Alliance lacking Allies

When I was in eighth grade, I started a Gay Straight Alliance at my school. Back then, I stayed in my own bubble a lot; my ideologies had not ventured very far from the progressive thoughts of my parents. In middle school, I thought my GSA would only do good things for my community. Now, I’m not so sure.  

One of the main goals of any GSA is to create a place where LGBT students can go to discuss their experiences and feel unjudged; in short, it’s a safe space. The problem is that this focus on acceptance leads a lack of structure or diversity of mind. 

Naturally, if a space is to make people feel unjudged, one may think that the space would share opinions that had the potential to be judged. But, this doesn’t appear to be the case. If your opinion can cause some people to be offended, you’re not allowed to speak it. 

For example, a hot topic in the LGBT community currently is whether or not you need gender dysphoria (when one’s psychological identity of male or female is opposite to their biological sex) to be transgender. If you take the side that says you must be dysphoric to be transgender, you’re labeled a gatekeeper, a truscum and are told your words are hate speech. For just voicing an opinion, you can be labeled the villain. 

This fear of offense means that everything you say in a GSA will be taken as fact, as long as it’s not offensive. You could identify as a pansexual aromantic nonbinary dragon and it would be taken seriously. The sad part is that people actually identify as this and aren’t told that maybe they need more time to think their identity through before telling people.   

There is an urge to be different, to live outside of the binary. It’s an environment that encourages you to explore your identity, which can be good, but not when the encouragement is pushing you to change your identity. When I was an active GSA member, I thought I was bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and genderfluid all in the span of about a year. No one told me it was okay to just be a lesbian; I had to be as different as possible. 

Though GSAs often try to normalize the LGBT community in an attempt to promote understanding and stop bullying, the true result is a group of people who are incapable of handling criticisms and further themselves from normality to prove their point. By pulling themselves further from the mainstream, they open themselves up to bullying and criticism. Since they’ve immersed themselves in an imaginary world where everyone is accepting and unoffensive, these people tend to take their criticisms very poorly, falling back on sob stories and appeals of pity. 

This doesn’t define everyone in a GSA, of course. Some tend to get more into activism or seek advice with coming out or other personal LGBT issues. However, the environment is often shaped and lead by this safe-space mind set of ‘you can’t offend people in the slightest way or it’s a hate crime.’ GSAs can be a great place to seek advice from your peers and find a like-minded community, but this doesn’t excuse the toxicity and lack of true understanding of the world that stems from high school GSAs.