Hannah+G’s+OpEd+Article



The involvement of members of the majority population inside of the LGBTQA* community has become increasingly more prominent in the past couple of years, as slight improvements (as well as major halts) have been made in the name of acceptance of queer individuals. It’s also become much less of an involvement, however, and has developed into a kind of interference that the cisgender, heterosexual majority has pressed forward in their unjust attempts to be a part of something that isn’t theirs. The queer community was founded by its own members and continues to grow and become more integrated in western society due to the progressive actions of these same people. It has remained a largely independent movement with a number of revolutionary feats, all achieved by those who are active members of the movement. These people face constant discrimination and must undergo a pressure that is on a completely different scale from that which the majority endures. And where is this coming from? The cis-hetero population. Small amounts of individuals who come from the same group of people who created the oppression in the first place are trying to squeeze themselves into a community where they don’t belong and have never belonged in. It’s nice having open support, sure, but it gets to a point where privilege is denied and the attention is directed away from the target and back onto the majority. The so-called allies’ vision of equality has become warped so that they’ve unfairly thrown away reasonable efforts in alliance, ignored and refuted their own privilege, and redirected the spotlight back onto themselves.

I’ll compare it to a scenario in which there are three men of different heights; one short, one tall, and one that is just in between. The men are seated at a baseball game with a brick wall obstructing their view. The tallest of the three can still see over the wall, and yet the other two cannot. There are only three boxes that can be administered. If the shortest man was to stand on two boxes and the average was to stand on only one, everybody would have a very clear view over the wall. This is attempted, but the tallest man protests. His view of equality is flawed, and he preaches that it is unfair that he is not given a box of his own to stand on, while the others are, even though he can see perfectly clearly on his own and it is obvious that the other two need them to see over the wall. And so, due to the tallest man’s privilege, the boxes are rearranged so to fit his wishes, and one box is given to each person. The tall man has a perfectly clear view, the average-sized man can just barely peek over the edge, and the shortest can’t see a thing.

It’s completely unfair. Why does the tallest man get to have a say in what clearly does not affect him, and why does it so completely overshadow the opinions of those who actually are affected? Go out and listen to any sort of inspirational speech having to do with the queer community. Very rarely will you even hear of firsthand experiences from someone who is actually queer. Oftentimes you are listening to the words of straight white men and straight white women, who maybe had a gay child or a trans neighbor or knew an asexual kid who made some sort of difference. This is so common that it has become what’s viewed as most comfortable and even more influential. Why is it so much easier, so much more comfortable, for society to go out and steal the voices of those who have actually been affected by homophobia/transphobia and lend them to people who aren’t even relevant to the cause? Why are these people viewed as the heroes when they do nothing more than speak on behalf of the population that is perfectly capable of speaking, and yet whose voices are completely drowned out by those of the majority? Straight allies have created their own organizations (“Straight But Not Narrow”) to go out and let the world know that they exist, as if we hadn’t already known. Heterosexuals involved in pop culture and the music industry, most promptly artists such as Macklemore, have written songs about the struggles of queer youth that they have in no way experienced, and muffle the voices of so many who have set the same message across before. Worse yet, Macklemore’s message about ‘Same Love’ just led to his straight, white, cis self being stamped onto the gay community as a symbol of equality, while he’s done nothing more than trivialize actual members of the minority and preach about an issue that doesn’t affect him to benefit his own profit. Straight people are squeezing themselves into the actual acronym, unrightfully changing the “A” for asexual into an “A” for ally, and respond to protest much like the tall man at the baseball game responded to his lack of an unneeded box to stand on. If someone’s going to go ahead and show support and encouragement, that’s fine. But the unnecessary interference in the LGBTQA* community does nothing more than mute the voices of the actual minority. Get the illusion that we need majority involvement in order to progress out of your head. Pipe down a bit and we might finally have a chance to speak for ourselves for once.