying, abuse, violence, suicide attempts.
I’m 36, female, in a heterosexual marriage with a (transracially adopted) child, white, educated, and affluent. You wouldn’t think I’d necessarily be the average person who would be so fervently passionate about LGBT issues in the real world and about the lives of fictional gay teens in a part-real part-fantasy fairyland TV world. But these are some of the most pivotal issues that have shaped my life, and those fictional gay teens are the next generation of my own best friends growing up. They’re my heart. And I need to talk about it.
I made a post last year about how Kurt is bits of three of my best friends in high school, and that’s true, but it goes much deeper than that
About twenty years ago now, in the early ‘90s, I was in high school at a prestigious private liberal boarding/day school in New England. It was one of the best experiences of my life - despite it being, you know, high school with all of the drama and trauma that entails - because of the enormous diversity of the school. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had very close friends from all over the world; T was from Germany, P was from Taiwan, E was from Nigeria, M was from South Central LA, J was from Park Avenue, T was from the midwest, A was from the town next to mine. These were all friends who slept over at my house regularly. (I was a day student.)
In an environment where everyone was different and special, where each of us had our own stories, we focused on the things that bound us together - humor, passions, interests, music - and we were stronger for it. It was amazing in retrospect; at the time, it was just fun.
And it was also so, so hard, because high school might not be real life, but it’s REAL.
When I was a freshman, I met T in my physics class. He was from the midwest and was a year older than I was. He’d been bullied so badly (including physical violence) that his parents had pulled him from school and sent him to boarding school halfway across the country. (A boarding school with navy blazers as the boys' ‘uniform’ for dress-up events, I might add, but no piping of any color.) He’d been suicidal and turning to drugs and alcohol before he transferred at age 14.
He came out when I was a sophomore, the first out kid in the school. And with it about half of my friends came out in quick succession around him.
J was a year younger than I was. He and I had a tempestuous friendship, but we were both loyal when it counted. His parents were very religious, his father hit him, and when he came out at 15 they did everything they could to try to tell him he was crazy instead of gay. If they’d been a different denomination, they would have sent him to Christian therapy to “cure” him; a different decade and he’d have been shut away in an asylum. As it was, they sent him into a tailspin of depression and dangerous behavior. He turned to cutting, to alcohol, to heavy suicidal ideation. If he hadn’t had us loving him at school every day through the worst of it, I know he would have killed himself. As it was, when he had to withdraw from school we were all terrified for him. Fortunately he’d pushed back against his father enough at that point that his parents backed off some and J had pulled himself together enough to know that he was who he was. He’s still with us.
S had a much easier time. He tried dating girls for a while, ultimately realized he was gay, and came out to his family and close friends. His parents weren’t thrilled but didn’t do anything bad about it. He always came across as very sure of himself, and part of that was his instinct as a consummate performer. He threw himself into his music as his escape and release. He didn’t date anyone until the summer after his senior year; it didn’t feel safe in high school, not even in our school with no tolerance for homophobic behavior.
A was small for his age, slight, his voice and body desperately late to change, who even in a school with a no bullying policy was tossed around in the dorms. He wasn’t so much out as outed. Everybody knew, probably even before he did.
There was M, who came out as bi and who wasn’t allowed to sit on the LGBT club board (by the gay faculty advisor) because she was dating a boy at the time. There was D who came out to me in high school but who has dated women for decades because he just can’t handle his family’s disapproval. There was T, who was from Europe and who didn’t understand what all the fuss was when she wanted to kiss another girl. There was R, who was in love with me, her best friend. There was H, who tried to date boy after boy after boy because she couldn’t face going home to her conservative parents as a lesbian. There was G, who had homophobic slurs shouted at him by townies because he had green hair and dressed punk. There was L who did a semester abroad in Europe at 17 and had so much unprotected sex with the men he found there - the first gay men besides his friends at school that he’d ever met - that he feared for years after that he had contracted HIV.
I sat and cried with them all, held their hands, made them laugh, was there for every single one of them, some only once or twice around coming out and others every day for years. I was there. I listened. I loved. And it had nothing to do with them being gay; it had to do with them being them, being dear to me, being my friends who held my hand back when I needed it, too, and this was a part of their struggle. Some days it was about exams and gossip, but other days it was about the deepest parts of ourselves. This was them becoming themselves, being honest, being true and real. It was hard. It was amazing. It was so, so wonderful to see what the human spirit is meant to be when it is unfettered. I was there. It changed me. It opened me. I do not have the words to explain how fundamentally this experience rooted in me.
