While we’ve come a long way in terms of gay rights, how authentic can we be around our nearest and dearest today? LGBT people are likely to curate a social media presence that appeases their family, a study from Western Sydney University, Australia, suggests.
It’s the old story: a small-town gay runs to the city and cuts ties with their family for good. But saying bon voyage to Mom and Dad is not always the case. In fact, lesbian and gay people consider their family a lot more important than researchers once suspected.
There are many reasons why lesbian and gay people curate a palatable social media presence for and to their families. But a popularly cited reason in the study was that we don’t want our parents to feel the burden of our sexual orientation.
If homophobia was dead in 2023, would we be invisibilizing ourselves for our safety and for other people’s comfort? What would we be protecting our loved ones from, if people were actually cool with being gay today?
Interestingly, gay people are using the same sites they invisibilize themselves on, for their relatives, to ask advice from other gay people – including about how to be more “out.” One person said that they are not out to their family yet but are growing more confident with the prospect since reading other people’s experiences with doing so on Facebook.
Researchers behind the study suggest that services and practitioners ensure LGBT people have the “digital literacy” to carefully navigate social media spaces, in order to “sustain ties” and “care for families.”
That feels like an individual solution to a societal issue to me. It naturalizes homophobia instead of critiquing it. It makes homophobia a homosexual’s responsibility, rather than our enemy.
It’s not acceptable that gay people have to over-analyze their self-expression to appease heterosexual family members. I don’t suggest cutting ties with family members; I suggest being your authentic self if it is safe to do so, instead of making yourself small so others can take up all of the space. People that matter don’t mind; people that mind don’t matter.
