Dan Savage went out of his way to promote the Trevor Project. Unfortunately, the promotion of that organization got lost on the other videos and some of the coverage of the message. The phrase is empty by only those who do not put more weight behind it. That's a nice concept, but the main thrust of many "It Gets Better" videos I've seen (including ones from famous/well-known LGBTQ figures) is that you are bound to endure the pain of high school/religious/familial bullying and shame until, one day, you'll miraculously find a community that accepts you for who you are. My question is, why must that be endured? Why aren't people held accountable when they bully someone, or when they stand by and turn a blind eye to bullying (as is the case more often than not, sadly). I'm sure the It Gets Better campaign was started with the best of intentions, but its message seems at least somewhat unsettling and possibly dangerous to me.
The Make It Better Project speaks more directly to the action one can take in order to enact change. Unfortunately, the don't have a celebrity like Savage backing them, so they've sometimes gotten lost in the shuffle. Take a look at their website and you'll understand why I find it to be the superior program.
The Make It Better Project
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
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