It Gets Better: Sanctioning Routine Violence

Image by nettsu via Flickr

Between the movement for marriage equality and the It Gets Better campaign, I’m just about ready to give up my membership in the LGBT community.

But I checked, and it turns out that I don’t have a membership card.

It’s not even about the smiling white faces inundating us with the message that all shall be well one day. That’s certainly annoying but it is the message that is dangerous. It serves to normalize political violence by telling us that it goes away as we get older.

Violence isn’t just a physical act. It is present in our cultures, institutions and meanings. Violence is political and politics is war by other means. Violence constitutes white privilege, unjust and unfair laws that target minorities, an immigration system that rips families apart, an economy where the rich get richer and poor get poorer, and every instance that the state creates and sustains categories of people. These are all acts of violence — violence sanctioned by the state through systemic racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism and colonialism.

Violence is another site where we see the production and reproduction of power. This violence is the power to omit historical narratives of the Other from state archives. It includes the construction of the subject / object, self / other, us / them that creates majorities and minorities, and subsequently omits dissenting voices and counter-narratives from official History. Violence is then, the entire disciplining and normalization of social behavior and existence legitimated by the hegemonic state.

It’s no wonder that the head of the state has his own it gets better video. Big Gay just came out in support of Obama and his re-election campaign, while he smiles and keeps waging war against our families en route his European pub crawl. I’m also sure Big Gay has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.

It is simple. It actually doesn’t get better for a vast majority of people. Lets start from there . You’ll learn to like it.*

*Shamelessly borrowing the quote from my new friend with the Montana Human Rights Network.