An Analysis of the It Gets Better Project

qsmpc 1 (1) pp. 85–94 Intellect Limited 2016

Janna Jackson Kellinger and Lianna Levine University of Massachusetts Boston

While you wait: An analysis of the It Gets Better Project

Abstract Keywords This article analyses videos created for the It Gets Better Project as well as comments bullying by their viewers. The authors examined the top 21 videos based on number of views It Gets Better Project and rising popularity. Upon analysis of the comments, it was noted that the major- LGBT youth ity of them place the onus on the victim to ‘stick it out’ and wait until they are older queerness for the bullying to stop, as opposed to advocating for support and action by respon- suicide sible adults or bystanders, or even themselves. In addition, the messages within the video videos and the comments rarely offered ideas regarding how to put an end to the violence bullying or that the bullies should be held responsible for their actions. This article draws attention to the unintended, and sometimes contradictory, messages received even when the goal is support.

In the wake of a number of publicized gay suicides in the United States, author Dan Savage and his partner, Terry Miller, started the It Gets Better Project. It originally was designed to address the anti-gay bullying epidemic by having individuals in the gay community post their personal stories via video to give gay youth hope. However, it has grown to the point where people outside the gay community have posted videos as well, including straight politicians, celebrities and sports teams. The It Gets Better Project comes with good intentions – to give gay youth hope and prevent suicide – but its messages are often framed in ways that have the potential to discourage gay youth and may even displace the blame from those who should bear some responsibility.

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In a world where education is no longer confined to schools, or even to the physical world, the messages of digital media and how those messages are framed are crucial in constructing the cultures in which youth engage (Buckingham 2008: 73). Because of the disconcerting number of gay suicides (including the ones that go unreported); the verbal, mental and physical violence committed against not only gay youth, but also those perceived to be gay (Kosciw et al. 2014: 12); and the well documented academic, personal and social consequences of such bullying (Connolly 2012: 248; Freis and Gurung 2013: 11), it is imperative that educators and researchers critically examine the messages all youth receive in schools and out. In the United States, schools have been sites of tradition and conformity, both in the official curricula and policing by peers, often in the form of teasing and bullying. When it comes to gender and sexual orientation, bullying of those who do not adhere to traditional roles has been particularly acute. This has been documented quantitatively, in particular by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which publishes a National Climate Survey every other year, and in numerous qualitative studies (including C. J. Pascoe’s 2007 ethnography, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School). Despite some queer students and their families winning lawsuits against school administrators who did not do enough to prevent anti-gay bullying, protections for queer students, and enforcement of the protections that do exist, are inconsistent and often depend upon the sentiments of the state, school district and even school administrators. Even outside of schools, the United States has a history of public fights over gay civil rights being inflamed by anti-gay crusaders claiming that inclusion of queer teachers or non-heteronormative curricula will destroy the innocence of children. For example, supporters of a ban against marriage equality in California asserted that same-sex marriage will lead to schools teaching about homosexuality in order to ‘scare’ people into supporting their cause. It is within this context that Dan Savage and Terry Miller launched their It Gets Better Project. Others who have written about the It Gets Better Project have both praised it as an effective suicide prevention tool (Goodman, Wennerstrom and Springgate 2011: S1-97–S1-98; Patrick et al. 2013: 1260) and even an AIDS prevention tool (Herrick et al. 2013: 1423) as well as criticized it for the underlying messages some of the videos promote (Grzanka and Mann 2014: 372–89; Meyer 2015; Muller 2012: 271–76). Criticisms include placing the burden of action, or rather inaction, on those being bullied (Grzanka and Mann 2014: 378) as queer youth are told to ‘tough it out’ for a later reward of success. Because this success is often defined by middle- to upper-class values in the videos posted to the It Gets Better Project website, the testimo- nies by many in them can further the despondency felt by disenfranchised youth by presenting a world that can feel unattainable for those who do not see themselves as possibly being successful in those ways (Meyer 2015; Muller 2012: 274). In addition, in many of the videos cities are depicted as urban oases for queers and rural areas as inescapable havens for homophobia, which can also make queer youth who wish to live in rural areas feel hope- less as well (Grzanka and Mann 2014: 380). While Dustin Goltz acknowledges these critiques, he counters them by pointing out that the project changed the historical depiction of queers as having no future (because queers cannot reproduce, because of the fear of AIDS, etc.) to having promising futures that are ‘multi-vocal’, as a wide variety of people with varied success stories have posted videos, which have reached both queer youth and the mainstream

