My queer elevator pitch

It was lunchtime. I was at a day-long picture book workshop, and at the break a group of us sat down to eat together. I hadn’t met any of them before, so we introduced ourselves and started making small talk. Then, the inevitable question arose:

“What do you write?”

A logical question, considering we’re all attending a writing workshop. But a loaded one – for me, anyway. In my experience, if I say, “I write LGBT-themed books,” I get one of two responses. Usually, people are excited and interested. But sometimes the response is stark, uncomfortable silence. Picture book writers tend to be white, female, heterosexual, and middle-aged, a demographic that could swing either way in terms of LGBTQ acceptance. When I give that answer, I’m simultaneously preparing myself for any possible reaction – much like LGBTQ kids and young adults do when they’re coming out to their parents.

The other issue with the what-do-you-write question is this: Saying “I write LGBT-themed books” isn’t a complete answer. I’ve written lots of stories that have absolutely nothing to do with the LGBTQ community – and they don’t fit neatly into some category or genre. One story is about weaning from breastfeeding. Another is about Humpty Dumpty getting fixed. (That’s called a “fractured fairy tale,” where a traditional fairy tale is told in an entirely different way.) I’ve written stories about cats, dogs, roosters, seagulls, and toes. (The toes story is one of my favorites.) Sometimes I write stories because I want to infuse some deeper meaning into them. But often I write stories just because they’re fun to write.

So often people have to market themselves in order to be successful. If a person is looking for a job (or looking for a publisher), they’re told to develop a thirty-second “elevator pitch” that quickly summarizes who you are and what you’re all about. It’s part of a larger process commonly referred to as “personal branding,” which is how you package yourself as a marketable asset. The book Think and Grow Rich, originally published in 1937, first introduced this idea – later,  the 1980s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People  used the concept of “visioning” to modernize this idea. Hundreds of studies in business, marketing, communications, and psychology have been conducted on the power of personal branding. If I were to brand myself, I could say, “I am a community college professor and author who specializes in LGBTQ issues.” That’s a short, sweet elevator pitch.

But just like the what-d0-you-write question, that pitch doesn’t even come close to telling the full story. Labels and categories rarely do. When people ask, “What do you write?” I don’t have a quick, easy answer that is complete and honest. When people ask, “What do you do?”, my elevator pitch doesn’t tell people that I’m a licensed psychologist (who currently doesn’t practice), a mom, a crafter, a crazy cat lady and chicken keeper, a swimmer and lover of the ocean, an obsessive scrimper and saver – and lots of other things. If anything, my elevator pitch allows people to pigeonhole me into a category. It encourages stereotyping.

No wonder so many people in queer communities have resisted being labeled, categorized, pigeonholed, or elevator-pitched. Labels can help us find each other and form communities. Labels can also help others understand who we are – to a point. But they don’t tell the whole story. When I’m asked, “How do you identify your sexuality?”, I don’t have a quick, easy answer. If I say “bisexual,”  which is the most technically accurate term, I’m aware that a particular vision of bisexuality is likely to get conjured up – and that vision might not be who I am. If I say “lesbian,” that matches my long-term relationship status, but it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that I’ve had relationships with men (and potentially could again in the future, although I’m quite happy with my partner).  The fact that I don’t look “bisexual” or “lesbian” (most people who know me will tell you this) complicates things even further. I don’t have an elevator pitch that conveys a “sexuality brand” – and frankly, I don’t think I want one.

Alison Hearn, a professor of Media and Information Studies at Western Canada University, has written many articles about self, identity, and branding – and essentially what she says is this: When we engage in self-branding, we’re constructing a “narrative of the self” (which may or may not accurately reflect the real self). This narrative comes from what she calls an “outer-directed” form of the self (giving people what they want, in the service of capitalism), rather than an inner-directed self. This is not a new idea – many classic theorists, including Carl Rogers and D.W. Winnicott, talk about the “false self” as the society-conforming personality. If you think about it, this is the opposite of  what feminists, anti-racism activists, and social justice advocates have been working towards – creating space for our true, authentic voices and selves to be heard and seen. The idea of an outer-directed self is not new – many classic theorists, including Carl Rogers and D. W. Winnicott, have identified the “false self” as the society-conforming personality. It’s not something that people in radical social justice communities want to participate in, I’d say.

