I’m Visible. Are You? Is That Good Or Bad?

You know that adage that when you know a trans person that it had to hate us, that being visible changes people minds about us. Well it seems to be working.

Exclusive: More Americans understand LGBTQ people, but visibility has 'double-edged sword', GLAAD report says
USA Today
By David Oliver
November 3, 2021


More and more people are identifying as members of the LGBTQ community. Increased visibility educates non-LGBTQ people, but it also comes with a purported price, according to GLAAD's annual Accelerating Acceptance Study out Wednesday.

The report found that 43% of non-LGBTQ people think gender is not exclusively male and female, up from 38% in 2020. And 81% of non-LGBTQ people anticipate nonbinary and transgender people will become as familiar in everyday life as gay and lesbian people have.

"Our community continues to grow, and we're seeing some growing acceptance of that," says Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD CEO. "We are seeing that the concept of gender, in terms of non-LGBTQ Americans, is evolving." A poll earlier this year found that 5.6% of adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ – a record.

But people are not all the way there. Among non-LGBTQ people, 45% admit they are confused by all the different terms to describe people in the LGBTQ community. Ellis says this requires education – the purpose of GLAAD's work.

But (You know there is always a “but.”)…

GLAAD's research also found that six in 10 people said they faced discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity – an increase of 13% from last year.

"That does bring up sort of the double-edged sword of visibility," Ellis says. "As our community continues to grow and become more visible, we're seeing greater acceptance in some areas, and then we are seeing these growing challenges for acceptance in others, which are then turning into discrimination and hate."

That is a BIG BUT. Hate crimes are increasing against us, discrimination against us is increasing. Conservatives hate people who are different; blacks, Muslims, immigrants, gays, trans people.

We still are the butt of people jokes.

A lack of acceptance of the transgender community has been on full display in recent weeks after Dave Chappelle's transphobic Netflix special.

Did you see? Dave Chappelle is accused of ‘punching down’ in 'The Closer.' How can comedy go up from here?

It attempted to juxtapose the pace of civil rights gained by LGBTQ people over those fought for by the Black community. Chappelle repeatedly focused on jokes that targeted the trans community, doubling down on criticism that his sets punch down on the most vulnerable.

We were made the villains in movies “Dress to Kill” and Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the butt of jokes comedians like Milton Berle and Flip Wilson and now Dave Chappelle.

Being visible has made us more friends and unfortunately more enemies, lets hope more friends than enemies.