Trigger Warning: This article discusses topics such as domestic abuse, child exploitation, homophobia, and sexual assault. The videos linked to this article contain explicit (NSFW) content including sexual assault, domestic abuse, violence, and coarse language.
As I was sitting in my room, on my bed, bored and exhausted after a busy week of giving tours in the hot DC sun, I found myself mindlessly scrolling through the recommended for you section on Amazon Prime, eagerly and desperately searching for something new to watch.
As I was about to abandon all hope, an unfamiliar program with a rather thought provoking title piqued my interest. The feature I stumbled upon was an independent web-series entitled "Disposable Teens" which, until this point, I have never heard of before.
The series consists of one season containing five episodes which are six minutes each, amounting to about thirty minutes of total content. When I decided to watch this program, I was merely looking for an interesting way to kill thirty minutes of time. Little did I know was that this unknown, rather unassuming web-series tucked away in the fringes of the Amazon catalogue would bring me to tears, leaving me in a torrent of provocative thoughts and powerful emotions more so than any other piece I have watched in quite a long time.
"Disposable Teens" is set in New York City and documents the plight of 17-year old Austin who recently was outed as gay when his mother stumbled upon him and his boyfriend kissing each other. After being beat by his father for being gay, Austin runs away from home to an LGBT community center where an eager and compassionate albeit strained social worker refers him to a homeless shelter for LGBT youth.
Once at the shelter, the surly intake officer heartlessly informs Austin that there is no room for him and that he is on his own. Sleeping on a public park bench for days, the dirty, unkempt, battered Austin is approached by a man named Madison who appears as a good samaritan. Attractive and glib, Madison offers to take in Austin, bathe him, feed him, and provide him a bed and clean clothes. Desperate and without anywhere else to turn, Austin accepts the offer.
Unbeknownst to him, Madison's intentions for helping Austin was far from altruistic. Austin soon discovers that Madison is a photographer who forces the underage child to take pornographic photographs and videos in order to keep eating. Isolating Austin from his former boyfriend, social worker, and family, Madison proclaims that he now "owns" Austin and verbally berates the child as he protests Madison's perverse productions. Eventually, an infuriated Madison kicks Austin out of the apartment, and the season ends with Austin standing on a bridge, about to jump into a river.
LGBTQ youth homelessness has reached pandemic levels in America. Unaccepting home environments coupled with increasingly burdened and decreasingly funded social services programs serves as fuel to this fire. The statistics surrounding the issue are abysmal.
In 2015, 40% of the homeless youth population identified as LGBTQ, for a total of 22,000 LGBT teens and young adults living on the streets at any given time. Even more shocking is that 17% of these teens and young adults are HIV positive, and 5,000 will die each year from illness, assault, starvation, and other non-natural factors.
Furthermore, as the web-series brings to light, homeless LGBT youth are more at risk to become exploited through child pornography, human trafficking, and prostitution than either their non-LGBT or non-homeless counterparts. The final statistic is the most emotionally jarring-- over 53% of homeless LGBT youth will attempt suicide, compared to 30% of non-LGBT homeless youth, and 4.6% of non-homeless, non-LGBT youth.
At a time where LGBT individuals have achieved many victories in the past year, from the Obergefell v. Hodges marriage decision, to the Obama non-discrimination executive order, the alarming level of LGBT youth homelessness is unacceptable. This is often an area in LGBT rights that gets overlooked, as it is not as "sexy" as marriage equality or LGBT labor issues. The fact that there are so many LGBT teenagers and young adults who are homeless, starving, sick, and dying is an abomination for the most powerful economy in the world.
Thanks to series such as "Disposable Teens", the LGBT youth homelessness epidemic is beginning to be brought to light. However, unless we act as a nation to correct this societal wrong, this problem will only grow worse over time. Be the active change in your community to ensure every child, and every teen, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity is healthy, well-fed, and with a roof over their head. Donate to a local LGBT youth center near you, volunteer, or write your local legislators to demand change. Only if we act, will we see these glaring statistics begin to fall.
To check out "Disposable Teens" please visit the producer's YouTube channel here, or their website here. For citations to all facts referenced here, please follow the links in the article.
