As Trump Attacks The LGBTQ Community, Queer People Are Holding Tight To These Spaces
When it became clear that President Donald Trump was going to be president again on election night, Paul Curry, a gay man in Seattle, took refuge in his friends.
“It felt like an inevitable gut-punch, or a recurring migraine, but we had each other’s back,” Curry said. “A week later, we saw Issa Man’s ‘Hard Candy’ cabaret show, went to a queer bar, danced and drank, then went to Cuff [nightclub] and danced a bit more scandalously.”
“No matter how bleak things get, we have each other to lean on, support, and, most importantly, joke around with,” he said.
Curry has also been leaning into Dungeons & Dragons, a game that’s increasingly become a safe haven for those in the LGBTQ+ community. (That’s in part because your character’s gender identity is entirely yours to invent: “You don’t need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender,” the game’s Player’s Handbook reads. “Likewise, your character’s sexual orientation is for you to decide.”)
“We’re a bunch of gaymers who gather every Sunday from 1-3 p.m.,” Curry, who’s a Dungeon Master, told HuffPost. “The world is spiraling, so it’s nice to escape into a different kind of chaos ― one where the cartoonish villains only last for one arc.”
Like so many others in the queer community, Curry has never valued his safe spaces ― the gay bars, his D&D get-togethers ― more. Often caricatured and used pejoratively by right-wing pundits, a “safe space” is any place where marginalized people can come together and feel safe to express themselves, without fear of judgment from the dominant culture.
These kinds of affirming communities aren’t just about safety — though that is essential. They’re about being seen in your fullness and not having to water down your personality, said Cindy Ramos, a therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York City.
“It’s where we can break free from the constant strain of having to perform or conform,” she said. “It’s essential to be able to share pain and challenges, but it’s equally important to experience joy, real, unburdened joy.”
It’s rooted in our history and our DNA as a queer community to find each other, even in the smallest of towns and unlikeliest of circumstances, and help, support, and love each other.J. Paul Reed, San Francisco resident
Out of necessity, queer people always found ways to build safe spaces, whether online (Discord servers or subreddits) or in physical spaces, like a queer-friendly “Stitch ’n Bitch” knitting circle, a gay club or a lesbian bar. (Sadly, safe spaces have come under attack in the past: Gay clubs have been the target of violent attacks including the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016. Lesbian bars in the U.S. are becoming few and far between.)
With the Trump administration already taking steps to end multiple policies protecting LGBTQ+ rights, safe spaces are vital to the community’s safety and viability, said Nicole Davis, who works with Ramos at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center, where she serves as clinical director.
“Breaking isolation, refusing to give into despair, and giving yourself permission to find joy or comfort or meaning is what will carry us through this time,” Davis said.
Physical Spaces
Chelcea Stowers of Detroit said her safe space is drinks with the girls. Stowers is the founder of Lesbian Social Detroit, a group that produces pop-up events around the city. Lately, they’ve partnered with a local hotel to host a biweekly happy hour where women can come, decompress, enjoy a drink and dance, if they’re so inclined.
“Having space to connect and have conversations on how we can grow as a community in spite of what’s going on has been huge,” she said.
J. Paul Reed of San Francisco has been leaning on his friends at SF Gaymers, a LGBTQ gaming community that hosts low-key hangouts in San Francisco and the East Bay. For his peace of mind, he’s been limiting the amount of media he consumes, so Gaymer events have been where he’s caught up on news he might otherwise miss.
“It’s a place where I can seek and offer help to my queer community in the wake of elevated attacks on us and organize when that inevitably becomes necessary,” he said.
“It’s also just a place where I can just be around friends, not focused on all of this, but still exist with a shared acknowledgment of that sense of, ‘Ugh, we’re doing this all again? F’ing really?!’” he said.
Queer people have a long history of finding each other and creating community when doing so was fraught, Reed said, and it’s been heartening to see younger members of the community recognize that.
“A lot of younger folks may not be familiar with that history, having grown up with the internet and apps and ways to engage that aren’t in the physical public square or gayborhood,” he said. “But know that it’s rooted in our history and our DNA as a queer community to find each other, even in the smallest of towns and unlikeliest of circumstances, and help, support, and love each other.”
