I hope it never gets old

On being in queer spaces

I can count on one hand the number of people I knew who were out and gay that I met in my life before I turned 18. I can count on the other hand the number of fictional characters I knew in that same time span. It wasn't until I went to college that I started to realize that queer people were everywhere, and that there wasn’t just one way to be “gay,” which is when I slowly (so slowly) started to stop repressing the feelings I'd been having my whole life. But I was still scared. I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade, and they were very clear about the spiritual consequences of being gay. They even taught us Matthew Shepard's story as a cautionary tale of the potential physical consequences. It was dangerous to be gay, and it wasn't until I started to meet gay people who were not only out and proud but happy that I started to dismantle the web of lies I'd been fed my whole life. But I was still scared. I remember once Freshman year, I decided to go check out the LGBTQ+ Center on campus, to see if maybe I could find some answers there. When I walked in, it looked like any other student lounge, but I realized I didn't know what I had intended to do when I got there. I stood in the entrance looking around for a minute, and when no grand plan came to mind, I just turned around and left. I wasn't ready for that. 

At the end of my first semester in college, one of the boys across the hall was transferring, so we had a big going away party for Neighbor Dan, who was gay. At the end of the night, as he was saying his final goodbyes, he told me, "You're going to make a great lesbian someday." It seemed out of nowhere to me, but now I understand. He saw in me what I wasn’t ready to see myself. He was a smart one, that Neighbor Dan.

I have more stories to fill in the college and beyond years, but we'll fast forward to 2013. I had been out for four years, but all of my queer friends were trapped in the internet. I talked to them on Twitter and in recap comment sections, but in real life I was still hanging out with mostly straight people. But then suddenly some of my queer internet friends became IRL queer friends, and that friend group kept growing and growing. 

And once I had a queer friend group, within a few years, we started to go to queer events. I went to a summer camp for LGBTQ+ adults and queer comic-cons, and it was amazing. Gay bars in New York City are almost always infiltrated by cis gay men and their straight girl besties, or straight bachelorette parties who visit gay bars like children visit zoos. But a queer summer camp, a convention specifically for fans of sapphic media...these spaces were filled with people I had more in common with. When you move through the world at large with a minority identity, being in a space where that identity is the majority is a really awesome feeling. And empowering! 

I went to my first queer event in 2016...and also my second and my third. It's likely not a coincidence that this was the year I started to seek out more community, and that I wasn't alone in that, but that's a conversation for another time. But also! Gay marriage had only been legalized nation-wide the year before. I was almost 30 and actively watching both my world and the world at large get gayer and gayer.

And of course, that's something I never take for granted. Because rights are being stripped away all the time, and in some countries it's illegal to even be gay. So every time I'm able to be in a queer space, I am grateful.

Which is what brings us to why I'm talking about all this right now in the first place. This past weekend, my friend Nic and I went to Flame Con, an LGBTQ+ comic convention in NYC. According to Wikipedia, it's the largest of its kind in the world, which is a little sad only in that it's still pretty small, but exciting that it exists nonetheless. Nic and I went to panels that talked about the importance of queer representation in youth entertainment, celebrating diversity in reboots and remakes of popular franchises, and celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Lumberjanes comics. We even got to see a live play of For the Queen that was deliciously queer and absolutely hilarious. We walked the exhibit hall floor and saw our favorite ships and shows displayed everywhere, as opposed to the scavenger hunt we usually have to do for sapphic art. I bought...so many stickers. Including one that says "All vampires are gay." 

And even though I've been out for almost 15 years now, even though I've been going to queer exclusive events for almost a decade, it still always feels exciting and special. I sometimes take for granted how infrequently I find myself in the minority when it comes to being queer in the spaces I move through. All of my friend groups are majority queer, and even sometimes when I'm with family, the queer people either equal or outnumber the straights, depending on our combination. And yet, it's still exciting seeing people cosplaying their favorite queer characters and being in a space where everyone compliments you and your friend on your "Read Queer Books" and "who all's gay here" shirts instead of side-eying them. We have our own inside jokes and short-hand and we love the same niche shows or background characters, and it's beautiful. And it's also a great way to find out about new queer media (mostly comics, for me, this year) that you may not have heard of because marketing budgets often aren't as big for LGTBQ+ projects. 

And I know some people would complain about how often I talk about queerness. “You don’t have to make it your whole personality.” Sure, I don’t HAVE to. But I want to! Being queer is cool as hell! Being part of this community is amazing! There are so many amazing queer artists and writers and creators out there making amazing queer things and it’s so fun to celebrate them. And we have to take advantage of the fact that (at least, as of right now), we are privileged enough to be able to gather and celebrate. It doesn’t come without risk, of course gathering in public to celebrate our community, but it always comes with high reward.

So I hope it never gets old. For me, at least. I hope there's a generation of kids growing up now who will never lack for a safe space, who will have no problem finding big gay groups of friends and having queer events to go to. I hope they don't even remember the first queer space they were in because they have been available to them their whole lives. But I hope I never forget how it felt the first time I entered an all-queer space, and I hope I never take it for granted. Because it really is special, that a community of people who spent decades being told to stay in closets and hide who we are never stopped creating spaces just for us and celebrating who we are and what we love. It's been amazing watching how far we've come in the past ten years alone, and I can't wait to see how far we can go.