I know Glee is flawed. I know the writing can be weak, continuity can be terrible, and the set-ups and pay-offs of big emotional moments can be frequently fumbled, sometimes in major ways.
And yet somehow they’ve managed to create not one, not two, but a handful of excellent and different LGBT teens. Kurt, Blaine, Santana, Brittany, even Karofsky and Sebastian - bits of all of them were in my friends in high school. I had friends as strong as Kurt and as haunted as Karofsky. I had friends who passed like Blaine and who didn’t care about it one way or the other like Brittany.
I had friends who had detailed plans to kill themselves, not because they were clinically depressed but because they saw no other way out of the seemingly endless circle of pain their life was bringing them. They had just enough support not to give into the urge. In some cases, it was a very near thing. One picked up call vs. one unanswered phone.
And these friends now work on Broadway, in professional sports, as artists, as teachers, as mentors for at-risk youth. Some are married. Some have kids. Some are still enjoying being single. They all made it.
But they didn’t have to make it, just like Kurt doesn’t, like Karofsky doesn’t, like Blaine doesn’t.
So watching Kurt and Blaine and the others stand tall and keep going each and every week means something very important to me. Because, yes, there are flaws in the damn show, but these kids, there’s something very real in them. And they are making it, not just because of the writers or the actors but because the characters are bigger than the fantasy world they live in. And they are giving other kids the chance to see what their options are; I can only imagine what it would have meant to my friends and myself if we’d had such roles on TV. I can only imagine. And I know things are different now than they were twenty years ago, but the rate of LGBT youth suicide is indication to me that it isn’t different enough.
And so with tears in my eyes, I watch and write Kurt and Blaine with pride, because I love them, because I honor their path, because I honor the paths my own friends took to be the people they were meant to be. It isn’t easy. But they can make it. They will. And through that they will help other real kids make it, too.
Assumed spoilers through Glee 3x14 ("On My Way").
WARNINGS for non-graphic talk of bullying, abuse, violence, suicide attempts.
I’m 36, female, in a heterosexual marriage with a (transracially adopted) child, white, educated, and affluent. You wouldn’t think I’d necessarily be the average person who would be so fervently passionate about LGBT issues in the real world and about the lives of fictional gay teens in a part-real part-fantasy fairyland TV world. But these are some of the most pivotal issues that have shaped my life, and those fictional gay teens are the next generation of my own best friends growing up. They’re my heart. And I need to talk about it.
I made a post last year about how Kurt is bits of three of my best friends in high school, and that’s true, but it goes much deeper than that
About twenty years ago now, in the early ‘90s, I was in high school at a prestigious private liberal boarding/day school in New England. It was one of the best experiences of my life - despite it being, you know, high school with all of the drama and trauma that entails - because of the enormous diversity of the school. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had very close friends from all over the world; T was from Germany, P was from Taiwan, E was from Nigeria, M was from South Central LA, J was from Park Avenue, T was from the midwest, A was from the town next to mine. These were all friends who slept over at my house regularly. (I was a day student.)
In an environment where everyone was different and special, where each of us had our own stories, we focused on the things that bound us together - humor, passions, interests, music - and we were stronger for it. It was amazing in retrospect; at the time, it was just fun.
And it was also so, so hard, because high school might not be real life, but it’s REAL.
When I was a freshman, I met T in my physics class. He was from the midwest and was a year older than I was. He’d been bullied so badly (including physical violence) that his parents had pulled him from school and sent him to boarding school halfway across the country. (A boarding school with navy blazers as the boys' ‘uniform’ for dress-up events, I might add, but no piping of any color.) He’d been suicidal and turning to drugs and alcohol before he transferred at age 14.
He came out when I was a sophomore, the first out kid in the school. And with it about half of my friends came out in quick succession around him.
