• DOI:10.1177/0896920515571761
• Corpus ID: 145751398

“One Day I’m Going to be Really Successful”: The Social Class Politics of Videos Made for the “It Gets Better” Anti-Gay Bullying Project

@article{Meyer2017OneDI,
  title={“One Day I’m Going to be Really Successful”: The Social Class Politics of Videos Made for the “It Gets Better” Anti-Gay Bullying Project},
  author={Doug Meyer},
  journal={Critical Sociology},
  year={2017},
  volume={43},
  pages={113 - 127}
}

• Doug Meyer
• Published 1 January 2017
• Education
• Critical Sociology

The author examines the “It Gets Better” (IGB) anti-gay bullying project, focusing particular attention on social class narratives in videos made for the campaign. Results, based on a content analysis of 128 videos, indicate that individuals most commonly began by describing negative experiences during adolescence before shifting to a narrative of progress, emphasizing how their life had improved since high school. In doing so, the makers of the videos drew on class-based standards of success such as traveling, attending college, and moving to a big city. At the same time, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people sometimes stigmatized the bullies in classist ways. Thus, as IGB encourages makers of the videos to underscore their financial success and to condemn the perpetrators of anti-gay bullying, the project reinforces the cultural elements of neoliberalism.