It’s prom season, and BuzzFeed is throwing a party of its own – a queer celebration to promote the concept that “normal is relative.”
For the website’s video producer and development partner Eugene Yang, the crowning dance was just another “night of normativity.” That’s because, as a gay teen, he felt the weight of heteronormative convention demanding that he take a girl to the big night.
“What’s supposed to be a milestone is instead a stumbling block that further delays our self-actualization,” Yang wrote in a piece for the Huffington Post. So that’s why he proposed the idea of a “queer prom.” And it’s actually happening this May.
Buzzfeed is accepting applications for those who “need access to a safe space for [their] prom,” and will fly between four and five LGBT students out to L.A. for the dance. The rest of the partygoers will be gathered from local high schools.
In a promo video for the event, LGBT Buzzfeed staff reminisced over their personal high school experiences, often marked by pressure to conform. “Many schools continue to discourage and even exclude LGBT students from their own proms,” one employee complained. (Although it should be noted that their behaviors, and not the students themselves, are discouraged.)
“Prom represents the right to experience an important and joyous event and it should be without discrimination,” another woman commented.
“For us,” Yang explained, the queer prom is “a way to show young people all over the world that ‘normal’ is relative and produce a point of reference they may not believe exists.”
One thing is clear. The LGBT agenda of making normal relative has been extremely successful in media and in liberal circles.
