Artist's Statement
Sofia Sanchez Manni
Issue
Internalized homophobia is a term rarely seen outside of queer theory despite its lasting and harmful effects on LGBT youth. In order to bring light to the issue, my Capstone project is a short digital comic detailing my personal experience with it and how it continues to have a hold over not only my life, the lives of those around me.
History & Distinction
Internalized homophobia has to do with how, by simply living in a heteronormative society, we take in dominant ideologies, which can often be homophobic, and unknowingly normalize them and take them as our own feelings. This is often done unconsciously. Like Veganscully and multiple other Tumblr users, who came together to throw together a PDF detailing the feelings of many modern lesbians, many growing and young queer kids grow up under the idea of compulsory heterosexuality (2019). This is described as being the idea that society pushes the norm of heterosexuality on youth so strongly, that many simply follow the norm without a second thought. This and the other details laid out in the document were all extremely relevant to my situation. However, this really all started with a manga by Kabi Nagata. A few years ago, this book was being highly praised not only in LGBT spaces but in more mainstream audiences as well. The reason for this is it’s a frank and often brutal honest look at the author's struggle with her identity and her mental health. She doesn’t shy away from the ugly parts of self-loathing and self-harm and for many, it was a refreshingly real look at something that was painfully relatable. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is a simple, 4 panel (known as 4 Koma in Japan) per page manga with 6 chapters that cover the topic of mental illness and sexuality by recounting a specific story about the author having a sexual encounter with another girl for the first time in her life.
Approach
In order to begin this project, I first needed to reflect on my experience and write it down. From there I read more books with similar themes. Some of these books included Bloom Into you by Nakatani Nio, Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani and Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. All three of these pieces show different experiences with internalized homophobia and how to overcome it (if at all). I also interviewed multiple LGBT friends about their experience. The questions were left very unstructured, as I wanted them to lead the conversation and not put my bias into their responses. I asked them to tell me about their experiences with internalized homophobia and then let them take that question where they wanted. In total there were 6 responses in total. With all this gathered, I began to draw the comic with my Ipad on Procreate.
Audience & Impact
The audience for my capstone is not only other LGBT people but anyone who wants to work towards being a better ally. By using not only my experience but that of those around me and one I find in the media, I hope to paint a more complete picture of a struggle that is often warped or invisible.
References
Baldwin, James, and Caryl Phillips. Giovannis Room.
Kamatani, Yuhki, et al. Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare.
Nio, Nakatani, et al. Bloom Into You.
Nagata, Kabi, and Jocelyne Allen. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness.
Interviews collected from multiple LGBT people.
Veganscully, et al. “Am I a lesbian?”
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Heather and my fellow art scholars for all the help and to my wonderful friends who shared their stories with me. You all mean the world to me!