Queering Healing

  We all celebrate and grieve in public places at different moments of our lives. But for queer folx these spaces are often the same. This is a documentation of the people who are encountering their own identities in spaces of simultaneous joy and pain. Intertwined are quotes by community leaders and scholars on the value and implications of queer spaces.   All photos and interview quotes are used with the permission of the subjects. This is an ongoing project, if you are interested in being featured please reach out!

[brandonalex]

Britney Spears tweeted this on June 12, 2018 on the 2 year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre.

👸🏼❤🧡💛💚💙💜👼

[revelandrioton]

2 years since the massacre of 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando FL. Every day 100 people are killed by guns in the USA. Demand action from your elected officials.  #HateKills #OrlandoPulse #OnePulse

[queeringhealing-blog]

Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Encinitas, CA 

Vigil for Victims of the Pulse Shooting in Orlando, FL - June 13, 2016

[queeringhealing-blog]

when our grief is tied to tragedies of that kind [in reference to the Pulse and Parkland shootings], or even grief related to certain identities that we have, I think places of celebration around queer spaces can really help that healing process

Roxanne Zech (interview March 15, 2018)

[queeringhealing-blog]

Sam/Sam (Grace Halvorson)

Sam

she held my hand

he pulled my hips towards him

Sam

he said “please stay”

all I could think of was her

Sam

she kissed her soft lips against the palm of my hand

he splashed me with stinging jacuzzi bubbles and warm beer

Sam

she twisted the rings that rested on the fingers of her left hand as I

Sam

he said “please stay”

all I could think of was her

Sam

she let me rest my hand on her knee and pretended not to notice how shaky I was

he firmly grabbed my knee so that I had to reach into the water and move it away

Sam

he said “please stay”

all I could think of was her

Sam

I don’t know his last name

hers, Frost, like how I feel when winter kisses my nose

all I can think of is her

https://www.therationalcreature.com/volume-2-fall-2017

[queeringhealing-blog]

Madison Kelts, New York, NY

"My twin sister who goes to school in Cleveland lives in gender neutral housing because their roommate is nonbinary and also polyamorous so my sister has gotten to talk to them a lot and honestly seeing them in the background of facetiming my sister and talking to them about shit has been amazing and it's not a physical space but it's totally a queer space"

[queeringhealing-blog]

Andre Batchelder-Schwab, New York, NY

"When I walk by Stonewall I think about my much older coworker at the library who is very gay and who had this man who he loved who died of AIDs back in 1982 and it makes me think of those kinds of stories, the suffering that had to happen for us to be at a place where today I can walk with my boyfriend in the street holding hands. And yeah we get stared at and sometimes we called out, depending on the neighborhood, but it's clearly not how it used to be, it's much more okay. And Stonewall is a testament to that, look at how far we've come. So it's like sadness in that my coworker had to lose all his friends and get fired from his job for being gay and all that while at the same time he has a partner today and he is gonna get married and he has a good job. You know, it's a story of progress. Stonewall is a place where I realize the privilege I have living in this decade. It could be so much worse. And it used to be."

[queeringhealing-blog]

Prior to moving to New York I didn't have any safe spaces. so for me the city itself is a safe space. I still experience that when my partner and I are here we hold hands in public. I'm not a big PDA person but we hold hands and I notice even still at home and in other cities I'm hesitant so for me, this city itself is safe. It's NY, everyone is accepted here no matter what. In particular I've found a safe space in our church, St. Francis. I'm very devoutly Catholic but it was always a point of contention for me because at home our churches were always a sacred space but not a safe space. And moving to NY finding a church with an LGBT Catholic lesbian group was so cool.