I’ll end with a funny story. During lunch at this picture book workshop, when I shared more details about the kinds of things I write about, someone said to me, “You write great stories! They just aren’t a good fit for what mainstream publishers are looking for.” I laughed and said, “Even my stories are queer!” And then I realized: That’s my elevator pitch. I write stories that speak to people, but they don’t fit neatly into a category or niche, which, ironically, is often how my queer identity plays out. If I’m going to have an elevator pitch for my writing, that is one that’s subversive enough for me to live with.

One big happy family

Several years ago, our local LGBT center, which at the time was called the Lambda Community Center, underwent a name change. When the new name was announced, several groups (mainly people in the bi and trans communities) began circulating a petition attempting to block the change. Why? Because the new name, “Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center,” didn’t appear to be inclusive or all-encompassing – “gay” and “lesbian” were assumed to cover everyone in the LGBTQ community. Over 500 people signed the petition – to no avail. It was only this past year that the name changed to “Sacramento LGBT Center,” and still, many people still refer to the center as “Lambda.” Years later, many still feel incredibly hurt and angry about this – with good reason.

I shared this example with my Psychology of Sexual Orientation students the other day, within a larger discussion about transgender identities. Quite a few of my students – several of whom identify as gay or lesbian – were surprised. Shocked, really. Because aren’t we a community? Don’t we all support each other in unity? Aren’t we one big, happy rainbow family?

I wish I could answer “yes” to that question. Sadly, I can give so many examples of discrimination and oppression within the LGBTQ community. Here’s a sampling of well-publicized historical examples:

• In 1953, author Jeff Winters published an article about Christine Jorgensen in a gay men’s magazine. According to Winters, Jorgensen, a transgender woman, was committing a “sweeping disservice” to gay men by transitioning. “As far as the public knows,” Winters wrote, “you were merely another unhappy homosexual who decided to get drastic about it.”
• In 1979, Janice Raymond, a lesbian-feminist scholar, wrote The Transsexual Empire: The Making of a She-Male (yes, she really used the term “she-male”), in which she repeatedly referred to transwomen as “male-to-constructed females.” She went so far as to say, “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.” Raymond wrote 1980 Congressional brief that led to the defunding of transgender medical insurance coverage.
• Well-known sex researcher J. Michael Bailey, who is unabashedly straight but conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity, at one time refused to believe that bisexuality really exists (particularly in men), saying, “You’re either gay, straight, or lying.” He only recently changed his position, but only after results from one of his studies indicated that bisexual men, in fact, are not lying.

Robyn Ochs, a bisexual writer, scholar, and activist, has this to say about the double-edged sword of biphobia: “Gay- and lesbian-identified individuals frequently view us as either confused or interlopers possessing a degree of privilege not available to them, and many heterosexuals see us as amoral, hedonistic spreaders of disease and disrupters of families.” And many other edge communities under the LGBTQ umbrella experience a similar double-edged sword – they’re rejected by mainstream heterosexual culture, and they’re also denigrated within their own community.

I have a slew of examples of community infighting that I’ve observed personally. And we’re not just talking biphobia and transphobia – there’s racism, class oppression, sexism, and ableism thrown in there too. A bisexual woman I interviewed years ago had this to say about her lesbian friends:  “They basically edged me out once I started dating men. They treated me like I’d infiltrated and then bailed with the information.” A graduate school colleague, after she’d finished a presentation about BDSM, was admonished by a senior faculty member, a gay man who said, “Most of us aren’t like that.” At a conference, a gay male graduate student repeatedly used the term “rice queen” during his presentation to refer to non-Asian men who are sexually attracted to Asian men – and used the phrase like it was professional, scholarly terminology (without ever being corrected by his research advisor, also a gay man). A transgender male student of mine recently shared that, after coming out as trans, his lesbian friends completely rejected him, telling him that he was selfish and betraying his community. I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the picture.

These aren’t right-wing fundamentalist uber-heterosexual haters. These are our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who are behaving this way. Unfortunately, getting people within the LGBTQ community to take ownership of their oppressive behaviors is really hard. “How can I oppress people?” they cry. “I’m the one who’s oppressed!”

All of us within the larger LGBTQ community have experienced institutional oppression (such as being denied rights that are granted to heterosexual and cisgender people), and most of us can cite examples of interpersonal oppression. But the dirty little secret within the community is that we do it to each other, too. And I’d like to talk about a couple of reasons why.

