video: Obama/It Gets Better

Following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Message to LGBT Youth comes one from President Obama* [transcript]:

While I’m glad this is getting a lot of national attention now, I agree with critics of the MSM who decry the particularly bright spotlight bullying–not just bullying of LGBT/LGBT-perceived kids and young adults–is getting now. The tools may have changed, but attitudes haven’t. There are times when I would be hard pressed to say that It Gets Better but as you grow older, your perspective changes and I do agree with the article “It Gets Different; Leveling Up” from The Rotund.

…here is what happens: When you’re playing an RP game, and you first start out, there are these enemies at the beginning of the game who seem impossible. All you’ve got is, like, a flashlight, if that, and you don’t know where you are or what to do. You fight those enemies and sometimes they wound you gravely and you limp along avoiding other fights until you find something that will heal you. You repeat the process, and you level up.

You keep leveling up until, when you go back and fight those early monsters, they seem like a cakewalk in comparison. The enemy isn’t changed at all – they are still the same low-hit-point ridiculous monsters they were at the beginning of your campaign. But you have changed. You’ve survived in spite of them and sometimes you even get to deliver a hearty fuck you in the midst of it all.

That’s very satisfying, I’m not gonna lie.

To piggy-back onto her metaphor, a lot of those early monsters end up seeming more like minor annoyances to the point that you wonder why you went back to that starting area in the first place–to which nearly anyone that’s gone to a class reunion can attest…

Admittedly, you do have to make it to that point, so I share articles on Facebook and Twitter, I wore purple on Spirit Day and I spread the word as best I can. Oddly enough, a lot of the people from my past who picked on me–for many reasons** of my being different–have since wanted to be my “friends” on Facebook. To some I would say, “There’s a reason we haven’t chatted in about 20 years,” but there are others who now have families and kids of their own that I hope are taking the message to heart and making sure their children are raised in environments of love and understanding and given the courage to be different if that’s who they turn out to be and not just go along with the popular kids or the status quo.

TGIF, y’all! I know I haven’t been writing a lot lately, but I’ve had a lot going on. Once the room stops spinning, I’m sure the tales will find their way to the blog, but until then… 😉