To be queer in this violent world

I woke up this morning to the same news you did

Content warning: reference to suicide and violence against queer people. Tread gently.

I woke up this morning to the same news you did. I woke up this morning and went to work and bleary eyed and heavy hearted worked my way through the day, thinking thinking thinking of what it is to be queer in today’s world. In today’s America. In today’s New Zealand. Today.

I woke up nauseous, nauseous with anxiety about all the change happening in my life, the uncertainty, the emptiness, the blank and shining winding path forward that I feel like I have no control over. Then I read the news and my nausea notched up and I remembered just over a year ago lying in my bed, asking Arlene if I would be hate crimed as people sent me death threats on the internet.

Gun laws in Aotearoa kept me safe, or at least, I hoped they would, and they did. The audacity of people behind a screen but their meekness outside of social media kept me safe, or at least, I hoped it would, and it did. I wondered if gender essentialist midwives with piercing words, half a world away could throw a physical punch, and if I could duck in time.

I think of the 5 dead and the 25 injured and the countless others who bore witness to the attack at the LGBTQ+ night club in Colorado Springs on Saturday night and I think how their lives will forever be changed, cut short, broken. I feel ill for the parents who will receive a phone call that their child was in the firing line. To grieve your own child - a hell no parent should ever have to go through. I was a queer and suicidal teenager. More recently I was a queer and suicidal adult. I remain alive because I know, from seeing in my extended family the way suicide tears a mother to pieces, rips a brother’s heart in two, and forever guts a girlfriend, that I could never do that to my parents. My parent’s hypothetical grief of their queer child has kept me alive for a long time, it always will. I will do everything in my power to survive this messy fucked up world if it means my parents do not have to grieve me, before I grieve them.

Photo by Pim Myten on Unsplash

And then I think how much worse this is because those night clubs are supposed to be safe havens. Those safe havens of queerness where like minded people gather become homes, become families for those thrown out, those left by the wayside, those cut off from their families and homes and parents after coming out, or welcoming their parents in, to the knowledge that they are queer. Those kids in that night club, even if they weren’t kids, they were somebody’s kids, those kids in that night club were in their own home, their own safe haven, their own place in a world that tells them they do not belong. I think of them frozen in time, sweaty with joy and movement, I hope as the shots rang out their lives ended before the horror set in. I hope they died in a moment of bliss filled ignorance with glitter on their cheeks and disco lights pulsing in their eyes.

I have thought and read about how politicians must bear some responsibility for this. You can’t wage wars of words against queer people, call us groomers and pedophiles and a threat to humanity and refuse to teach about or acknowledge our existence in schools then act surprised when a young indoctrinated man picks up a rifle and shoots us dead. It was a long range rifle I read. The same kind of rifle people in New Zealand can legally carry if they’re licensed. No hand guns, no concealed weapons, nothing but the audacity and assuredness of knowing that right wing politicians told you this was worthy work as they lined their pockets with hatred and greed. I think of how unsafe it is to be in America. I think of how my Aunty considered homeschooling my younger cousin after Sandy Hook, terror everywhere she looked, terror and gun violence and no promise of safety not even in the room of kindergarteners and their cut out turkeys stuck up on the wall for thanksgiving this week.

I think about how New Zealand isn’t so far behind the U.S. I think about how when I was younger and more naive than I am now, and before that Ariana Grande concert got bombed and before the Christchurch Mosque shootings and before conversion therapy was banned and the hate speech came out in spades with that campaign, and before I become engaged in online conflict with UK TERFS and all the before’s of a more innocent me that I had told the children I nanny that “things like that don’t happen in New Zealand,” and I meant it. I meant it and I believed it but now I would never say anything so simple. I would maybe say I am scared too or this life is full of scary things and we go on living anyway. But I would never say things like that don’t happen in New Zealand. Because labour just passed an amendment to the hate speech laws that only protects religious groups, not queer people who face hate from those religious groups, not women, not trans folk, not anybody who has had religion forced down their throat in the most hateful of ways. Because National politicians voted against banning conversion therapy. Because Stand Up For Women isn’t labelled as a hate group even as they tell trans people that their lives are less worthy of justice and humanity. I think about every politician who voted against marriage equality in 2013 and I think about the woman who yelled at me as I walked out of an appointment the other day that queers like me should burn in hell. I think about it all and I cannot find it in myself to say or to think or for a single moment believe that things like that don’t happen in New Zealand.

I live in a queer friendly neighbourhood at the moment. My neighbours are queer, my flatmate is queer, the man over the road who yells abuse at us most weeks is definitely not queer and I am very scared of him but I can walk down the road looking my most butch and I can walk into any barber shop and be treated like one of the boys and I can live my day to day life as freely as most straight cis people can, most of the time, I only get hate yelled at me for being queer once a year or so - that’s not so bad in the scheme of things, I think. The same can’t be said for other suburbs or cities or towns within New Zealand, where I would be less safe, where I would get hate yelled at me more often.

But today I do not feel safe. Today I do not feel brave. Today I do not feel resolute that my country is a safe haven and that things like that don’t happen here. Today all I feel is grief. For my queer brothers and sisters and their blood that drip drip dripped onto the dance floor, their home, their living room, their dining table, their family members. Today I feel sad, and scared, and alone in this big wide world. Today I am a little more worn down, and broken, and far less resolute about progress and the liberation of all queer people. Today feels hard to be queer.

I hope if today being queer feels hard for you too, that you have a family, chosen or born into or otherwise who you can find safety in. I hope you can whisper to yourself I am safe. I hope you are safe. I hope I hope I hope. Most of all I hope I never wake up to hear news like this again, and I know, that hope is a far fetched one, and then, the nausea returns.

---

If you are LGBTQIA+ in Aotearoa and need support you can find it at Outline -

https://outline.org.nz/ or call 0800 OUTLINE