When I went to Atlanta Pride in October, I couldn’t get out of my own head. I kept thinking about how disconnected I felt from the queer community. Guilt washed over me — disconnection was not what I was supposed to feel while surrounded by other queer people. Contrary to how pride events are advertised, being there in Piedmont Park and around Midtown did not make me feel like a part of this huge community, much less like I fit in or truly belonged. From my experience, the idealized queer community is just that: only an ideal. Contrary to popular belief, members of the queer community do not all innately understand each other by virtue of their queerness. I even struggle to find common ground with those I share the same identity labels with — gay, nonbinary, transfeminine — due to our differences in experience, and ultimately due to the fact that these “shared” identities shape people in such diverse ways.
People have their own queer communities and little groups in which they feel comradery and collective identity. However, the idea of a singular, expansive queer community that shares experiences, values and a homogeneous idea of queerness is a myth. Especially after arriving at Emory University as a first-year student, unfamiliarity made finding pockets of queer community more difficult, and that myth of a global queer network has been made more obvious to me than ever.
I grew up in a small Southern town in South Carolina, so I didn’t realize that I am queer until high school. After realizing my own queerness, I had a lot of catching up to do — I dove into queer culture, finding representation and role models through YouTube, Netflix, music and novels. I began thinking nonstop about my own queerness in relation to everyone around me and noticed how societal systems and people were working against my identity. I learned the sobering reality of anti-queerness in the United States, how it manifests in all spaces — from the federal government taking until 2003 to recognize people’s right to engage in same-sex intimacy (and that right is still being called into question) to the looks of disgust and even harassment I have experienced in school and elsewhere. I could not escape this anti-queer world. All I could do was strive to understand it.
Through relationships with high school friends, I gained that understanding of the world and people around me. I learned about the meaning of queerness in my small town, what queerness meant for my friends and what it meant for me. Queerness was equated to my best friends, the lewd jokes we made, the movies we watched, the men we loved and the men we hated, the actresses and singers we obsessed over, transgender slang, venting over text while at family events and so much more. I was ingrained in a queer community that was in many ways entwined with my own sense of who I am.
Now that I am in college, that community has disappeared from my life. The friends I grew into my queerness with, and the world in which we did that, are no longer part of my daily life. This loneliness and disconnection that I’ve felt in college is eerily similar to those feelings from when I first realized, devastatingly at the time, that I was queer.
Here at Emory and in Atlanta, there are plenty of LGBTQ+ resources and events, other queer people all around and more acceptance than I ever could imagine. Yet, I still feel alone in my identity. That is because I am on a certain level: My queerness, just like everyone else’s, was developed in a unique context. I made my first queer friendship as a sophomore in high school when my friend Audrey and I came out to each other as gay. Immediately, Audrey became someone to talk to. They felt the specific weight I was feeling and could understand me intimately. Our queernesses became enmeshed, influencing and growing with each other. As the year progressed, we began to confide in each other about feeling gender-nonconforming, and when Audrey ultimately came out as nonbinary, I was finally forced to confront my paralleling issues with my gender. Audrey set me on the path toward discovering my transness, and since then they have been my confidant for every struggle.
I don't even know what being trans is outside of my relationship with Audrey, and I struggle to relate to those who have different conceptions of it. I still feel more at home with them and other high school friends than anywhere else and with anyone else — those are the only times I truly feel not alone.
At Emory, it is daunting to navigate expressing my queerness to people who have had experiences completely different from mine. While I have made wonderful friends, I have not yet made a true connection with anyone queer. Partially, I’m afraid to — they may not see me like my hometown friends and our queernesses might not mesh. As someone experiencing gender dysphoria, discovering more of my identity and uncovering repressed pieces of myself, I need friends who are a refuge from the pain of everything else. Explaining my history, identity, gender and pronouns to new people at Emory is the last thing I want to do. It feels invalidating to even think about it — my friends from home just get me in a way that others do not.
I went to Atlanta Pride with Audrey and another queer friend from home. Despite the disconnection I felt, being there with my personal queer community livened me. I walked around that day with clothes, makeup, jewelry and my grown-out hair, and each of these made me feel more beautiful, free and like myself than I had in a long time. It was not only my appearance that caused this joy, but also the presence of my friends who know about my fight for those modes of expression and what they mean to me. At Emory, I have caught glimmers of that understanding and the joy that it brings me. Although I have not found the queer friendships I am looking for, I am slowly feeling more seen and at home here through kind words, messages and glances. Perhaps, with enough effort, I can cultivate those friendships on campus, and, by extension, that queer joy I lack.
Especially in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s reelection, I feel the absence of my community intensely. The threats that transgender Americans, like myself, face are immense, emphasizing the need for queer communities, small and large. Though I know from experience that I have the power to build my own community, not having easy and immediate access to a large, supportive queer community has left me feeling adrift.
However, I’m tired of feeling sorry for myself. Now, the need for powerful queer communities is more clear, even though that community is certainly a work in progress. Queer Emory students, including me, need to be brave, put themselves out there, get uncomfortable, make the relationships and truly build the community.
To those who feel they already have queer community here: Expand it. This point should go without saying, but, to cisgender heterosexual students: Be allies, and live your lives at Emory with open arms and minds. Crucially, Emory administrators must fulfill their responsibilities to proactively and materially support queer students and foster queer community on campus. Every year, there is a new crop of vulnerable, lonely queer students — many of whom have had their struggles exacerbated by increased anxieties about the future of queer rights in the United States and Georgia. Emory should dedicate itself to being more than safe — campus should be vibrant with queer community, setting an example for how the nation can become that too.
Contact Davis Swann at davis.swann@emory.edu.
