Our Future: 2017 in Review for LGBTQ Americans

2017 wasn't a particularly good year to be gay in America, which can most obviously be attributed to the course of Trump's presidency. In his first year in office, the president has consistently worked to roll back anti-LGBTQ discrimination legislation and packed courts with judges who have extensive anti-LGBTQ track records. And Trump's erratic, off-the-cuff style of governing certainly hasn't alleviated worries, when a random one-off tweet prompted by a segment on the nightly Fox News broadcast could prompt serious legislative action to roll back LGBTQ rights. The banning of transgender troops, the switch away from covering sexual orientation under the Civil Rights Act and the withdrawal of federal protections for transgender children in school have all presented serious reasons for concern among LGBTQ Americans.

On a cultural level, Trump's presidency has reinvigorated fears and awareness of how homophobic and transphobic America can still be. In a recent poll by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it was found that more than half of all LGBTQ Americans have experienced slurs, derogatory language and violence in regards to their sexuality. While for many this is simply business as usual, the last year has shown that violence and hatred towards minorities still lies beneath the surface of much of America, despite the fact that it's been less visible in recent times.

While the executive branch certainly hasn't given LGBTQ Americans any reasons to celebrate, significant progress was made on other levels of government in 2017. Transgender candidates had a historic string of wins across the country, spanning various governmental positions from state legislature to city council positions. In fact, more transgender public officials were elected in the last year than the previous 5 years. Though a less direct win for the LGBTQ community, Doug Jones's victory over Roy Moore in the Alabama election showed the ousting of one of the most violently anti-LGBTQ senators on record in a deeply red state.

In many ways, this was indicative of one of the more significant shifts in the last year within the LGBTQ community, which is the increased prevalence of transgender issues and transgender individuals within mainstream culture. Historically, the T in LGBTQ has been seen by most as an odd footnote, one that's confusing and hard to make much sense of. The increased legislative action on behalf of conservatives to silence and restrict the transgender community is, if anything, indicative of the fact that trans people are no longer a part of society that's overlooked by most.

From a global perspective, 2017 has been a mixed bag for LGBTQ rights. The revelation of Chechnya's gay concentration camps came as a bombshell at the start of the year. While Russia's troubling track record for LGBTQ rights has been common knowledge for some time now, the horror stories that came out of the spotty, restricted coverage from Chechnya showed a level of brutality that few could have fully anticipated. However, 2017 also saw the legalization of gay marriage in Australia, Germany and Taiwan.

Culturally in America, LGBTQ media and artists saw widespread success. One of the most notable instances of this is the drastic uptick in LGBTQ artists in hip-hop, a genre that historically hasn't been particularly welcoming to gay people. Brockhampton rose to become possibly the largest hip-hop act to come out of 2017, with member Kevin Abstract talking in-depth about his experiences as a gay man across the three albums they released this year. Tyler the Creator and iLoveMakonnen, two artists who have been standout acts in hip-hop in recent years, both came out of the closet. The film "Call Me By Your Name" stood out as one of the most notable successes of 2017, following in the path of "Moonlight" to prove that the stories and experiences of gay men have the potential for mainstream success.

Of course, if we're to talk about gay people across popular culture in 2017, it's impossible to ignore Kevin Spacey. The allegations lobbed on their own played a large roll in the shifting landscape for sexual assault victims, but what was more important to the LGBTQ community was his subsequent response in which he finally came out of the closet. With his declaration came the type of mainstream cultural stereotypes of gay men as sex-crazed pedophiles that haven't been seen in decades. But beyond that, it prompted a conversation within the LGBTQ community about sexual harassment, one that up until that point had mainly only been staged in regards to heterosexual harassment. It's a conversation that I hope will continue going into 2018.

Kyle Mangione-Smith is a filmmaker and student living in Boston.