Part 1: Mainstream Queer Culture
What I have noticed is that generally, most Americans, queer or cishet, assume that there is "one queer culture" built off ballroom and gay bars of urban centers such as NYC and San Francisco. Now that culture, largely built by trans WOC, has been the most financially successful of queer culture. Ballroom slang is appropriated by white girls in Estonia, and drag has been turned from a niche exploration of gender into white gays and cishet women appearing on a multimillionaire's tv show.
If there were some sort of queer culture war to appear financially and more socially popular, then this route of queer culture would have won.
But the truth is that for many queer kids, they don't grow up in this environment. What this often leads to is white gay kids in the suburbs of ohio copying aave they heard on tiktok, but in the experiences of many queer kids, it leads to another form of queer culture completed seperated from the mainstream.
Part 2: DND, MTG, and suburbia
For me, as a queer kid, I lived nowhere near any center of the mainstream form of queerness. I had no access to it my entire life. I was the head of my high school GSA, a GSA that had around 6 members in total at my small school. In high school, I was out as a form of queer, not out as a trans woman, but out as queer and nonbinary. Comphet and tying to appeal to femininity made me date a transman at my school for a while before I realized I was a lesbian.
My experience with queerness and discovering myself, though, was largely through the nerdy friends I had who were accepting. In a town where there is NOTHING to do, the one area of nerdy interests becomes the one area where the "others" can compile themselves together for socializing. My friends were all nerdy men and women with whom I played games and DND with. We played Magic: The Gathering at the card/comic book shop, and I was able to explore how I dressed and viewed myself and my gender and sexuality and body in a safe environment.
Why was this safe? Well do to the othering that nerds already receive, even if they are cishet, while young, in small schools such as the one I was in, these nerdy spaces become a place where all the freaks can be friends together. I was a freak, to the common culture, for being queer and nerdy. My friends were freaks for being brown and nerdy, or immigrants and nerdy, or fat and nerdy, or women and nerdy, but our shared geekiness brought us together.
What this led to for me was a queer culture which is less connected to ballroom and more connected magic the gathering, tabletop games, and other activities. Since that was the safe space for me, it became how I interacted with queerness. Even when I moved to a city and became connected with a friend group that was 100% queer, our queerness was still connected through this nerdy queerness and not through mainstream queerness.
Part 3: the bedroom and suburbia
Another big thing for me was the bedroom. Access on my computer to social media allowed me to explore my queerness in safety, and in ways I was unable to IRL. The IRL nerdy experience had its limits, and the bedroom brought the rest of what I needed.
You see less IRL culture from nerdy queers, I think, since they are far more isolated than those who, in big urban centers, can form bars and clubs.
Instead, the art of the other trans women I interacted with online was primarily digital. We made music, games, and drawings. I sucked at all of it, but the girls who were much, much better than me have been some of the most successful and influential artists of recent times.
Instead of creating IRL art in the cities, they stuck to online, creating their own art and culture, which became super common on sites such as reddit in tumblr in the 2010s. Our culture became one we couldn't fully express in person, due to our conditions, and so we stayed online.
Part four: conclusions
This is not to say one type is better than the other. I don't believe so. I think it's just different conditions that create different kinds of queer people.
But it is to say that queer culture isn't monolithic. My queer culture is very different than a lot of other trans people, and I am ok with that. I still love the art and queer culture I grew up in; I still hold many of the same hobbies and interests which I gravitated to as a young queer woman, and I have been able to appreciate things from more mainstream queer spaces as an adult who has seen more of the world.
I also don't think I am less queer for not fully being included in the aspects of queerness which have become mainstream. I am sure I would have if I grew up in a city, but I didn't, and instead I searched for community where I could find it.
