Eric James Borges, 19 years old. Kenneth James Weishuhn, 14. Jay "Corey" Jones, 17. Brandon Elizares, 16. Jack Denton Reese, 17. Josh Pacheco, 17.
As we passionately discuss differing opinions about Jodie Foster's (not) coming out, our differences are bridged in the cultural relevance of mainstream gay representations and a mourning and deep sadness for these lives, alongside the far too many other gay teens, who "succumbed to" or "gave into" suicide this past year.
They, too, were beautiful kids, lost forever.
The statistics are horrific, yet the language we use to discuss this epidemic is also troubling: They "gave into" suicide. "I couldn't make it." "I couldn't hold on"—as if to not kill oneself is the struggle, and suicide is the passive choice, the flowing current. For gay teens, suicide is written as a norm, an inevitability that pulls at gay kids who must fight to hold on, endure, not give in.
In 2012, if you heard a gay teen from a small urban town killed himself, how would you react? Outrage? Sadness? Frustration? Loss? As a culture, we are told we should feel all these things, but we are not told we should experience confusion. We need not ask "why?" Why would a gay teen kill themselves? Their age and sexuality problematically work to fill in the blanks. As a culture, gay suicide is not unthinkable, but rather a visible, viable, and sensible story.
It is well-known that studies indicate significant elevation of suicidal attempts and ideation in gay and lesbians respondents, wherein as many as two-thirds of gay men surveyed report having considered suicide. When the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention was unveiled this year, LGBT suicide was linked to the "minority stress" resulting from cultural stigma and "institutional discrimination." A second factor mentioned, however, was the issue of "contagion resulting from media coverage of LGBT suicide deaths that presents suicidal behavior as a normal, rational response to anti-LGBT bullying or other experiences of discrimination."
In Nick Hornsby's novel A Long Way Down, Maureen states, "I didn't know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves." While her statement is narrow and homophobic, this linkage between gayness, unhappiness, and suicide reflects a culturally produced logic of gay suicide that has been ever-present in mainstream media for decades.
Vito Russo's landmark study, The Celluloid Closet, demonstrates the historical connection in Hollywood between gays and tragedy (often suicide or murder).
Even in the post Will & Grace media landscape, this contagion extends beyond made for TV dramas such as "Prayers for Bobby" or advocacy campaigns like It Gets Better, to cultural parodies of these ingrained logics in shows like South Park and Drawn Together. In other words, Maureen claims to not know anything, yet she does know something; gays and suicide are commonly fused in our cultural grammar.
Last season's winter finale of Glee brought back the supporting character of Dave Korofsky, a football player who physically and emotionally bullied Kurt, only to be revealed as a closeted gay person in later episodes. After he is outed to his teammates, it takes a few brief snippets within a musical montage for Dave's story to be communicated; we see him publicly outed, teased, he looks hopeless and isolated, he tries to hang himself.
From the first chord of the montage, it was clear where it was heading. Outed, lonely gay teen + sad song = suicide. No further explanation needed. Were Korofsky not marked as a gay teen, the suicidal act would have required more information. It would not have made sense.
Korofsy lives, and his suicidal attempt becomes a catalyst for mending a relationship with Kurt, gaining support from his father, and turns the heart of the vindictive and vain Sebastian who was caddy and dismissive of Dave. Suicide is less a finale, for Dave, than a passage or stage towards self acceptance.
The Trevor Project reported a major spike in web activity and phone calls following the controversial episode.
This power of putting gay stories of homophobia, bullying and isolation into the mainstream is surely important, but how this awareness is being produced draws questions we must continue interrogating. It is problematic that suicide becomes the logical, if not uncontested, vehicle for Dave to express his pain and loneliness. It is a problem that we have been trained as a culture that a few snippets in a music montage can make sense of ending one's life. It is a problem when suicide is represented as the only way to facilitate relationships when one feels isolated, as the second chance, and a way of becoming human and valued to others. These representations—and there are far too many—do not merely reflect a festering suicidal impulse in our culture. They do more than the work of awareness, but also perpetuate an all too familiar the "logic" of gay suicide.
Make no mistake, I stand firmly behind the works of "It Gets Better" and the Trevor Project, support the breakthroughs in representation we see in shows like Glee, and believe gay suicide is a very real epidemic. I also believe the issue of contagion requires much more consideration, as the ways we represent gay identities in relation to gay suicides is messy, complicated, and dangerous.
We need to get to a point where we no longer need to fight against the option of gay youth suicide, because, suicide is no longer an option (or, at least, so readily recognized as an option) for gay youth. We need to move to a point where, if we are tragically faced with the news of a gay youth killing themselves, we find it senseless and refuse its logic. We need to let gay suicide confuse us and anger us and disgust us, and push us to ask more complicated questions.
The loss of each of these beautiful kids is also a national tragedy. The greatest tragedy, it seems, is that it has stopped registering to many as senseless, but rather something to "give into."
Dustin Bradley Goltz is an assistant professor of communication and performance studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of Queer Temporalities in Gay Male Representation: Tragedy, Normativity, and Futurity (Routledge, 2010), and his research examines the discursive production of gay male future in popular culture and within gay cultural spaces. This op-ed was written in association with The OpEd Project, which seeks to expand the range of opinion voices.