First of all, when we stereotype, we’re falling into an “us vs. them” mentality. If our “us” identity feels shaky, then creating a “them” can strengthen that sense of identity. Committing a hate crime against a gay man, for example, might shore up the perpetrator’s insecure sense of masculinity. Engaging in biphobia might reinforce one’s exclusively gay or lesbian identity. The statement, “Most of us aren’t like that,” is essentially saying, “I’m safely over here. I’m not crazy like those folks over there.”

There’s another element to this, too. One way to feel like we belong to a group is to gain acceptance from others within a group. When we engage in “us vs. them” thinking, we’re essentially creating an in-group and an out-group – and our “us vs. them” beliefs allow us to connect with others in that in-group. It’s no accident that hate crimes tend to be committed by groups of individuals, because it’s a way (albeit a sick way) of forming a connection with others who share similar attitudes. By rejecting a transgender man, a group of lesbian women might band together even more strongly. It’s a way of taking refuge within a group – and the in-group/out-group dynamic is even more likely to happen when the in-group’s status is shaky.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled “A House Divided,” in which I focused more specifically on oppression directed towards intersex people, as well as racism within the LGBTQ community. And here we are again. It’s so clear to me that if our collective communities can’t find a way to hang together and stand on common ground, we’ll fall. All of us. Because when we’re fighting each other, the dominant power structure of our society goes completely unchallenged. White privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, class privilege – all of that remains intact, while those of us who experience oppression bring each other down. I don’t think we can afford to do that.

Labels, labels, labels!

This weekend, I attended the LGBTQIA conference at the University of the Pacific, a biannual event that draws hundreds of people from throughout California. At this conference, I presented an overview of findings from my research for my upcoming book, Fringe: On the Edges of the Mainstream Gay Community. The room was packed. There were people sitting on the floor. I stayed for half an hour after my session ended to talk to a line of people. “I don’t think they liked it very much,” one of my colleagues joked afterwards.

Then there was The Question. The one I didn’t have a great answer for. “Did you consider interviewing someone who identifies as asexual?” she asked. I had not. Because, in fact, I don’t know anyone who openly identifies as asexual. I didn’t at that particular moment, anyway. Throughout the conference, I met several people who identify as asexual. I met another person who is a demisexual panromantic poly female. I met another person who described herself as an “amoeba.” I heard the terms “gray-A,”, “nonlibidoism,” and “queerplatonic.” I’m embarrassed to admit that I wrote these terms down and Googled them later, because I had no idea what they meant – and, like entering Narnia through the back of the wardrobe, I was introduced to a whole new nomenclature.

There aren’t a whole lot of studies focusing on asexuality, and I could only find one that addressed the question of how common it is. Out of a community-based sample of 18,000 participants, 1% identified as asexual – which doesn’t sound like much, until you crunch the numbers. One percent of 18,000 is 180. One percent of the U.S. population is over three million people. That’s a lot of people.

Other studies focus on who is likely to be asexual. Morag Yule and Lori Brotto, researchers at the University of British Columbia Sexual Health Lab, have conducted several studies investigating whether other characteristics are associated with asexuality. Interestingly, asexual men and women are more likely to be left-handed, according to one study. One of their studies focused on birth order – asexual men, according to their findings, are more likely than non-asexuals to be later-born siblings, while asexual women are more likely to be first-borns. People who are asexual are more likely, according to yet another study, to have alexithymia – an emotional blindness, detached from any experience of feelings. Not surprisingly, Laura Gilmour, a researcher from Grant MacEawan University in Ontario, found a higher-than-average rate of asexuality among people with autism spectrum disorders – which often involve some form of alexithymia. The asexual community seems to have made this connection on its own – one blogger calls himself  “Amoebageek.” (“Amoeba” is a slang term used to describe asexuality.) Another calls herself “LadyGeekGirl” and posts semi-regularly about asexuality. Like so many things in the queer community, I bet if an asexual-identified person read these studies, that person would say, “Well, I could have told you THAT!”

All of that came from about five different studies. No joke. In fact, the best information out there about asexuality isn’t emerging from the psychological literature – at least, not yet. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), on the other hand, provides an overview of asexuality, a series of FAQs, stories of the experiences of various asexual-identified people, a newsletter, and an online forum.  In fact, some people identify as “AVENites” or “AVENistas,” meaning that they are a member of the AVEN forums. It’s clear that AVEN is a strong fixture in the asexual community, and it’s chock-full of great information.

