by Raúl Al-qaraz Ochoa
4 October 2010
Originally published in Chican@ Magazine:
Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old student at Rutgers University in New Jersey plunged from a bridge to his death after his roommate secretly recorded him having sex with a man and streamed it live on the internet. In another suicide, 19 year-old Raymond Chase, an openly gay sophomore studying culinary arts hung himself in his dorm in the morning hours of October 1st. These are but the latest of an epidemic of suicides involving young men who were believed to be victims of anti-gay bullying.
In other heartbreaking incidents, fifteen-year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself in a barn in Greensburg, Ind. Asher Brown, 13, shot himself in the head in Houston. And 13-year-old Seth Walsh of Tehachapi, Calif., hung himself from a tree in his back yard.
These tragic cases are a glimpse of a horror all too common in gay life. It is an epidemic that has plagued the queer community for generations. With the recent attention, the media, celebrities and national organizations are placing the blame on bullying. While this is definitely a contributing factor, we must also place these deaths/murders in the context of a long history of patriarchal violence. Gay “suicides” are an extension of a legacy of murders, committed by religious and state institutional heterosexist oppression.
The European/Christian invasion of the Americas used queer “unnatural others” as an excuse to take over lands in order to “civilize” native communities. Indigenous people that didn’t fit the male/female gender roles were tortured, killed and even thrown to be eaten by dogs. Sodomy was criminalized since the foundation of the United States and in 1786, Pennsylvania was the first state to repeal the death penalty for sodomy. Rights—much like they were denied to Africans, Natives, Asians, Latin@s and womyn—were also denied to queer people. In fact gay migrants were refused entry to the U.S. on the basis of their sexual orientation alone, until Congress lifted the ban in 1990. Recently, voters passed Prop. 8 which would have banned gay marriage in California if the courts had not overturned it. And scores of politicians like John McCain are allowed to spew homophobic idiotologies.
Then society has the nerve to wonder why there is an alarming rise in hate crimes against queer and trans people. Then society wonders why men are so desperate to end their lives at such a young age.
There is an undeniable correlation between institutional oppression of queer people (through anti-gay laws and rhetoric) that leads to interpersonal hatred (bullying and hate crimes) that leads to internalized homophobia—where a person begins to adopt negative views of themselves for being gay or the possibility of being queer. Gay teen “suicides”are essentially murders because social/political oppressions forced the conditions for someone to feel like death is the only way to escape torment and oppression. These murders are happening for reasons more complex than bullying. These youth have been murdered by society, religion and politics.
Society resting upon interlocking systems of oppression—patriarchy, heterosexism, capitalism and white supremacy—allows and promotes the violence that has ended the lives of Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase and countless other anonymous rainbow warriors that felt they could no longer be part of such a world.
Rest In Power to my brothers that felt they no longer had a way to rise here on earth. Your pain, struggle and beauty lives in me. In your memory, I will continue to work towards building a world free of injustice and oppression so that no one has to ever go through the pain and self-destruction that you did.
I’m also compelled to apologize—sorry for not moving fast enough…
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