Day of Purple

A Facebook initiative began last month for an international day of wearing the colour purple on October 20th to commemorate the loss of so many young people in the United States recently due to LGBT bullying and homophobia with the added goal of promoting equality for all. Like many people, I am saddened and frustrated over their deaths, and consider myself 110% behind equal rights for all regardless of sexuality or gender. However, I really have a problem with events that attempt to promote awareness through wearing a colour. As this cause is so close to my heart, it frustrated me even more. My dissatisfaction lead me to make a post on Facebook about it, and the response was very intriguing. I had 25 friends "like" it, and underneath a debate began about how messages and events of equality should happen. I started my day saying:

Wearing a colour does NOT instigate change. If you care about equality for all sexualities and genders, put on whatever clothes you want, & go out into the world consciously acting against hate. Speak up when you are around discrimination. Don't vote people into power who refuse to equally represent everyone. Hiding your homophobia behind religion is not a legitimate excuse. Love is love, and love is beautiful.

A few people agreed, but said that wearing purple was a good idea anyways. I argued that the event makes you guess what another person's motivations are for wearing a certain piece of clothing, and excuses the consciences of some people who think that simply putting on a certain shirt in the morning will end this kind of hate. There are still laws at Federal, Provincial, and State levels in North America that discriminate against people who don't comply to the heterosexual norm, and these are more important to me than an awareness campaign that works only if you are around online social mediums. My friend Ben agreed with me, and brought up this point:

While the "wear purple" campaign has a nice sentiment, the world is being saturated by these awareness campaigns to such a degree that people are becoming wilfully apathetic to the cause. The fact that there are so many movements that are, in actuality, doing very little to solve the problem waters down the message trying to be sent to the point that these (insert cause here) day are simply becoming an annoyance. In the days of the internet, if you aren't already aware of some social injustice then chances are you never will be.

The debate continued, and the legitimacy of both sides remained strong. The ultimate goal of everyone involved was the same, which led to a general feeling of discontentment on both sides. My favourite comment against my view came from my friend Ryan, who said:

I agree with your sentiment Danielle, but I don't think the lazy semi-activists, however irritating, reduce the importance of symbolic displays. Visibility is essential to a social movement or political group, especially one you can't always pick out of a crowd.

Since the Day of Purple, Barack Obama has released his own "It Gets Better" video while hypocritically, the Federal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" law for the American Military has flipped back and forth as to whether it will remain in effect, giving homophobes legal fodder for their beliefs and actions. There have been more reported cases of suicides of teens who have identified as LGBT, although I feel that since the media has dubbed this an epidemic of sorts, they are more likely to report suicides that before would never have been news. The event intrigued a small portion of the population, and a few days later things seem to be getting worse.

I'm still anti-purple.