Post 10, Question J: The effects of Hetero-sexism

I believe LGBT youth the documentary film "Queer Streets" respresent the damage of the current methods of dealing with LGBT issues in general. Because these youths made the decision make their sexual identity public, they where cast off society and forced to leave their homes and flock to New York City seeking a better life. However, what they got was a life of homelessness, drugs, and sexual slavery.

When I first saw this film I was of the opinion that most of the youths problems where of their own creation, after all it was their misguided choice to come to New York in the first place, and it was their choice to pursue drugs and prostitution. I summed it up as the typical problems of misguided teens who want to rebel against society.



However, after thinking about it for a while I realized that while there was a tad of "adolescent angst" to their problems, I saw that most of the problems they were facing were in reaction to societies oppression, things non-LGBT youth do not have the additional burden of facing.

Whenever I was in crisis or times of need I knew I could always depend on my family as a last resort to help me out of whatever hole I had dug myself into. These youths were cast away from their familes (or had none in the first place) their was no one to relay on. They face all of the difficult task of cleaning themselves up, with little or no support. Their social circles were lacking too, as they were constantly surrounded by others with similar problems, who often encouraged their behavior. They had no role models, no one to look up to.

At the root of most of the problems was societies hetro-sexism. Most of these kids were cast from their homes or circles for being different. They were then denined employment simply because their legal gender did not match their social one. Finally, they where required to fulfill the stereotypical expectations of being "evil homosexuals" by doing drugs and working in the sex trade. This is very similar to a topic I talked about before where oppression and disenfranchisement are systematic and long lasting, due to the fact that those who are believed to be "evil", lack the social support to be anything but "evil".