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(2013: 136–42). Others also tout the It Gets Better Project as a public relations success, pointing to the user-generated content as providing a diversity of perspectives that engage the larger public (Ward 2013: 157–80; West et al. 2013: 49–80). However, Lister et al. have pointed out that the videos tend to offer very little in terms of solutions, particularly solutions supported by health behaviour research (2013: 21–22). Queer youth have also criticized the project for a lack of solutions and expressed a desire for strategies to make immediate change (Craig et al. 2014: 209–11). It is with these contradictions in mind that we set out to analyse the videos and comments on the videos with an ecological systems approach (Bronfenbrenner 1979). The ecological systems theory recognizes that individuals operate within systems while at the same time operating on those systems to influence them. These systems are often depicted as concentric circles, with the more influential systems, such as family and school (microsystems), closer to the individual and larger systems, such as community and society (exosystems), making up the outer circles, with mesosystems in between. The theory also recognizes that these systems shape each other in all directions. Bronfenbrenner later added the dimension of time, labelling it the chronosystem. While Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory largely impacted people’s views on poverty by countering the myth of meritocracy, the same issues apply here, as many of the videos suggest that, like some attitudes toward the poor, queer youth ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ (Puar 2012: 151). In analysing videos and comments on the videos uploaded to the It Gets Better Project website, therefore, we applied an ecological systems framework in order to recognize both the agency of queer youth and the influences of their cultural milieu. For this study, we analysed the top 21 videos posted for the It Gets Better Project as determined by relevancy (an algorithm that sorts by a combination of popularity and rising popularity). Because some videos had upwards of 12,000 comments, we only analysed a sampling (n=1,602) of their accompanying comments, focusing on the beginning and end of the comment record in order to get a sense of the received messages of these videos. We interrogated the data by asking Holsti’s (1969: 43) questions for content analysis, which we tailored to our purposes in order to tease out the various levels of queer youth’s ecological systems being addressed or not addressed:

• Who (authorship including perspective and potential biases)? • Why (explanation for bullying)? • How (persuasion techniques and common messages)? • What (what key words were used to describe the gay community and how are key words, such as bullying and happiness/success, defined)? • To whom (audience and terms used to describe the audience)? • With what effect (impact on both intended and unintended audiences)?

We also included some questions of our own:

• With whom (who is depicted as having shared responsibility for the bullying)? • When (when does it get better and/or when should it get better)? • Now what (who is expected to take action and what action is expected to be taken)?

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Comments were categorized by their contents. Because many people posted multiple times, the ratio of comments was calculated both in terms of number of overall comments and in terms of the number of people who posted among the comments. Our analysis revealed that all of the videos surveyed fit within the stated purpose of the It Gets Better Project, as included on its website:

The It Gets Better Project was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential and positivity their lives will reach – if they can just get through their teen years. The It Gets Better Project wants to remind teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone – and it WILL get better. (Savage 2010)

The most striking phrase in this description is ‘if they can just get through their teen years’. This frames the overall message of the project: that gay youth just have to wait it out and suffer the torment until they become adults, when all these problems will fade away. The videos affirm this message, with only 1 of the 21 analysed explicitly stating that things should get better now. One video even states it will get better ‘once you get out into the real world’, suggesting that the suffering gay youth’s experience in high school is not real. The messages of these videos only view the chronosystem as change- able and fail to recognize the agency of individuals both in terms of the queer youth being bullied but also those responsible for the bullying, and in creating atmospheres that allow bullying to flourish. This ‘while you wait’ message tells gay youth they have to suffer now for the ‘vague promise of better days to come’ (Skitzki 2012: 14), as one gay youth described it in an article addressing the impact of the It Gets Better Project. She continues:

