Want to build your own queer community? Assuming we’re starting from scratch (as I so often did), here are my concrete steps to hosting and creating a dinner party for your chosen queer fam. Community requires patience and a lot of work, but the collective healing that emerges from these efforts is an endless celebration of queer love and excellence. In the midst of Pride month, where capitalism and cis gay men party culture can really take control of spaces, it feels especially important to share some of the practical things I’ve learned about creating the space I envision for myself.
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Over the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about how to curate and host a sacred queer space. Knowing our purpose, intentions and desires helps us create the space of restoration we all long for and deserve. It radically names that spaces for us are not only vital for building a better world, but they are the bedrock of challenging the systems that would try to strip our collective power.” QFD resists these systemic attempts to pull us apart into individualistic struggle and insists that there is abundant queer belonging, power, and healing within all of our communities if we chose to work towards it and intentionally carve it out. This has never been okay, and it never will BE okay. We see the exclusion of trans, femme, GNC, and lesbian identities in “masc” dominated circuit parties we see the rejection of trans folx from cis-heteronormative, feminist struggles we see black, brown, indigenous, and other people of color experience harassment, fetishization, and abuse in self-designated “inclusive” clubs. Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community is no exception to these forces at large, and oftentimes, can reinforce these institutions in insidious ways. Not only does this create a culture where certain folks benefit from the status quo, while others get crumbs, it breeds a societal mentality that scarcity is all that there is and belonging must be earned. We are a white-centered, cis-heteronormative, capitalist, ableist, transphobic, xenophobic, and racist culture in nearly every facet of life.
“Any reflection of today’s American society will point to a very grim picture. Vrushabh’s intentions were clear from the beginning: Our outgoing, bubbly, and endlessly loving leader, Vrushabh, made a point to connect with me and other queer, trans, and GNC folks to make one-on-one connections and curate a space where anyone who needs a home can find one in us. Queer Family Dinner came to fruition because a few core friends recognized the desperate need for restorative queer spaces. However, it was in these moments that I learned my first guideline in community-building: it only takes one other person. Most of my networking involved showing up to clubs or events alone, hoping for the best and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t seem to make any friends. In the past seven years, I’ve lived in six vastly different places where I was confronted with the option of retreating into the antisocial hermit I sometimes love to be or growing outside of my comfort zone to create a social and emotional network for myself. Is queer community really in this high of demand? Based on the sheer amount of leftovers in our fridge the next day, I can report that the answer is a resounding hell yes.įinding and creating an authentic queer community has been a skill I’ve developed and learned to heavily lean on as I’ve navigated the mess that is my 20s. The shoe pile at our front door slowly spilled out into the hallway and with each group of fresh faces I kept wondering how new folks even found us. At another moment, I was meeting two other writers who just moved to LA and expressed a desire to make queer community. At one moment in the evening, I was in a corner manifesting good sex with my other queer femmes. I didn’t recognize more than half the faces in my own apartment, but that’s what made the ambiance so exciting. The first few early birds were friends we knew well, dressed to the queer nines, bearing everything from a Greek potato dish to Ube crackers.īy 9pm the room was flooded with laughter, conversation, music, and the amazing smell of fried chicken our hot married couple friends brought later in the evening.
With a candle burning, Charli XCX playing on our speaker and the heat from the oven rising into the living room, we started to welcome guests right at 7pm. My roommate had been vigorously cleaning as I was moving furniture around and figuring out how to make my Thai noodle dish look as tasty as it actually is. This would be the first time we had guests over since COVID began and we wanted it to be special.
The 200 Best Lesbian, Bisexual & Queer Movies Of All TimeĪnxious energy consumed our apartment for most of the day.LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.