Margaret Hlousek
Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellow in the Humanities
2010—2011 Forum on Virtuality
Margaret Hlousek
Gender, Society and Culture, Urban Studies
"Pink Politics": Negotiation of LGBT Identity through Politics & Popular Media
In September of 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage began the "It Gets Better Project" in response to a number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth taking their own lives "to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better." The largely painful personal accounts revealed in the video testimonials operate within a realm of privacy policed by market forces that render individual sentiment publicly invisible by eliminating forms of welfare support, and therefore, compelling competition to ensure economic prosperity. The Project fails to neither disrupt nor transgress the dominant, aggressive, exclusive heteronormative culture nor its gay homonormative counterpart but instead guarantees a virtual promise of future happiness.