Gentil 1

Kelsey Gentil
Jennifer Rodrick
QS 115
25 September 2016
How has social media and the internet helped/hindered the acceptance of the queer
identity, and to what extent?

As far as the year we are in now, I

don't exactly think that social media has
helped the queer identity rather hindered
one another. We live in this society where
social media is everything. You have to
post daily pictures of what you're doing, eating, exploring, etc. Basically, letting everyone know
what you are doing in your day to day life. If you aren't really involved in social media people
like to question you because you are expected to be active on social media. Based on celebrities
experiences, I have found that they take a while to come out of the closet and accept the person
they are because of the publics opinion . As Ellen DeGeneres said Find out who you are and be
that person. Thats what your soul was put on this earth to be. Find the truth, live that truth and
everything else will come. (Pride.com/2016) What she is trying to convey is that social media
wont help you really find yourself because there is always going to be those negative roads that
you might take that can lead to depression, suicidal

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thoughts, and other things, that will make you feel even more unacceptable to the real world.
Also as Ellen Page once stated:
...I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I
was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships
suffered. And Im standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain. I
am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes,

even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being.
And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without
compromise (Pride.com/2016)

Social media had hindered the acceptance of the queer identity to a great extent that it
has kept a lot of people hidden under a shell, afraid to come out because it is so easily to get
judged, especially on social media. Yes, you do have that few group of people that will accept
anyone no matter what they represent, because we are all human yet, you have those other people
who just hatefully bash people because of what they are, for example it is extremely hard for
people to come out to their family and say their gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and what not if they
feel like they won't be accepted. People who dont feel accepted by their family, friends tend to
go on social media and try to feel accepted but yet, to an extent that when they meet those bumps
on the road that they get judged, or they hear others opinions and they dont like it,takes them on
that other road that people don't ever want to be on. According to the, Youth and Society article,
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In families, for example, some LGBTQ youth have described their relationships with parents as
distant or strained due to their sexual orientation (Floyd, Stein, Harter, Allison, & Nye, 1999), a

fear of victimization from family members (DAugelli, 2006), and a lack of acceptance from
socially conservative parents (Newman & Gerard, 1993). (pg.664) People part of the LGBTQ
community need acceptance from everyone. Depression can hit them, along with suicidal
thoughts because they think their different and cannot be accepted in this world.

There has been many recent studies that people have done on teens usually around the
age of 15-20 to try to see how they live their lives day by day, also see how being part of the
LGBTQ community makes them different as others claim. In that matter there is lots of
negative and positive effects that come with being a human, but just liking other things that not
that many people do. As things go also being a different gender, race, or part of a different
ethnicity makes you get bullied, critiqued more. As said on Intersectionality and Cyberbullying:
A Study of Cybervictimization In A Midwestern High School:
Bauman (2008) found no differences in rates of victimization between male and female
high school students, but did detect some racial and ethnic differences; unlike in Nansel
et al.s (2001) study, Black students had the highest rates of victimization while Hispanic
students reported the least. Similarly, while Carbone-Lopez, Esbensen, and Bricks
(2010) research on direct and indirect forms of bullying found that male students were
more likely to experience physical forms of bullying and female students were more
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likely to be teased or joked about, they found no gender differences when it came to
direct forms of bullying. Further, Carbone-Lopez, Esbensen, and Brick found that race
was not related to the likelihood of direct forms of victimization for male or female

students and that involvement in delinquency increased the risk of physical victimization
equally for male and female students (343).

As of being part of the LGBTQ community people still to this day, although it's even legal to get
married, you have that few groups of people who think it's malicious because of many reasons.
Reported acts, there have been man, but nothing like the Orlando night club shooting that
happened on June 12, 2016. Omar Mateen who was 29, years old at the time of the shooting was
a pledged allegiance to ISIS, was thought to be mentally ill by his wife committed this horrific
crime against the LGBTQ community members that were in attendance of the club that night.
According to Police Chief John Mina "It appears he was organized and well-prepared"
(CNN/2016). This was a well thought out crime, an act of hate, discrimination against lesbian,
gay, bisexual etc. people. As said in The Journal of Social Studies Research; Editorial Research
on LGBT issues and queer theory in the social studies;
But as of June 12, 2016, this special issue achieved a whole new level of significance.
None of us could have predicted the horrific events that took place in the Pulse nightclub
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in Orlando, Florida, but now we know that what happened was a purposeful act of terror
and an explicit act of hate perpetrated against LGBT people. We know that 50 human
beings are now dead and another 53 are wounded, marking this event as America's
deadliest mass shooting. (pg.169)

It has scared many of us because it makes us think that we're not even safe to go out to a club,
where plenty of people go out to have fun, enjoy time with friends or just to even meet new
people.

In addition to that having scared many of of President Obama was one of them. He spoke
up quickly a few hours later after the incident happened, As President Obama said in a press
conference a few hours into the investigation, "This is an especially heartbreaking day for our
friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Heartbreaking because people were
slaughtered for simply gathering to celebrate their multiple identities and sense of community
during a time set aside to recognize, express, and enact gay pride. The learned hate that drove the
29-year-old shooter to commit such mind-numbing crimes must be viewed within the larger
context of violence faced by queer youths and adults worldwide. The existence of such learned
hate clearly drives home the need to re-educate young people and the adults who teach them
about the consequences of this powerful emotion, particularly as it pertains to how society treats
members of the various queer communities. (pg.167)
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It hurts many of us to see that social media and being out and as part of the LGBTQ
community had hindered tons of people because not all of us can accept people for being who
they are and what they have become to be. Social media has taken a toll on many of us that
sometimes yes, we can say it's good for us to express ourselves because its really easily to make
friends, companions, relationships because its has happened before but also there is still some

people who create fake accounts, and hide under shells because they get hatefully criticized for
who they are.

WORKS CITED
http://www.pride.com/women/2016/3/28/15-inspiring-quotes-queer-women-live#slide-2

15 Inspiring Quotes for Queer Women to Live By

By Raquel Willis
1. Development, construct validation and measurement invariance of the Greek
cyber-bullying/victimization experiences questionnaire (CBVEQ-G)
2. 2016, Computers in Human Behavior
3. less
1. Antoniadou N., Kokkinos C.M., Markos A.

2. Development, construct validation and measurement invariance of

the Greek cyber-bullying/victimization experiences questionnaire (CBVEQ-G)

Mayo, J.B. "Research on LGBT Issues and Queer Theory in the Social Studies." The Journal of
Social Studies Research, 40.3 (2016): 169-171.

Higa, Darrel, Marilyn J Hoppe, Taryn Lindhorst, Shawn Mincer, Blair Beadnell, Diane M
Morrison, Elizabeth A Wells, Avry Todd, and Sarah Mountz. "Negative and Positive Factors
Associated with the Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning
(LGBTQ) Youth." Youth & Society, 46.5 (2014): 663-687.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/
Orlando shooting: 49 killed, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance
By Ralph Ellis, Ashley Fantz, Faith Karimi and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
Updated 11:05 AM ET, Mon June 13, 2016
Stoll, Laurie Cooper, and Ray Block. "Intersectionality and Cyberbullying: A Study of
Cybervictimization in a Midwestern High School." Computers in Human Behavior, 52 (2015):
387-397.