Ashley (interview on April 21, 2018)

[queeringhealing-blog]

Pulse (Grace Halvorson)

we only have so many spaces

and they are already killing us

pouring poison into our mouths

you say it was unexpected

but we showed up knowing

violent history runs through our veins

we curl our bodies into each other

lean in to shout over loud music

brief respite worth future hearing loss

she whispers “I love you baby”

he pulls the trigger

you say it was a terror attack

I am afraid

we only have so many spaces

[queeringhealing-blog]

Carley Moore, New York, NY

"When Pulse happened I actually did go to Stonewall. I didn't go inside but I went and hung out outside where everyone was meeting. I went by myself, like I didn't have anybody with me. I went to Stonewall by myself after Pulse just because I wanted to be around people."

http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/event/16-pills-carley-moore-dawn-lundy-martin-and-stephanie-k-hopkins-prince-street

[queeringhealing-blog]

Bori Kereszturi, New York, NY

"I actually don't love Cubbyhole though because I think a lot of women there are very aggressive and just because it's two women you can still be a predator. I feel like I was kind of taken advantage of there because I was so young. So I don't really seek out those spaces... I don’t think that I limit expressing my identity to a physical space but I do feel like social media is the best place for me to express my identity. I reach the biggest audience through technology and that feels powerful to me.”

[queeringhealing-blog]

"it kind of all started from a place of mourning and a place of activism. I think that a lot of the queer community is born in politics. and the fact that the only reason we have a LGBTQ community is because we need that space separate from all the oppression. so I think the way that queer people can create celebration from horrific marginalization, oppression, violence, and that that is really the heart of it is super important to keep in mind because we do get wrapped up in the stupid politics of who is queer and who isn't. It doesn't really matter because when it comes down to it, this community is because people hate us and we need to love each other because that is what we do have that's separate."

Avery Bonner

[queeringhealing-blog]

Lindsay Hollander, New York, NY

"When Pulse happened I was in DC with my girlfriend at the time, we had just gone to pride so when we found out we were devastated because that could have been any one of us. And pride had just happened so it was really happy and then to have that happen was crazy. So when we got back to the city I really wanted to go to the vigil at Stonewall but I didn't end up getting there."

[queeringhealing-blog]

Jalil Austin, New York, NY

"There are not too many spaces where you do have people of low income or black and brown identified or people who are not able-bodied to occupy these spaces but they also experience trauma as well. It also comes into this other question of whether there should be a new queer agenda. Like what would it mean to encompass these different narratives and making sure that everyone's heard. And even looking at homelessness as well, like marriage equality was all about assimilation to being in a civil union but the queer agenda never had a conversation about homelessness and how we're able to take care of not only queer youth in homeless shelters but everyone who is displaced."

[queeringhealing-blog]

Jenna Ruzga, New York, NY

"When I think of a queer space I think of... as lame as it sounds... Tumblr. I think it was probably the main factor in coming to terms with my bisexuality. Besides the fact that I had a crush on a girl. It's so open and nonjudgemental about LGBT things... On Tumblr you're either a leather jacket bi or a denim jacket bi and like obviously I'm a denim jacket bi... it's just really easy to identify with those things because its such normal stuff, like we're talking about clothing, not the big lofty fact that we like people of the same gender. It normalizes it and it becomes easy to go there."

[queeringhealing-blog]

a place at the political table that won't have to come, as it were, at the cost of our place in the bed, or the bar, or the baths. But there are no queers in that future as there can be no future for queers. The future itself is kid stuff, reborn each day to postpone the encounter with the gap, the void, the emptiness, that gapes like a grave from within the lifeless mechanism of the signifier that animates the subject by spinning the gossamer web of the social reality within which that subject lives

Lee Edelman (The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification, and the Death Drive)

[queeringhealing-blog]

Avery Bonner, New York, NY

"Pulse is what made me come out. I knew I was bisexual from like junior year of high school probably, not in so many words but my freshman year of college I was like yeah cool that's what that is. But I kind of thought I was one of those people who was like 'straight people don't have to come out so why do we have to come out?' ... but then after Pulse happened it made me so deeply sad and I thought, 'there are still people being literally murdered for being queer and the least I can do is make myself visible."