As I was reading through AVEN’s site for the first time, what intrigued me was their strong, repeated focus on research ethics. Emphasis on the word STRONG. Their “Rules for using AVEN for research,” for example, provides researchers with an extensive set of guidelines for recruiting participants or using existing data from AVEN. This is as rigorous as a university Human Subjects Committee, I thought to myself as I read through these documents. In addition to their lengthy guidelines, AVEN also asks researchers to read their “Open Letter to Researchers,” a document drafted in 2011 that provides further recommendations for conducting research using online asexual communities. 

Why so much focus on research ethics? Remember what I said earlier – that “the best information out there about asexuality isn’t emerging from the psychological literature.” Part of that is because asexuality is just starting to register on the radar screen. But part of it is that asexuality has already been extensively studied – but in an abusive and pathologizing way. You see, most researchers have assumed that asexuality is a psychological disorder. They get diagnosed with “HSDD” – hypoactive sexual desire disorder (or, since the publication of DSM-5, “SIAD” – sexual interest/arousal disorder). And then they get treated for it – well, subjected to reparative therapy, really. Sound familiar?

Think about it. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people continue to be subjected to reparative therapy, even 41 years after the “homosexuality” diagnosis was removed from the DSM. Transgender people often are expected (or forced) to undergo some form of gender-reparative therapy, often after being diagnosed with “gender identity disorder” (or, since DSM-V, “gender dysphoria”). And here it is again. While there truly are people who suffer from sexual dysfunctions and deserve to experience relief from them, AVEN – and a growing group of researchers – makes clear that asexuality is not the same thing as HSDD or SIAD. It’s a sexual orientation. And attempts at changing people’s sexual orientation via reparative therapy techniques – well, you all know how that goes.

At the conference, the question about asexuality wasn’t the only one that got the gears of my brain turning. Shortly afterwards, another student approached me and asked, “What do you think about labels?” (Actually, before asking the question, he prefaced with a series of comments about queer theory, post-structuralism, and radical deconstructionism. I won’t go into all of that here.)

What do I think about labels? I had to think for a minute. Years ago, feminist psychologist Laura Brown wrote a book called Subversive Dialogues: Theory in Feminist Therapy, which influenced my thinking enormously. One chapter in the book was titled “Naming the Pain,” and it focused on the politics of diagnosis – a form of labeling, if you will. The Cliffs Notes version of that chapter is that diagnosis, as we all know, can be incredibly pathologizing and shaming. But it can also be liberating. Knowing what it is that you have enables you to talk about it, to find community, to experience some sense of relief.

The same goes, I think, for sexual and gender identity labels. Finding a word to describe your experience can be enormously empowering. Once you find the word “asexual,” you’re more likely to stumble upon AVEN – and find a large community of others like yourself. But labels can be hijacked by others (or they can create their own labels), and used to suppress and control. Sexual and gender minorities are all too familiar with this, I must say.

One conference. A semester’s worth of new information. Try it sometime.

Good moral character

It’s the end of the semester. My grades are done. The holidays are over. And now I can breathe. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Except not really. I may be breathing, but my brain is still going strong. This is the time when I reflect on what worked and didn’t work in my classes – and how I might do it differently the following semester. I do this with all of my classes, but probably the most with my Introduction to Psychology class. That’s the class that covers so much information – too much for one semester, really. Every semester I end up letting go of something because there just isn’t enough time.

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is one of those that usually gets kicked to the curb in some way. Most Introductory Psychology textbooks include Lawrence Kohlberg’s work in their developmental psychology chapter – along with Jean Piaget, Harry and Margaret Harlow, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Lev Vygotsky, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Erik Erikson, and the twenty-million other theorists that need to be covered in two class sessions. As you might imagine, his groundbreaking and influential work notwithstanding, one of two things usually happens in my class when it comes to Kohlberg. Either my students are treated to one Power Point slide and a breakneck-speed-rundown of the six stages of Kohlbergian moral development, or they’re told to pay close attention to that section of the textbook (like they really read the textbook anyway!) and be prepared for a question or two on the test. If anything, Kohlberg shows me just how low my teaching can sink – if I let it.

Oh, who cares about Kohlberg and moral reasoning, anyway?

That’s an easy way to let myself off the hook – to tell myself that nobody really cares about this stuff anyway. However, so many students wrestle with a range of moral questions – and often those questions involve sexual orientation and sexual behavior. One example: A student who was in my Introductory Psychology class came to my office one day with a dilemma. Religion is a very significant part of his life, and he plans on becoming a pastor when he finishes school. He believes, in accordance with the teachings of his religion, that homosexuality is a sin. But his brother is gay, and he loves his brother. “How do I reconcile this?” he asked me. I suggested that he take my Psychology of Sexual Orientation class, and he did. He respectfully took in all the information presented in the class, and he wrestled with his dilemma the whole time, eventually coming to grips with it in his own way.

