Homophobia

 

 

For my social injustice I chose to go with something very personal, but a widespread problem people in the LGBT community face daily. The picture includes me and my roommate Sam. A problem we face a lot of the time is people assuming that since Sam and I are best friends and roommates, she’s going to end up becoming lesbian or experimenting with me. This couldn’t be further from the truth and if it was true, why do people not question me experimenting with heterosexuality? Heterosexuality is so embedded within our culture that anything different is deemed not as important or a “phase”, ultimately degrading the ideology as a whole.

I decided to bring awareness to this topic because we as a society are still to this day, facing issues of homophobia and hate crimes against gays. There are controversial debates on gay rights, there are internet memes using homophobic terms, and there are stereotypes saying that if children see gay couples on TV they too will become gay. To me, all of these ideologies and practices come from a place of ignorance and lack of education. It’s extremely problematic that we are categorizing people by their sexual orientation and marginalizing them if they don’t fall under the social norms category. This issue can be related to class in numerous ways. But I’m choosing to focus on the LGBT community and transgender people and heteronormativity.

After watching the documentary called the “T Word” in class we all saw firsthand the discrimination and hardships that transgender people face at home, school, and society. This goes hand in hand with homophobia because people are terrified of something they see as different. Heteronormativity allows homosexual relationships to seem lesser and not as important as heterosexual relationships which embeds issues like homophobia and discrimination against gay couples.