The Problem with Activism in America

I came out as a gay man the day after high school graduation.  It was subtle, as all I did was change a bit of information on my Facebook profile and post a statement saying I'd be happy to field questions from anyone who wanted to ask some.  My freshman year of college was the year I started to become comfortable with being out, and as I wanted to have gay-friendly friends, I joined the local gay-straight alliance.  In order to fit in with the group, I participated in the activism efforts in which that group engaged.  It was the first time I'd been able to actively fight for gay equality and rights, and it felt good to do so.

There was just one problem: activism in America is all-or-nothing.  An American activist can't fight for gay rights without also supporting the trans activists, the feminists, the racial minority activists, the poor activists, atheists, environmental activists, special needs activists, vegans, and any other group that would fit under the commonly accepted umbrella term of 'liberal', without question.  There's nothing necessarily wrong with any of these other groups, but if you aren't concerned with one of these particular movements or, god forbid, disagree with anyone who does support them, you're automatically labelled a horrible human being, labelled as opposing all of the 'liberal' movements that exist, and are no longer taken seriously when it comes to activism.  By not fitting into the liberal label perfectly, you are shunned by those who believe they do, and the other side of the commonly accepted political binary does the same exact thing.  This is the problem with activism in America.

I didn't notice this my first year or two of college.  I was too busy trying to fit in with the members of the GSA to notice anything.  Like many of the members, I wore shirts which said "gay? fine by me." in order to passively fight for LGBT rights and improve our visibility.  I wasn't flaming, and I didn't make everything in my life about my sexuality, but I made it present enough to appease most of the people in the GSA.  When discussions came up in the GSA about feminism, veganism, atheism, or any other liberal topics, I thought nothing of it.  I even pledged for the local chapter of Delta Lambda Phi, the national fraternity for gay and gay-friendly men, seeing as most of the guys in the GSA were members themselves and I wanted to fit in.  It wasn't until I started seeking counseling for the emotional and psychological problems that resulted from my upbringing that I started to place less value on what others thought of me.  I learned to push through some parts of my social anxiety and express myself with less fear of the receiver's reaction than I once had, and with that breakthrough came a greater sense of independence with regard to what I thought and felt.  That's when I started noticing problems.

I depledged a week before initiation as I'd noticed that I was being left out of a good deal of things DLP related.  I didn't have a firm grasp of why I was being treated this way, but I eventually realized that trying to fit in with a group of people who didn't want me would be destructive.  It wasn't until my next year when I began living in a house which hosted many DLP-related activities that I noticed the main problem: I was different.  Where many members of the local chapter of DLP would make fun of straight and straight-acting men, I found myself feeling kinship.  Where effeminate people were quick to blame masculine men for all of the world's problems, I would look for other sources. I'm a bear. I like bears.  I'm the type of gay man who doesn't look down on being a man.  I accepted and embraced my masculinity, and this pushed me away from the mainstream gay community.  When I realized that having a female-to-male trans president the next year wouldn't help anything,  I stopped being involved with the local GSA, but I continued to wear "gay? fine by me" and bear-related shirts so I could participate in activism without the need to be involved in the local clique.

I transferred to UMKC during my fifth and final year of college.  I'd heard it was a good school for LGBT people, and since I'd wanted to try living in Kansas City, I transferred.  Unfortunately, this happened right about the time the Michael Brown case gained public attention, and with it came a great deal of racial friction between the African-American community and the Caucasian community.  I wasn't too concerned, as I believed that a good deal of college-aged liberal people who had actually lived in the real world would be more reasonable than the overgrown children I'd gone to school with in Rolla.  I attended the local GSA for a few weeks, noticing that my masculinity was more accepted there than it was in Rolla.  However, I began to notice a few things.  This GSA wasn't being a GSA; it was becoming more of a trans-activist group.  I have no problems with the trans community or their fight for acceptance, but I believe the trans and LGB movements should have been separate, and the only reason they were together in the first place was due to the effeminate gay man stereotype.  Something else began to crystallize in my mind when something interesting happened in one of the meetings.  One of the students, who was of a racial minority, proposed the idea of creating groups specifically for LGBT individuals who were of racial minorities.  The idea wasn't a bad one, but the justification was.  He claimed the LGBT community wasn't doing anything for LGBT people who were racial minorities. No one in the group disagreed with him.  It was at this point that I realized I couldn't participate in this GSA either, as this group, and the campus as a whole, was more focused on promoting a form of racial diversity that barely tolerated white people rather than fighting for gay rights.  Neither the liberal or conservative areas were being reasonable when it came to activism.  Because of this, I ended my role in LGBT activism and packed my "gay? fine by me" shirts away.

I had one last glimmer of hope left: the bear community.  Being mostly separate from the college campuses and being celebratory of masculinity, I'd hoped I could find some acceptance among my fellow bears.  It didn't happen.  The third and final straw in my search for LGBT acceptance came with a problem which existed both in Rolla and KC: the belief in atheist superiority.  I'm an agnostic, and have no problems with people having beliefs that are different from me, but the latter point is where I seem to differ a great deal from other people.  I'd seen it in Rolla, in KC, and among the bear community: anyone with a belief in some form of God was looked down upon as not being a real gay person and not caring about the LGBT struggle.  Theists were often viewed as foolish for believing what they could not prove, and they could find no acceptance in the LGBT community.  I should know, because at one point I held this belief.  One day, though, someone (I can't remember who) brought up a very good point: atheism is a religion in itself and acts like one.  The fact that I seemed to be one of the only people who saw this alienated me from the atheist community and from one of the last fronts of the LGBT community I could participate in.  That was when I stopped LGBT activism all together and packed my bear shirts away.

I won't try to label myself when it comes to my beliefs.  I'm not liberal. I'm not conservative. I'm not easily categorized into a binary system.  Because of this, I can no longer effectively participate in activism.  Neither can anyone else who is the least bit reasonable.  The only thing we can do is vote.  But I fear that with hoards of people screaming for radicalism, the whisper of reason will be drowned out.