J was a year younger than I was. He and I had a tempestuous friendship, but we were both loyal when it counted. His parents were very religious, his father hit him, and when he came out at 15 they did everything they could to try to tell him he was crazy instead of gay. If they’d been a different denomination, they would have sent him to Christian therapy to “cure” him; a different decade and he’d have been shut away in an asylum. As it was, they sent him into a tailspin of depression and dangerous behavior. He turned to cutting, to alcohol, to heavy suicidal ideation. If he hadn’t had us loving him at school every day through the worst of it, I know he would have killed himself. As it was, when he had to withdraw from school we were all terrified for him. Fortunately he’d pushed back against his father enough at that point that his parents backed off some and J had pulled himself together enough to know that he was who he was. He’s still with us.
S had a much easier time. He tried dating girls for a while, ultimately realized he was gay, and came out to his family and close friends. His parents weren’t thrilled but didn’t do anything bad about it. He always came across as very sure of himself, and part of that was his instinct as a consummate performer. He threw himself into his music as his escape and release. He didn’t date anyone until the summer after his senior year; it didn’t feel safe in high school, not even in our school with no tolerance for homophobic behavior.
A was small for his age, slight, his voice and body desperately late to change, who even in a school with a no bullying policy was tossed around in the dorms. He wasn’t so much out as outed. Everybody knew, probably even before he did.
There was M, who came out as bi and who wasn’t allowed to sit on the LGBT club board (by the gay faculty advisor) because she was dating a boy at the time. There was D who came out to me in high school but who has dated women for decades because he just can’t handle his family’s disapproval. There was T, who was from Europe and who didn’t understand what all the fuss was when she wanted to kiss another girl. There was R, who was in love with me, her best friend. There was H, who tried to date boy after boy after boy because she couldn’t face going home to her conservative parents as a lesbian. There was G, who had homophobic slurs shouted at him by townies because he had green hair and dressed punk. There was L who did a semester abroad in Europe at 17 and had so much unprotected sex with the men he found there - the first gay men besides his friends at school that he’d ever met - that he feared for years after that he had contracted HIV.
I sat and cried with them all, held their hands, made them laugh, was there for every single one of them, some only once or twice around coming out and others every day for years. I was there. I listened. I loved. And it had nothing to do with them being gay; it had to do with them being them, being dear to me, being my friends who held my hand back when I needed it, too, and this was a part of their struggle. Some days it was about exams and gossip, but other days it was about the deepest parts of ourselves. This was them becoming themselves, being honest, being true and real. It was hard. It was amazing. It was so, so wonderful to see what the human spirit is meant to be when it is unfettered. I was there. It changed me. It opened me. I do not have the words to explain how fundamentally this experience rooted in me.
I know Glee is flawed. I know the writing can be weak, continuity can be terrible, and the set-ups and pay-offs of big emotional moments can be frequently fumbled, sometimes in major ways.
And yet somehow they’ve managed to create not one, not two, but a handful of excellent and different LGBT teens. Kurt, Blaine, Santana, Brittany, even Karofsky and Sebastian - bits of all of them were in my friends in high school. I had friends as strong as Kurt and as haunted as Karofsky. I had friends who passed like Blaine and who didn’t care about it one way or the other like Brittany.
I had friends who had detailed plans to kill themselves, not because they were clinically depressed but because they saw no other way out of the seemingly endless circle of pain their life was bringing them. They had just enough support not to give into the urge. In some cases, it was a very near thing. One picked up call vs. one unanswered phone.
And these friends now work on Broadway, in professional sports, as artists, as teachers, as mentors for at-risk youth. Some are married. Some have kids. Some are still enjoying being single. They all made it.
But they didn’t have to make it, just like Kurt doesn’t, like Karofsky doesn’t, like Blaine doesn’t.
So watching Kurt and Blaine and the others stand tall and keep going each and every week means something very important to me. Because, yes, there are flaws in the damn show, but these kids, there’s something very real in them. And they are making it, not just because of the writers or the actors but because the characters are bigger than the fantasy world they live in. And they are giving other kids the chance to see what their options are; I can only imagine what it would have meant to my friends and myself if we’d had such roles on TV. I can only imagine. And I know things are different now than they were twenty years ago, but the rate of LGBT youth suicide is indication to me that it isn’t different enough.
And so with tears in my eyes, I watch and write Kurt and Blaine with pride, because I love them, because I honor their path, because I honor the paths my own friends took to be the people they were meant to be. It isn’t easy. But they can make it. They will. And through that they will help other real kids make it, too.