It’s not enough to simply tell a kid that it’ll get better because it just so happened to get better for you. It’s not enough to tell a kid to hang tight and deal with all the bullshit because one day they’ll get out of high school, or college, or their hometown, or whatever, and everything will suddenly fix itself. No. That is not okay. That is not useful. (Skitzki 2012: 14)

These feelings were reiterated by some of the individuals who posted comments on the videos on the It Gets Better Project website:

I’m sorry but this whole project is bullshit. […] Just telling kids that ‘it gets better’ being gay won’t make it so. It only gets better if the kids can manage to get out of whatever environment is making it worse, and the sad fact is that simply can’t happen in many instances. We need more agencies and resources that are designed exclusively to help gays and lesbians live successful and fulfilling lives. I don’t see any ongoing effort to achieve that. (comment about Savage and Miller 2010)

The gay adults who post videos on the It Gets Better Project website are the ones who had adequate support systems both within themselves and through external resources in order to survive. For many queer youth, however, that

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support just is not there: ‘Facing rejection at home and school because of their sexual orientation, LGBT youth may experience a “narrow view of the options available to deal with recurrent family discord, rejection or failure [that] contributes to a decision to commit suicide”’ (Connolly 2012: 256). One of the bullied gay youth who posted a comment on one of the videos expressed the despair she feels because of a lack of support:

Just give up hope. I have been bullied like crazy. The girls in my changing room chuck food etc [sic] at me. You can say it does but it dont [sic]. I have given up hope. You can say im [sic] attention seeking but im [sic] not. Just give up. (comment about Savage and Miller 2010)

The message of ‘sticking it out’ through the torment while waiting for an uncertain future, a message communicated in more than 80 per cent of the videos we analysed, puts the burden on those being bullied to persevere rather than implicating larger systems that perpetuate bullying. We also found that the images of what counts as ‘success’ are largely reflective of middle- and upper-class perceptions, such as going to college, skiing and travelling to Paris, activities that some gay youth may see as not attainable by anyone in their lives, let alone themselves. As Bronfenbrenner (1979) makes clear, it is the immediate microsystems that have the most influence. If gay youth do not see anyone in their communities as having these kinds of ‘successes’, there is little reason for them to be able to picture themselves participating in these middle- to upper-class pursuits and pastimes, particularly when the overwhelming messages they are receiving from all levels of their ecological systems depict them as the problem. While the videos in the It Gets Better Project do counter messages of homophobia they may be receiving from their immediate communities, this hope may feel too far out of reach, as cyberspace would likely fall in a more outer circle of exosystem for queer youth being bullied. In this way, some of the messages in these videos may serve to further make queer youth feel isolated. This ‘while you wait’ message also relieves the responsibility of anti-gay bullies and the current adults who should be responsible for protecting gay youth and changing the cultures of schools. As one person who posted put it: ‘The real reason why kids kill themselvesd [sic] is not b/c [sic] of the other kids, its [sic] b/c [sic] the school board doesn’t bother to stop the bullies from saying something about it’ (comment about Savage and Miller 2010). Only five of the videos we analysed specifically identified adults as people who should take action to change the cultures of schools. Those who actively create anti-gay atmospheres and those who turn a blind eye to these atmospheres largely are not sent any messages that they are responsible for taking action, even though ‘non-targets may be more effective than targets in inducing nega- tive affect and behavioural change in perpetrators because, whereas target confronters may be viewed as complaining (Kaiser and Miller 2001), non-targets are not (Czopp and Monteith 2003)’ (Dickter 2012: 1115). In addition, none of the videos analysed outline actions that the creators of the videos are taking themselves. When these videos are by politicians, this sends a powerful message that no one, not even people like the President of the United States, is willing to take action. The messages of the videos analysed by and large erase the rescuer in the victim–perpetrator–rescuer triangle.