Shane Cherry, the vice president of NYC Gaymers, values having physical spaces he can turn to ― board game and video game events in bars ― when the going gets tough. But he knows that isn’t true for everyone, especially those living in more rural areas.
“There are going to be plenty of people who are physically isolated in the city or elsewhere in the country, so a focus on virtual community spaces and simply actively working to build interpersonal connections are both also essential,” he said.
Online Spaces
In terms of social media, Cherry thinks the safest places at the moment appear to be private communities on platforms like Discord. (NYC Gamers has one, which he said LGBTQ gamers are welcome to join.)
Like many, Cherry has moved off of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter and now owned by Elon Musk) and Meta platforms owned by Mark Zuckerberg, whoattended Trump’s inauguration with a number of high-profile tech CEOs.
“Facebook’s recent policies of nearly eliminating fact checking entirely and specifically allowing users to refer to transgender users as mentally ill show how increasingly hostile it is on social media,” Cherry said.
“People who don’t have communities to support them will suffer the most, and nobody should have to feel isolated during such chaotic, oppressive times,” he said.
Cherry points to Reddit as one place with LGBTQ-friendly forums that are reasonably safe compared to the alternatives.
Jam Verona is the founder Human Flower Productions, a group that hosts “pay-what-you-can” portrait days, collage nights and other workshops for queer and trans people in New York and New Jersey.
“I make a lot of open creative spaces for queer folks because to me art is one of the best ways to communicate without having to justify ourselves,” Verona told HuffPost. “It gives hope, it shows queer folks that they have the power and autonomy to create different worlds.”
In an ideal world, affirming, affordable events like that would be easy to find, but Verona did offer some advice for those struggling to find something similar. For starters, ask around, and show up at your local queer bar regularly to see who’s hosting events there.
“If nothing like that exists where you live, create it. Talk to friends, friends of friends, BIPOC folks, disabled folks. See what your community needs,” Verona said. “Reach out to local libraries, queer-friendly churches, and queer bars to see who would allow you to host a free event.” (Verona has even hosted free events in parks.)
Professional Spaces
Queer people are banding together in professional circles, too. Cat Perez, the co-creator of Famm Connect ― the first social networking app for LGBTQ+ professionals ― said that when Trump took office, community activity on the platform surged by 50% week over week, reinforcing just how much LGBTQ+ professionals needed a space to connect and support one another.
Perez and her wife, Marianna Di Regolo, have made lasting IRL bonds on the app, which they co-created. She pointed to a hike they went on recently with another Northern California couple they met on Famm.
“What started as a casual outdoor meetup quickly turned into something deeper,” she said. “As we walked, we talked about our careers, but the conversation naturally shifted.”
“We started talking about our coming-out journeys, the complicated ties with some of our family members, and the weight of politics, especially when it comes to people in our lives who still support Trump or the Republican Party,” she said.
Being cloaked away in nature ― far away from a news cycle dominated by the Trump administration’s flurry of unilateral moves ― made it easier to just talk and concentrate on one another.
“There was no need to be quiet or cautious — just space to share, reflect, and be understood,” she said. “We touched on so much that often goes unspoken, the kind of experiences the world doesn’t always recognize.”
Volunteering Opportunities
Volunteering is another great way to find a safe space with like-minded people, said Rick Oculto. He’s been volunteering with the National AIDS Memorial since 2008, and they hired him last August. (Oculto is also a member and chair for SF Gaymers.)
“Because of the onslaught of news and how it affects both my livelihood and the lives of the ones I love, I’ve mostly been turning inwards and self-soothing through video games and the occasional rant session over brunch or Discord with friends,” he admitted.
He has been busying himself with volunteer projects, including making repairs to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which honors the lives of people who’ve died of AIDS since 1981 and is considered the largest communal art project in history.
“We were completing unfinished quilt pieces, providing protective layering to some older panels, and doing queer history trivia on the side while bantering back and forth about pop culture and our current political reality,” he said.
Though HIV/AIDS hasn’t affected Oculto’s friend group or some of the younger volunteers as directly as it has older generations, they still found comfort in engaging in living history and chatting.
“Being together doesn’t ‘fix’ anything in the sense of policy, but it does make the world we have to walk in that much lighter and enjoyable,” he said. “And I think the joy in the face of all the potential despair is crucial for both our survival and our evolution.”
