The purpose of LGBTQ+ Visibility is to showcase the versatility of visibility; the power of visibility to unite communities while also acknowledging its power to do the exact opposite. Recognition and representation of LGBTQ+ identities in the media and politics have always been a double edged sword. Through drawing a timeline of the constraints and liberties assigned to venues of LGBTQ+ visibility, one can demonstrate how LGBTQ+ visibility has positively and negatively shaped media, sex, politics, and regulations over time. In media, LGBTQ+ visibility has lead to LGBTQ+ positive films, songs, art, TV shows, novels, etcetera, some of which have even won prestigious awards on an international sphere. In politics, legislation, policies, and programs have been created to make accommodations for LGBTQ+ people to live without hiding gender and sexual identities. For better or for worse, the effects of sexual-and-gender based liberation and increased visibility on popular consumer media are portrayed in this exhibit. The symbiotic relationship between visibility and liberation and how the two affect one another will be demonstrated.
Despite superficial differences, all of the archival objects displayed all have a connecting thread: representation in society. While some artifacts display a more clinical approach, such as a description in a library cataloguing guide, compared to a more humanizing narrative, such as a photograph of street activism, they all elaborate on the complex history of LGBTQ+ visibility and representation in society. The LGBTQ+ community has been fighting for increased visibility for decades. In early years, LGBTQ+ visibility meant that the community was seen by society, but only through discrimination and intolerant practices, such as harmful or vague descriptions of LGBTQ+ identities in dictionaries, for example.
Over time, as LGBTQ+ membership increased, activists began to create political movements. Working in a political landscape through protesting and activism served as an effective way to make change. An early example of this is the Lavender Menace Zap in 1970, or the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in 1971. Radical protests involve directly forcing LGBTQ+ identities into visibility, refusing to be ignored by the dominant pulse on culture that regulates what is acceptable and what is not.
LGBTQ+ Visibility displays the importance and effects of visibility for LGBTQ+ identifying people. With heightened visibility comes a spectrum of both positive and negative effects, meaning that even though specific events and movements led by the LGBTQ+ community are needed to create change, these events can also lead to negative stereotypes and increased discrimination.
LGBTQ+ Visibility harkens back to previous course and class materials, such as chapter five from The Feminist Revolution by Bonnie J. Morris and D-M Withers, the Lavender Menace, the destructive capabilities in visibility as discussed in the section about pinkwashing, and chapter three from Sexual Identities & the Media by Wendy Hilton-Morrow and Kathleen Battles. The exhibition features objects of both international, national, and local recognition, and of relevance to LGBTQ+ communities. Due to cultural differences and accessibility, some objects may be more important on an international level than to the LGBTQ+ community, and vice versa.
Header image credits: uploaded by informatique on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/people/80824546@N00). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)
