Questioning gay suicides: Your sex and gender morning roundup
November 15, 2010 - 09:00 AM
By Amanda Hess
http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2010/11/questioning-gay-suicides-your-sex-and-gender-morning-roundup-4605.html (http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2010/11/questioning-gay-suicides-your-sex-and-gender-morning-roundup-4605.html)
ON LGBT SUICIDES: On the Good Men Project, Ritch Savin-Williams argues that the recent focus on LGBT suicide risks pathologizing mentally healthy LGBT youth. "[T]his portrait is an overgeneralization that communicates a cynical, hopeless, and inaccurate message that to be young and gay is to suffer," Savin-Williams writes. "Despite its apparent public appeal, scientific research simply does not support the picture of gay youth in psychological peril. Rather, many gay youth are proud, enjoy life, and, by most accounts, appear to be quite ordinary adolescents and young adults. In fact, there has never been a better time to be young and gay. . . . For most gay youth, the truth is not 'It Gets Better.' The truth is, 'It's Better, Right Now!'"