Tyler Clementi was a freshman at Rutgers whose roommate used a webcam to tape Clementi having homosexual sex. He then tweeted about the video with a friend, saying “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” A similar incident occurred a few days later; this time the roommate invited people to view the video live via Skype. Clementi subsequently committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
The tragedy of this story is seemingly boundless. Clementi was an accomplished violinist with great musical potential. He had apparently applied for a room change. He was a shy boy who likely reached out on an online message board for help and support. Every new detail forces us to ask, “How?” How could this still happen in 2010? How could his roommate and his roommate’s friend do this? How are we, as a community, responsible?
I went to an informal discussion at the LGBT Center about this incident to see if I could get some answers. I came to realize that the third question is the most important: What responsibility does the community have? I came to realize that our society shares the blame in this incident. Sure, we’d like to think that none of us would subject another human being to this kind of treatment. And for the most part we’d be right. But the psychology behind this is something we learned about in third grade: Bullies need audiences. The society we live in enabled a person to commit this heinous act. If he didn’t think anyone would be interested in hearing gay gossip about his roommate, or in joining his voyeuristic act, he might not have done this.
So what can be done? How do we fix this problem? How do we change the culture so that this kind of harassment is neither tolerated nor condoned? There are many avenues we can take, and, indeed, we will likely need to tackle this problem from multiple directions. There is one route, however, that I think is of vital importance if a cultural shift is to be marked. I call upon the gay community’s allies — the straight people who express support for the gay movement — to take active responsibility and pride in their crucial role.
The ability of members of the mainstream to sympathize has been a powerful force in all minority movements. That so many straight people have expressed outrage in solidarity with the gay community over the story of Tyler Clementi and others like it marks a critical shift in the mainstream view of gay issues. But it takes much more than just feeling compassion for gay people to be true allies.
We hear it all the time: “I love gay people!” or “I have a friend who’s a lesbian!” But the people who are very open and supportive of gay people in theory are the people I’ve seen uncomfortable when two girls hold hands in front of them. The people whose Facebook statuses joyously praise the reversal of California’s Proposition 8 are the people I’ve seen turn away when two guys make out in an eating club.
If we want to win this fight, allies need to take responsibility and embrace all aspects of the LGBT community, not just the simple and socially acceptable ones. When allies refuse to avert their gaze when LGBT people display affection or stand up to call someone out for using an offensive slur, they help establish a culture where it’s neither acceptable nor amusing to bully people for their sexual orientation.
And when this happens — when homophobia is as unacceptable in practice as it currently is in theory, when people learn how to respect the right to privacy in this digital age, when gay people aren’t judged only by the sex that they have — incidents like what happened one train stop away will be events of the past as we move, ever forward, toward equality.
Luke Massa is a sophomore from Ridley Park, Pa. He can be reached at lmassa@princeton.edu.
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