Introductory Chapter: LGBT+ Communities – The Challenges of Uncomfortable Spaces

1. Introduction

The concept of this book has been exciting for me. As an academic who teaches on issues of gender and sexuality and as a Queer community member and activist the idea of hearing from others about the challenges and strengths of community is something I was looking forward to reading and considering. The quest of this book has been to find authors who are speaking to these experiences of finding community in unlikely places, creating commonality and reinforcing ideas of humanity.

2. Conceptual framework

Let me first locate the notion of community for gender and sexual minority groups. There are many who have been suggesting that especially in large urban centres an identifiable Queer community or location (the idea of the Gay Village) has devolved [1]. Meaning that, particularly in large urban Canadian and American centres, areas where an identifiable grouping of Queer people live is no longer necessary. In these nation-states, we have rights and have been integrated into other urban locations and suburban areas. The need to organize and congregate is no longer as necessary in these spaces, although we all experience pride celebrations where we see the remnants of the former physical locations of gathering. In the argument of devolution, we must be cautious of the Americanization of Queerness wherein what many of us experience gets lost within the normalization of the experiences of a diversity of people in larger urban Canadian and American centres. Furthermore, the idea of devolution has been critiqued as we continue to see Queer and Trans communities forming and re-forming in small urban centres [2, 3] and in spaces where identity claiming is dangerous and represents struggle. Certainly, as someone who lives in a smaller town in Canada, finding others who are navigating Queer and Trans experiences has been necessary. Without the other people in this loosely based grouping of people, I would feel quite alone. For more on this we can look to the work of Henriquez and Ahman [4] to reiterate that for many Canadians living in rural spaces adds to precarity. For people living globally in much more dangerous circumstances because of their Queer and Trans identities, finding others is life-saving.

Therefore, when I was first contemplating how we might conceptualize the idea of “LGBT+ communities” I thought about the way community formation happens, and where we might find it. I considered the ways that groups form in online spaces, and how group formation can be either organic or contrived and planned. A place-based concept of the community did not fit how we live in spaces and what we might need from them. For many of us, living in challenged spaces, trying to find others who share struggles and can appreciate the complexity of identity is difficult and unsafe. If we live in spaces where our rights are non-existent, where our rights are being contested or even if we cannot see visible signs of Queerness and Transness, we look for other indicators that our lives have meaning and are legitimate. These are often online spaces, where we can see and can be seen. From this, the definition that emerged of community and was used to guide the chapters in this text is the loose grouping of individuals who share common struggles and joys.

Do we, as people who identify as gender and sexual minorities, share anything other than the understanding by the larger society that we are deviant? This question is persistent when we consider the vastness of identities and how intersections must play a part in these interrogations. The idea of deviance as an organizing concept may be as simple as Durkheim [5] suggested, that having a grouping within a larger society that is persistently deviant is useful, because this “deviance” helps others explore and maintain their “normal”. For those of us in this category of deviance, the experiences are different from each other. The Queer and Trans people in my small town cling to each other despite their different experiences of class, racialization, gender, ability, sexuality, and age. We derive strength from each other to support challenges and vulnerabilities that are as different as we are. Our persistent deviance is useful for us as an organizing feature and it is this that we use in our pride events to hold us loosely in the midst of larger community norms.

3. Concluding thoughts

It has been an interesting project, reading the drafts of chapters and discussing topics with the authors. One of the best conversations I had with a potential author was about the idea of human rights for Queer and Trans folk. For me, living in Canada, my rights are protected, and I live without fear of losing my job, my housing, my family, or my life. This is not accurate for most Queer and Trans people living around the world. In conversations with the potential author, we discussed how human rights are negotiable. Even in spaces like mine, where I live with privilege, these rights regarding my sexual identity may be taken away if the majority of people in my country decide that I should not have these rights. We are seeing this shift and change all around the world. At the time of this writing, Queer and Trans rights are actively under assault in the United States, Scotland, Kenya and many other places. I read as activists are maimed, silenced, and killed. Just two weeks ago in my own town, we held a counter-protest as protesters were challenging a Queer event at our local library. What this demands from all of us is vigilance and care.

To the people working within and supporting our communities of Queer and Trans folk, I say thank you and please keep up the struggle.