Queer (Mis)Connection

This is a personal narrative, I do not to intend to write about any other experience but mine.

In a digital age with easy access to individuals in different locations, it is hard to develop an authentic connection with another person. Disclaimer: in most of my blog posts I talk about queer issues, and I have talked about this vaguely. When I say queer, I refer to individuals against identification. That is, under the umbrella term of ‘queer’ I refer to any individual, any ‘body’, any ontological being that takes up space and is of the human species, or not, and often resists any identification, that being ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘bi’ and others. Till this day the term is debatable.

Old members of the queer community often talk about the heydays of cruising, promiscuity, and the dangers that this involved. Today these are practices that still happen very often, but in my experience, they have not occurred to me. Perhaps, it is a lack of self-esteem and internalized timidity, but the vast majority of men I have met have been through an online medium, and I struggle to meet queer groups with a cause in my socio-geographic area.

The other day talking to Alison Bechdel while she was at Rutgers, she mentioned how back in the 80s queer bookstores, cafes, and other queer spaces filled NYC. These places were a meeting point for a lot of members of the community. The contemporary reality is that this is not an occurrence anymore and growing up in the many places I have lived, queer spaces were not available to me.

Modern technology has structured my interpersonal relationships in a way that is not the most sustainable. A clear indication of this has been being called ‘self-destructive’ by a few partners. Apps like ‘Grindr’, ‘Tinder’, ‘Scruff’ and many others mobile applications have omitted the physical component of courting. The lack of queer spaces, or access to the few remaining spaces isolate many who find themselves out of the queer community. By this I intend to highlight the exclusivity of many ‘inclusive’ queer communities. It is a fact that modern queer issues are disseminated through online currents, and this raises a troublesome concern, the exclusion of the people not participating in these online communities.

The issue here is a complicated one with no simple answer. But, it is evident that the diminishing physical queer spaces, and the introduction of the internet have changed the way queer individuals gather and connect. For many, living outside major cities, finding an accepting community is difficult and almost never happens.

 In my experience, due to the nature of my upbringing, I did not know anyone besides the norm-heterosexual and living in six different countries did not help me understand what a queer space was (FYI, I have lived in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, US, and the Netherlands). Whenever I hear old members that belonged to the radical queer movement from the 60s to 80s, I am amazed at the activism and ease that was for individuals to meet and develop close-knit communities, cults, organizations, institutions, etc. Compared the previous thought, in modern society there is a concerning over-saturation of media, of events, of queer-claiming events, yet all these events, all this needed activism and organizing, feels unauthentic and not radical. The new organizing, due to the digital overload, has created the last remaining queer spaces with a fragmented community of members, where the technological convenience has eradicated the need for the queer physical gathering and connection.

Recently this topic has been an interest of mine. Considering privilege, access, and language, the new online communities that have appeared because of the internet are very niche. And, I wonder whether the advantages of this new phenomena are actually good? Or, if as a collective we must change the dynamic in place? I am still pondering about it.