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All but three of the videos we analysed did urge people being bullied to seek help by reaching out to others – adults, teachers, parents, friends. However, the directives were for those being bullied to talk about their feelings, not to formulate an action plan. This places the responsibility to reach out on those being bullied when ‘victims of anti-gay speech may be in the most difficult position to counter [bullying] because their voices have been dimin- ished ex ante by the message that being gay is inferior’ (Connolly 2012: 274). This reality is coupled with the lack of responsibility placed on others, including the bullies themselves and the teachers, administrators and policymakers charged with ensuring that our schools are safe spaces for everyone. The overwhelming message that only time (either because the social climate is changing or their lives will be better once they leave high school or enter college) will make a difference can serve to further isolate those who are being bullied. In the videos analysed, gay youth largely are portrayed as victims. Macgillivray and Jennings point out that this ‘victim narrative’ has the effect of rendering gay youth ‘as hapless victims with no self-determination or agency’ (2008: 182). In the videos that do move beyond simply urging gay youth to wait, the action they are told to take is to talk to others – specifically parents, teachers and the Trevor Project hotline (a hotline for gay youth considering suicide) – about their feelings. Rather than being urged to change the situ- ation for themselves and others by demanding that administrators enforce anti-bullying policies, forming gay–straight alliances or, as some gay youth have had to resort to, suing schools for not taking action, which are all strategies that have proven effective (Kosciw et al. 2014: 55–78; Meyer 2009: 57–74), gay youth are told they have to endure the ‘inevitable’ bullying that takes place during adolescence. Some bullying even took place within the comments on the videos, with some of the commenting turning into flame wars when someone posted something anti-gay (this occurred in 11 per cent of the posts analysed, but only by 4 per cent of the individuals posting). Unfortunately, within these heated exchanges, some of the comments exposed that those who are bullied can also be bullies themselves, disrupting the victim–perpetrator–rescuer triangle. For example, one poster wrote, ‘You stupid asshole if you have such a problem with gay people maybe you should just shoot youself [sic] and do the world a favor’ (comment about Savage and Miller 2010). One of the more interesting comments reflected both anti- and pro-gay sentiments: ‘I can’t help it, gays are creepy to me. No disrespect, you can do what you want and I support gay marriage. It is how it is. Good luck’ (comment about Savage and Miller 2010). In addition, one person who posted expressed that he was gay but desperately wanted to be straight. There were other individuals who posted (1 per cent of those posting) who expressed that they feel like gay people are hijacking the anti-bullying movement because so many other groups are also bullied:

I would support the IGB movement a lot more if they focused on all suicide victims instead of ignoring anybody who isn’t gay or lesbian. […] They are taking the issue of gay rights and mixing it with suicide prevention and bullying. (comment about Savage and Miller 2010)

Others expressed that gay people were just being weak:

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Or you dont [sic] be a pussy and get over it, (im [sic] straight btw) i [sic] was bullied physicaly [sic] and verbly [sic] and i [sic] didnt [sic] let it bother me i [sic] just got over it. […] its [sic] that simple, i [sic] even ended up being friends with them! (comment about Savage and Miller 2010)