These kinds of scenarios happen pretty regularly for me. So how can I possibly tell myself that students don’t think that moral reasoning is interesting or relevant?

Even though Kohlberg published his original article on moral development back in 1958, his work is in fact quite relevant today. In his original study, Kohlberg posed a series of moral dilemmas to a group of 72 males, ages 10, 13, and 16, asking them a series of questions to determine how they reasoned about moral issues. Based on their responses, Kohlberg identified three distinct levels of moral reasoning – the pre-conventional, which is an egocentric and self-centered way of thinking; the conventional, which involves following the rules and conforming to social norms; and the post-conventional, which is a more principled way of making ethical decisions. Within each level are two substages, resulting in six stages of moral development. From a bottom-up perspective, these stages look like this:

When we’re young, according to Kohlberg, our goal in making moral decisions is either to (1) avoid getting in trouble, or (2) maximize our rewards – and this is what we see in the “purple” and “blue” pre-conventional stages. As we get older, progressing into the “green” and “yellow” conventional stages, we become more concerned with following the rules, whether they involve actual laws or merely social expectations. When we reach the “orange” and “red” post-conventional stages (assuming we even get there), we engage in a more principled, higher-order way of resolving moral dilemmas, considering universal ethical principles as the highest guiding force.

Among my students, religion is often what guides their moral decisions – and what causes them to struggle with issues of sexual orientation. The student who visited me in my office that day is only one example. Many students have openly struggled with the morality of things like BDSM, polyamory, and bisexuality, to name a few – mostly because of what the law dictates (or has dictated in the past) or what they’ve learned from religious teachings. (As an aside, The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy is a good resource for helping people navigate these kinds of relationships with integrity.) If they’re in a Stage 3 (“good girls don’t practice BDSM”) or Stage 4 (“it’s illegal to have more than one partner”) level of moral reasoning – a common level for adolescents and young adults – there isn’t much room for a critical reasoning process to take hold. If you throw religion into the mix, research conducted at Texas Tech University suggests that the more strongly people hold to fundamentalist religious beliefs, the weaker their moral development – and their intellectual development – tended to be.  When someone says, “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and that’s that,” there’s no room for a conversation. That’s that.

But if a person breaks through into the post-conventional level of moral development, then issues can be wrestled with. Conversations can happen, both with others and internally. In a 1993 study, Stephanie Brooke of North Carolina State University surveyed members of 10 churches using Kohlberg-style vignettes and applying his stage theory – and found that the higher their level of moral development, the more accepting they were of homosexuality. Instead of saying, “it’s wrong, and that’s that,” they could engage in dialectical reasoning, increasing the likelihood of a more principled decision.

If I really evaluate what’s important to me in my teaching, it’s not so much the nuts-and-bolts of the content. Whether we cover everything, including Jean Piaget, Harry and Margaret Harlow, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Lev Vygotsky, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Erik Erikson, AND Lawrence Kohlberg, is somewhat irrelevant. But if my students can leave my class equipped to engage in a more principled level of ethical decision-making – now, that’s another story.

I’m still going to try to find a way to fit Kohlberg in there. And not just in one measly Power Point slide.

A mixed-bag holiday

Oh my God – it’s Thanksgiving Day. I’ve dreaded this day for MONTHS. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t eat breakfast. Or maybe just a piece of fruit and some coffee. LOTS of coffee. And I’ll make sure to go to the gym this morning. Okay. That sounds like a plan. 

But what if I get hungry? Can I hold out until dinnertime? I’ll chew gum. I’ll drink coffee and diet soda. I’ll make sure to keep my hands busy so I won’t eat. 

And then what’ll I do when I get there? I’ll be SURROUNDED by food! Maybe I can pass hors d’oeuvres around (if I’m holding the tray, I won’t be eating what’s ON the tray). Or I can set the table. But I know that Grandma baked the pies, and she’ll be heartbroken if I don’t have a piece.

How many calories does pie have, anyway? 200 calories? 500 calories? 1000 calories???

Maybe I shouldn’t have had that piece of fruit this morning after all.

