Queer theorist Jasbir Puar visited the College on Thursday, Sept. 22, to give a lecture entitled “The Cost of Getting Better: The Ecologies of Race, Sex, and Disability.” The Goldfarb Center for Civic Engagement and the women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) department co-sponsored the popular event.

Puar is an associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Her book, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, won the 2007 Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Puar is also published in a number of academic journals, as well as the British newspaper,The Guardian.

In response to the high number of suicides among gay youth last fall, author Dan Savage founded the “It Gets Better” campaign. Savage and his partner recorded a YouTube video titled “It Gets Better” in hopes of inspiring teenagers facing bullying and harassment. Within months, political activists and celebrities started making their own “It Gets Better” videos to support the campaign.

During Puar’s lecture, which was expanded upon her op-ed piece about the “It Gets Better” campaign for The Guardian, she asked the audience to reflect on the effectiveness of the campaign. As she stated in her article, “In the Wake of It Gets Better,” the video does not speak to all gay youth. The subtitle of the article reads, “the campaign prompted by recent gay youth suicides promotes a narrow version of gay identity that risks further marginalization.”

Puar began her lecture by retelling the story of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi. Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge in Sept. of last year after his roommate, Dharum Ravi, posted a video on the internet of Clementi kissing another man.

The only good that came out of this event, Puar said, was that it incited anti-bullying campaigns, like “It Gets Better,” and more LGBTQ support centers opened.

Puar expressed concern that Savage’s video did not touch on the abjection or shame felt by LGBTQ people. “His message translates to: come out, move to the city, travel to Paris, adopt a kid, pay your taxes, demand representation,” she said.

However, Puar added that she did not want to dismiss the “It Gets Better” videos, which show people what it means to go “viral.” “This means that [a message] can get around and [open up] a way of thinking differently,” she said.

In her new project, Puar hopes to extend these theories to “broader social justice issues about disability,” she said. Her new book will link issues about health, debility and capacity with the ideas of the “It Gets Better” campaign. She explained that regardless of one’s physical limitations, “you’ve got to live. You have a rehabilitated and clear body that has to live.”

During the question and answer session, Puar said that she is interested to see the effects of the “It Gets Better” campaign. “I’m not trying to say whether or not it should have happened,” she concluded.