I’ve been thinking about that series that I did about the importance of art a while back. Recently, another reason that art is important occurred to me: seeking out reassurance that one is not alone.
The thing about the minorities that I belong to – being queer and being deaf – is that neither of them necessarily run in families. Sometimes there will be a family with a “deaf gene” or a queer person will have a gay family member, but I think the majority of people in both communities have straight/hearing families. If you are queer and/or deaf, you may have to seek out a community yourself if you’re interested in connecting with others like you.
Personally, I was lucky with regards to deafness – when I was a kid, my parents made every effort to expose me to the Deaf community. They gave me a million books about the Deaf community and Deaf history, they showed me ASL films, et cetera. They even found an older couple from the local Deaf community center to “mentor” me. My mentors would babysit me sometimes, they would sign to me, they would make an effort to include me in the Deaf community. After having heard the stories of some deaf people whose parents refuse to acknowledge their deafness or people who thought that they were the only deaf people in the entire world, I feel very lucky to have had this opportunity.
Queerness, on the other hand? Totally different story. I didn’t know any openly queer people growing up. I first suspected something was up when I was about fourteen years old, but I didn’t tell a soul for a few months. When I finally came out to my parents, they ignored it in the hopes that it would go away. Then they said pretty shitty things about God etc. I couldn’t drive yet, so I wasn’t able to get to the Pride Center because I lived in an area with no public transit. So, yeah, I felt isolated as a queer person for a while.
During that period, I relied pretty heavily on media – especially movies and, to a lesser extent, books and the Internet – to learn more about the queer community. I would wait until my parents fell asleep, then pop an LGBT-themed DVD into the TV and watch it on mute. I’d sit on the edge of my seat, hoping that my mom or dad wouldn’t wake up and ask me what I was doing. It helped, to some extent. Personally, I actually didn’t really mind the subject matter so much as the fact that it showed that queer people existed – I was disturbed by the horrible things that happen in movies like Heavenly Creatures and Boys Don’t Cry, but for me, just knowing that other queer people existed helped.
Still, the fact is, I didn’t really have many positive role models in the media, even queer-specific art. When I finally ended up hanging out with other queer kids in school, that did a lot more good. That, and reading non-fiction queer books. Later on, gaining my parents’ unconditional support was probably one of the best things ever.
It’s disappointing because, for me, there are potentially positive aspects to identifying with characters in media. For instance, when I first read Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden, I immediately fell in love with it even though I couldn’t relate to being a lesbian. Finally, a book about gay teenagers falling in love that isn’t completely tragic! Sure, the ending isn’t happy for everyone in the story, but at least nobody dies. So, for a long time, I owned a dog-eared copy of that book just because it gave me hope that the world had good things in it.
I mean, our lives aren’t happy all the time – we go through a good amount of shit. I think artists have a responsibility to show the world some of the shit that happens. I can’t provide a solution in a package like “write more happy stories.” The best solution I can think of is to change society so that pain and death isn’t the norm for oppressed minorities; I don’t anticipate that being an easy journey at all.