What these comments do not reflect are the sentiments felt by those who read the comments but who refrained from engaging in cyber taunts. Many (27 per cent) of the comments, however, did directly express support, appreciation and gratitude, with several (11 per cent) stating that these videos are inspiring, helped them or helped their friends, which suggests that messages such as ‘it is ok to be different/be true to yourself’ (76 per cent of the videos surveyed), ‘you are not alone, there are others like you’ (62 per cent of the videos surveyed) and ‘people love you’ (38 per cent of the videos surveyed) do offer hope, even when no specific actions are identified, possibly because they counter queer youths’ own internalized homophobia, defined by Herek as ‘an intrapsychic conflict between what people think they should be (i.e. heterosexual) and how they experience their own sexuality (i.e. as homosexual or bisexual)’ (2004: 19). The messages in these videos may offer long-term hope for some, but for others, including Jamey Rodemeyer and Eric James Borges, who posted hopeful videos on the It Gets Better Project website and later committed suicide, this hope without action is ephemeral against a back- drop of society’s homophobia. Previous research in education has demonstrated time and time again that openness about the identities of gay teachers, open discussions about gay topics and gay–straight alliances reduce the stigmatization of the gay community and, consequently, anti-gay bullying (Jackson 2007: 71; Kosciw et al. 2014: 59). In addition, crafting and enforcing anti-gay bullying policies sends a ‘strong, unambiguous message that anti-gay bullying – and the prejudice underlying it – is unacceptable in our nation’s schools’ (Connolly 2012: 283). Even better, though, is stopping the behaviour before it ever begins by providing education about how to treat others, such as by utiliz- ing the Open Circle curriculum out of Wellesley; Roots of Empathy out of Canada; and content-specific strategies that work to reduce the homophobia that underlies anti-gay bullying (Graybill et al. 2009: 570–80; Meyer 2009: 65–80). Because these strategies are at the microsystem level of queer youth, they are likely to have a larger impact than messages from what, to many, would be considered an exosystem: cyberspace. However, exosystems can certainly provide blueprints for actions taken at the microsystem level. For example, the similarly named Make It Better Project aims ‘to give youth and adults the concrete tools they need to make schools safer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students right now’ through advocacy (GSA Network 2011). This website views all levels of an individual’s ecosystem as malleable, providing strategies that target micro-, meso- and exo-systems and providing a YouTube channel with videos of queer youth describing these actions. By having videos by queer youth for queer youth, the hope offered in these videos is more tangible than that offered by gay adults. Unfortunately, few of the It Gets Better Project videos analysed encourage the kinds of actions that prevent and interrupt bullying. Instead, they urge those being bullied either to wait – with one explicitly recommending that gay youth ‘hone their skills’ while waiting – or to talk to someone about it, in a therapeutic way. Rather than viewing bullying as a problem embedded

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in our cultural milieu, these messages frame bullying as individuals acting on their own, independent of messages received over the course of their life- times. Even a message that does advocate to ‘dispel the myth that bullying is a rite of passage’ – the It Gets Better Project video by President Barack Obama – sounds hollow when it does not offer any specific strategies for doing so. The messages that are communicated by the It Gets Better Project are impactful because it has had such a wide reach, as evidenced not only by the overwhelming number of comments on the videos, but also by the website’s own content:

Two months [after the project started], the It Gets Better Project (TM) has turned into a worldwide movement, inspiring over 10,000 user- created videos viewed over 35 million times. To date, the project has received submissions from celebrities, organizations, activists, politicians and media personalities, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Lambert, Anne Hathaway, Colin Farrell, Matthew Morrison of Glee, Joe Jonas, Joel Madden, Ke$ha, Sarah Silverman, Tim Gunn, Ellen DeGeneres, Suze Orman, the staffs of The Gap, Google, Facebook, Pixar, the Broadway community and many more. For us, every video changes a life. It doesn’t matter who makes it. (Savage 2010)

While getting celebrities to make videos certainly can be inspiring in the moment, because the lives of celebrities are part of most people’s exosystems, the long-term impact on queer youth who are being bullied is limited. Despite its good intentions to send messages of hope, the It Gets Better Project portrays gay youth as victims who lack agency to change their situations. Instead, the mission suggests that queer youth should play a waiting game of enduring torment now for the prospect of a better future which releases responsibility from administrators, educators and policymakers who should actively be making things better now.

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SUGGESTED CITATION Kellinger, J. J. and Levine L. (2016), ‘While you wait: An analysis of the It Gets Better Project’, Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 1: 1, pp. 85–94, doi: 10.1386/qsmpc.1.1.85_1

Contributor details Janna Jackson Kellinger is an associate professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include queer pedagogy and new literacies. Contact: Curriculum and Instruction Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Lianna Levine is a school psychologist in Massachusetts. Her interests include school-wide positive behavioural interventions and supports and working with at-risk youth who are experiencing behavioural and emotional challenges. Contact: Curriculum and Instruction Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Janna Jackson Kellinger and Lianna Levine have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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