Because you are Wearing a Pink Shirt

            The most common and easiest way people judge others is by a person’s appearance. It is the first experience of the person you get, so it is what you base one of your first impressions on. Homosexuality is greatly associated with bright/neon colors, predominantly pink and purple or even more widely known, all of the colors within the rainbow.

In one of the Simpsons episodes, Homer was thrown in an asylum because he wore a pink shirt to work one day. When he showed up to work he was immediately ridiculed by his coworkers and punished by his boss by being interrogated. He then failed a psychiatric test because Bart answered all the questions with yes and was put in an asylum because he was “not right in the head.” He was being treated like this just because he was wearing a pink shirt! We are taught it is more feminine, therefore associated with being homosexual.

This sounds familiar doesn’t it? The cinema workers who were openly homosexual were constantly harassed by peers and coworkers. A majority of them lost their jobs and were not welcome in the work place specifically because they were homosexual. This wasn’t only consistent with homosexuals in Hollywood, but it was the treatment of all open homosexuals, transgendered people, and even people who were less “gender appropriate,” for example men acting more feminine. Discrimination and harassment against the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community still takes occurs significantly today. You constantly here stories and news reports about an occurrence where a person, usually a teenager or young adult who has been harassed to the point of being physically abused by peers and even causing some to commit suicide due to the intensity and frequency of the harassment. It really is pretty disturbing and even more saddening that people can treat others to this severity.

One subtle thing I noticed the sign for the asylum Homer went to said “Home for the Emotional Interesting.” Having the sign read this reinforced or poked fun at the fact that people associated homosexuality with a mental illness or thinking that homosexuals need to be fixed and some people still think that today. This is because the heteronormativity mindset of America, which is the thinking that the normal sexuality is that of being heterosexual.   Is it appropriate to say that America is straight centered, dominated, and identified? I would say yes we predominantly are. Although, an increasing amount of people in higher positions in society are coming out, such as actors, entertainers, athletes, and political leaders. The rise of homosexuality and the support of homosexuality is on a slow rise.