Tansy Rayner Roberts

Queer Eye for the Hawk Guy (2/?)

Tan: It belonged to the bad guys!

Bobby: Yeah, think of it as rescue mission.

Antoni: What happened to the dog?

JVN: The dog is now named ‘Lucky’ and spends all his time with Clint and Kate. He has one eye and likes to eat leftover pizza.

JVN: Oh my God. They included pictures of Lucky ‘helping’ Clint with repairs around the apartment building

Antoni: Guys, I have a new favorite Avenger. 

JVN: At the end of this week, Clint will be attending a gala for the sixth anniversary of the Battle of New York. 

JVN: So while Clint really just wants to use this week to help out his tenants, Kate is hoping that the Fab 5 will help boost Clint’s confidence. 

Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.

A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”

This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:

1. Everyone does not already know.

2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.

Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.

I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.

There are a lot of people out there who genuinely believe that being any flavour of queer is intrinsically harmful to you. That unhappiness is a natural result of being gay, that to be trans is to be mentally ill, that bisexuals are confused and troubled. There are people who believe that you cannot be happy or well if you’re queer, and not all of those people are bad people. Some of them have what they perceive to be your best interests at heart, and they want you to be happy, to be well, to be physically, emotionally and mentally safe. And they still act in a way that causes harm, that damages lives, isolates kids and tells them that pain is what they should expect for being who they are.

A lot of the “IN OTHER NEWS WATER IS WET/etc” comes from that sense of frustration that this is in fact Shit We Know (because it’s our lives) and it is in fact frustrating to have these things treated like a revelation. 

It’s useful to turn that frustration around into shapes that are less likely to get research shut down. Like “FUCKING FINALLY SOMEONE DID THE FUCKING RESEARCH”. Or “AT LAST. SOMETHING TO THROW AT THE STRAIGHTS.” or “WE HAVE SCIENCED THE THING NOW WILL YOU BELIEVE US?!” 

Know that the researchers are, as OP notes, probably on your side! They have fought to get this stuff in order to have Data to back shit up. 

Additionally, everything everyone else has said, and ALSO that even when we study things we’re Pretty Sure Of we more often than not discover that there was at least some aspect that we were wrong about, or had under(or over)estimated, or whatever, or a contributing factor nobody had considered, so it is actually important to Do The Damn Research in order to make sure we can do the BIGGER research. 

For a paper I was writing, I needed a statistic that basically said “LGBTQ+ teens get discriminated against and makes them mentally ill.” This was something I knew, and my LGBTQ+ friends knew. Obviously, right?

But the study also said the following:

The bullying based on their identity, or repeated discrimination from other children, is a problem that does contribute to the development of depression and anxiety

[Here is the statistical amount of that impact]

And one mitigating factor that can decrease this effect by some ridiculously high number is parental acceptance

Of course, yeah, if you asked an LGBTQ+ person if they would have felt less terrible if their parents were accepting, they would say yes. But the study revealed that, due to the threat of homelessness, as well as acceptance making it easier for students to cope with the stress of school bullying, parental education would have way more impact than school bullying programs. Also, because LGBTQ+ kids face unique challenges of often being forced into independent living, then the LGBTQ+ political movement should be working together with youth activism.

And this is just one example. So it’s important to read these studies if you have access to them, because it’s not just obvious stuff! If you’re open to learning things to spite Straight people, because copying down statistics with proper citations is delightful, you can also better guide your own activism to be more effective.

Being neuro divergent often means you get extra punished for not doing these things… 

And then you get stuck between not wanting to learn these gender norms because they are toxic…

And wanting to observe SOCIAL norms enough that people don’t get mad at you all the time, or accuse you of other mental health diagnosis.