Hey everybody, so if my setup looks like a little bit different today, it's because my
girlfriend is here, and she rearranged my filming setup, and I kinda like it, so I'm
gonna try it out for a video or two.
But today, I wanna talk about a pretty serious topic: Homelessness amongst LGBT+ youth.
Unfortunately, LGBT+ people make up a disproportionately high percentage of all homeless youth.
Various regional surveys have found that somewhere between 7-39% of all homeless youth identified
as LGBT, and the National LGBTQ Task Force estimates that between 20-40% of homeless
youth identify as LGBT -- even though people who identify as LGBT are estimated to make
up only 4-7% of the total population of the US.
Basically, all of the available data suggests that queer people are far more likely to experience
homelessness than straight cisgender people.
So, why is that?
Well, according to the LGBT Homeless Youth Provider Survey from 2012, the biggest reason
is that their parents don't accept their sexual orientation or gender.
46% of respondents said they ran away from home because of rejection, while 43% were
kicked out of their house after coming out.
You'll notice that the percentages for all of these reasons don't add up to 100%, and
that's because respondents were able to choose multiple options.
For instance, they could have faced abuse at home, and because of that, decided to run away.
So it's because of societal stigma against queer people that causes youth homelessness
to be so rampant within the LGBT+ community.
When parents can't accept their queer kid, sometimes they just kick them out of their
house, and other times they make life so miserable for their child that they decide to run away.
There's nothing about queer people that makes them inherently more likely to be homeless
-- it's just the fact that there's so much societal stigma against them that they're
often driven to homelessness.
Negative attitudes towards people because they're not straight or cisgender aren't
just an opinion -- they're an actively harmful ideology that puts queer people on the streets.
When people crack jokes at the expense of queer people, when people falsely claim that
trans women aren't real women, when people argue against marriage equality -- all of
that contributes to a culture that is okay abandoning their children just because they're different.
And it's not just that LGBT+ youth are more likely to be homeless -- they're also more
likely to be worse off than straight cisgender homeless youth.
A review from 2014 in the American journal of orthopsychiatry found that LGBT+ people
are far more likely to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts than cishet people,
they're more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, and they're also more likely to be
sexually or physically assaulted.
And trans people specifically often have it the hardest, because accessing transition-related
services can be difficult if not impossible while homeless -- and those who are able to
get hormones may self medicate in a dangerous way.
There's also the fact that homeless shelters are often segregated by sex, which means that
trans people fear not being allowed into the shelter that corresponds with their gender,
and instead being forced into the shelter that
corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth.
For trans women, for example, being forced to use a men's shelter can be not only hugely
invalidating and discouraging, but it can also put them in danger when the cis men there
find out that they're trans.
All of this can cause trans people to avoid shelters entirely, and face more abuse than
cis people when they do use shelters.
There's no overnight solution to fixing how homeless LGBT+ youth are treated, but
increased federal funding would go a long way.
There needs to be more government funding for
explicitly LGBT-friendly homeless shelters and organizations.
For too many queer people, seeking help at a shelter is a gamble.
Will they be accepted?
Will they face rejection, humiliation, and possible physical violence all over again?
A report by The Palette Fund, the True Colors Fund, and the Williams Institute identified
lack of government funding as the main barrier to improving services for homeless LGBT+ youth.
There's just not enough money going towards these kids.
In fact, there's even federal money going to organizations that are known for being
anti-LGBT, like the Salvation Army, which receives millions in federal funding every year.
This leaves homeless LGBT+ youth with even fewer options
for shelter and aide than their cishet counterparts.
If you would like to help in some way, I'll link to some homeless shelters and LGBT organizations
that are doing what they can to help homeless queer youth.
You can donate money, which they obviously need, or donate your time by volunteering.
It could mean the world to a homeless queer kid.
In the meantime though, if we want to protect young queer kids from becoming homeless in
the first place, we have to work on changing how people view LGBT+ people in the first place.
If parents can accept their children for who they are, there's much less of a chance
that they will run away or be kicked out.
That's why it hurts so much to still see people making fun of queer people in 2018.
I feel like people act like because marriage equality is a thing now, LGBT+ people are
completely accepted -- but that couldn't be further from the truth.
When straight dudes talk about how queer dudes make them uncomfortable,
they spread the idea that queerness is wrong.
When cis women claim that trans women aren't "real women", they spread the idea that being trans is wrong.
Surface-level LGBT+ tolerance isn't enough -- we need to be confronting anti-queer ideas
and actively fighting for LGBT+ acceptance.
It's unacceptable that parents are still disowning their children just because of their
gender or sexual orientation, but it's important that we recognize that it's happening.
You can't address a problem if you don't know it exists.
So, please check out some of the links in the description and do what you can to support
homeless LGBT+ youth.
Thanks for watching this video, and I'll see you next time.
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