Here’s the really great thing that’s arisen during the pandemic: I’m feeling more linked to the LGBTQ community than I have in the past two decades. This old dog is learning new things, too. Thank you, Zoom! It would probably be different if I had to connect with coworkers on a screen during most workdays. If that were the case, I’d probably be cursing the platform. Get people off my screen! Mute yourself! Stop posting questions! Let’s end this session!
For me, Zoom is a choice. It’s offers comfort and connection. I don’t have to put on shoes or change out of my shirt with the brand new coffee stain. (If this were a Rorschach test, I’d say it’s a horse’s head. And, no, I’ve never seen “The Godfather.”) Any anxiety is slight. Could I possibly get the time wrong? What if the link doesn’t work? What if they can see me and I don’t know it? (If only I’d changed shirts!) An event moderator appears on screen and, whew, all is good.
I lost my Zoom virginity relatively late, maybe mid-June. A children’s author talked about her new book and her writing process. Can’t recall a thing about it now.
Apparently it was satisfying enough that I Zoomed again a week later. This time it was an LGBTQ alumni event from the school where I got my undergraduate degree. Texas Christian University. My friends in British Columbia always crinkle their noses when I mention TCU. With both Texas and Christian in the name, they assume I was surrounded by Jerry Falwells and Ted Cruzes, the Bible on the required reading list for every class and a pistol as a basic school supply. Just because. (Hold on to your rights!) In truth, I had great times at TCU. It never felt all that religious, aside from a school prayer that kicked off each football game before we broke into cheers like “Give ’em hell” and “Kill ’em!”
Of course, I didn’t come out during my time at TCU. It was the early ’80s and I’d heard talk of some news article that the school had the highest proportion of gay students in the country. (Purple and white were the school colors, for god’s sake!) Article or not, no one was out. Not. A. Single. Person.
And so it was astonishing that, in 2020, there was such a thing as an LGBTQ alumni group and that the event came through as a regular TCU post on my Facebook feed. Turns out the Zoom session, a talk by a gay professor—Mexican-American, no less!—about the history behind one particular panel of the AIDS quilt, was the group’s inaugural event. As far as I can tell, there was no uproar. A second Zoom talk is set for next week.
Feeling fully Zoom-comfy, I’ve since attended several other LGBTQ events online: a talk with author Garth Greenwell, a discussion with Canadian artist Keith Monkman about his exhibit at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, three literary events sponsored by Word Vancouver and another put on by the Victoria Festival of Authors.
These are focused talks on LGBTQ matters—mostly, the arts—that go deeper than anything that comes up with my two gay friends I still see as the pandemic drags on. During our socially distanced coffee chats or talks during hikes, we’re more apt to talk about what everyone seems to talk about these days: the coronavirus and Trump’s latest appalling Tweet or stunt. (I look forward to a day when people can go back to whining about the weather.) Zoom offers an hour of gayness. More importantly, I’ve listened and learned about parts of the “community,” going beyond the G and, more particularly, the white G. The most recent event introduced me to four queer writers—one lesbian, two trans, one gay—who also identified as QTBIPOC (Queer and Trans Black Indigenous People of Color). Lots of letters. Terms like “cis” and “non-binary” were also thrown in the mix.
It all goes a long way from the L and the G that I grew up with, when the B was often challenged and mocked and the T was sometimes embraced, sometimes cause for distancing. At times, all the extra letters have confused me. In a post from January 2019, I favored LGBT or LGBTQ as the outer limit for non-hetero spoonful of alphabet soup. All the variations can be assumed to fall within the general G, the broader interpretation of gayness that goes beyond just men attracted to men. In the alternative, Q might be the catchall letter. Easy for me to say as a white gay man. In North America, I fall within the majority of the LGBTQ minority. G works for me. It offers me a sense of place. But now I’m learning how a gay Syrian refugee needs to identify and connect with BIPOC as much as he needs to come to terms with his place within LGBTQ and that he can find even greater validation when sharing thoughts and experiences with its subset, QTBIPOC. There are nuances in identity that a predominately white society doesn’t always pick up on, acknowledge or understand.
Some (presumably white lesbians and gays) will find all of this as too politically correct, too attention-seeking. (I cringe whenever someone says “too woke.” It drips with smugness and derision.) I get that all the extra letters can sometimes seem to create distance instead of community. By themselves, the letters do that. I’m just G (and I suppose I’m okay with the Q now). But, clearly, I’m not L, not B, not T and none of BIPOC applies. I suppose I could lament this. I could say it’s hard to find myself in this evolving community of Pride. Isn’t that what certain white Americans are doing when they begrudge new immigrant waves and the rising voices of people of different skin colors? This doesn’t look like the country I grew up in. Why should it?
It’s difficult for me to grasp that some people who come to embrace the rainbow flag fight for their own acceptance and then are content with calling it a day. I’m “in.” Let that be enough. Everyone else should assimilate. In our own community, I wish we all could dig deeper. We share a common yearning to be understood and accepted, but for that to happen for many of us, there are extra layers. For now, LGBT or LGBTQ will be the default label in print and in conversation. Still, if some Pride seekers want to and need to shine a light on an asterisk or an extra letter so that they feel their own sense of place, I can welcome that. I can seek to understand why that makes them feel more represented and more included. It takes nothing away from my identity as a gay man.
I’ve always valued diversity. It fascinates and excites me. In practical terms, however, my understanding has been somewhat naive, a bit too much like a flower child imploring folks to hold hands and sing, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” (Favorite commercial ever. Even if I’ve never been a Coke drinker.) These Zoom experiences have put me in touch with people I didn’t get to meet and listen to in my pre-pandemic comings and goings at the gym and at my favorite cafe writing hangouts. I could see diversity, but there was never engagement. It was as if there was more plexiglass around myself (and around them) then than now.
Even if all these events were held in a physical space a block away from me and the coronavirus never happened, I probably wouldn’t have attended any of them. I might have had good intentions but, as a socially anxious person, I’d have found an excuse to stay home.
This very strange year has offered unique opportunities. I am invigorated by the thought-provoking moments of connecting that have emerged through a landscape that, at first blush, appeared to be so isolating.
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