Thanksgiving is one of those mixed-bag holidays. It’s intended to be a day to give thanks, to be in a state of gratitude, and to surround ourselves with family and loved ones. But for some people, being around family just ain’t pretty, especially around the holidays. Other people (including LGBTQ people who have been rejected by their blood relatives) don’t have family to be around. Still others wrestle with how to observe the Thanksgiving holiday in a way that honors the historical and cultural realities surrounding the Europeans’ treatment of those indigenous to these lands.

And then we have, on top of all that, the 10 million Americans who suffer from a diagnosable eating disorder. For them, obsessive thoughts like the ones described above have probably been festering for days, even weeks, before the Thanksgiving holiday – and when the day finally arrives, you’re surrounded by your biggest fear for a whole entire day. To friends and family, people with eating disorders seem incredibly selfish. If you plan to take just “one small taste” of the pumpkin pie before it is served, and then you end up eating the whole thing and throwing it up afterwards, others will probably – understandably – see that behavior as selfish. But it’s not an intentional selfishness – in fact, it truly may be the only self-preservation tool the person has in their mental health toolbox. Having an eating disorder feels like being in a prison, except you’re your own jailer, and the only way to get away from the torturous, anxiety-provoking thoughts is to engage in some kind of selfish-looking, self-destructive behavior. Eating disorders do a great job of ruining a perfectly good holiday meal. For everyone.

What does this have to do with LGBTQ people? you’re probably wondering – AGAIN.

Well, two reasons. First, I’ve been there. It was a long time ago, but the memory of what it was like is clear as day. And it wasn’t pretty. (We’ll leave it at that for now.)

The second reason is more research-y, if you will. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when eating disorder research really took off, there weren’t many studies focusing on body dissatisfaction and eating disorders among LGBTQ people. What little did exist suggested that, although gay men appeared to be at a high risk for body image issues and disordered eating, that wasn’t necessarily the case for other queer populations. (Regarding transgender people, no studies existed in the 1980s and 1990s, and only a couple of individual case studies – but none with a decent sample size – have been published since then.)  Today, the research paints a very different picture, in some cases indicating that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are at higher risk than straight people (particularly heterosexual men) for engaging in eating disordered behaviors. Bryn Austin of Children’s Hospital in Boston, for example, followed 14,000 youth between the ages of 12-23, and found that compared to heterosexuals, eating disordered behaviors were significantly more common among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning individuals. Moreover, straight males were the least likely to experience body image issues and disordered eating – gay males, lesbian females, bisexual males and females, and heterosexual females all showed a comparable uptick of these behaviors. Letitia Anne Peplau, a researcher at UCLA, found something similar in two of her studies, the first involving 2,500 adults, the second drawing over 54,000 participants. In both studies, heterosexual men were unlikely to experience body image issues – in comparison, gay men, lesbian women, heterosexual women experienced a similarly high rate of body image issues.

These are all large-scale studies, in comparison to the much smaller sample sizes common to studies a few decades ago. From a research methods standpoint, the larger the sample, the more robust your findings tend to be. In other words, what Bryn Austin and Letitia Peplau found isn’t a fluke – thousands of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people indicated that they suffer from body image disturbances and engage in eating disordered behavior. When researchers begin to include transgender people in a meaningful way, I bet the findings won’t be all that different.

This shouldn’t be surprising, really. Living in a culture of oppression is like being a fish and swimming in toxic water. Swallowing some of that water is unavoidable, just like internalizing oppressive attitudes is unavoidable. It’s no wonder that so many LGBTQ people attempt suicide. Or abuse drugs and alcohol, or engage in unsafe sex practices, or self-mutilate in some way, or suffer from debilitating depression or anxiety. Or have an eating disorder. These are hate crimes committed against the self, if you want to get real about what LGBTQ people often do to themselves.

There are lots of tips out there about how to survive Thanksgiving if you have an eating disorder. The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt has a good tip sheet. The Cleveland Center for Eating Disorders has a good article for family members, particularly for people who are in some form of treatment or recovery. And there are lots of ways to observe Thanksgiving that don’t have to involve surrounding yourself with food and triggers all day.

But I have this thought that I want to leave you with. As I said earlier, Thanksgiving is a mixed-bag holiday – a day of celebration and gratitude for many, a day of mourning for others. For those who have suffered oppression at the hands of others, and for those who direct oppressive practices towards themselves, I urge you to think about this:

What would it be like if oppression didn’t exist?

What would it be like if people didn’t oppress others in order to secure their own power?

What would it be like if we had the power – and claimed that power – to stop oppressing ourselves?

There would be nothing mixed-bag about Thanksgiving at all.