The following piece is part of a series of articles and essays on sexual assault and harassment in WashU’s social justice and activist community. This piece contains discussion of sexual violence.
Power-based Violence and the Lgbt community
I remember the first queer party I ever went to. The soles of my shoes stuck to the wood floor from a mixture of Jell-o shot and tequila as I stood at the center of the living room, looking meekly at the other freshmen. Through a crack in a crowd of sweaty bodies, I saw that someone’s ass had left a set of blue streaks on the wall. To the left of that streak, I saw a gay couple, and made eye-contact as they kissed each other while shadowed in a corner. Someone in a floral crop top put on a hand on my shoulder as they passed by, and they gave me a drunken smile framed by dimples before wobbling to the other room.
I was alone at the party and smiled to myself, because the floor was sticky, like a face right after crying, and the room hot, like the heat of a blush when exposed. The reflections of the party lights against the sweat and spills reminded me of the lights of my friend’s basement where I spent the night with my first partner, and our parents didn’t know, couldn’t know, but we made out anyway. It was the kind of temporal merging that could exist only in a rare pocket of freedom, where queerness existed not as margin but as collective. I think, after wandering my way back that night, I laughed while showering because the night was so exhilarating, in a way that could only exist when one felt truly home.
What thrilled me most about the night was their existence relative to the violence of the world outside it. When queer and trans* people are murdered, assaulted, exiled, and erased, the community is forced to acknowledge a brutal reality: we live in a world made for the straight and cisgender. When I was young, this reality was a hard one to swallow. I was bitter about my rejections, bitter about my supposedly liberal family and a life of normalcy I would never have. The first time I met another queer person felt like gazing into the mirror after a long, dreamless night.
So I collected more, wherever I could find them. In high school and in college, I surrounded myself with the queer and trans*, absorbed LGBT media and copied their clothes and lingo. I gradually learned that, at the margins of queerness, survival is hinged on wearing camouflaged self-sustainability. That the queer people who survived rebuilt their lives with only those they wanted and who wanted them in return. Through chosen family structures and close kinships, LGBT people are able to navigate a prejudice-laden world.
As I've dived further into the depths of the LGBT WashU bubble, I’ve also learned that these survival tactics are precisely what makes the LGBT community a danger to queer and trans* people. Despite its illusions, you will learn through whispering conversations and rumors that the LGBT community is not a perfect, safe space of equality; its tight kinships sustain it through the toxicities of social hierarchy and isolation.
For every student group, there is an executive board. For every community event, there is an organizer. And among all these leaders is a collection of stars that are chosen and uplifted as the bearers of queer ideals. Through their conventionally attractive looks, wide reaching networks, vocal natures, and expert use of popular social justice rhetoric, these stars serve as key organizers for political and social events. LGBT social dynamics are thereby made to revolve around central figures that form the standard for living as an unproblematic queer and trans* person.
Then there is the matter of those who are not leaders. Many members admire the stars of the community, looking to them for advice or as goals to one day achieve. Those that do not fit the perfect image of the politically charged, family-like community member meet ill social fates, or faze themselves out of the LGBT community entirely. Those who are comfortable, who gaze upon the wonders of our parties and gatherings with starry eyes, refuse to acknowledge this, gesturing vaguely towards proclamations of “safe spaces” when addressing the exclusivity of their cliques.
Social politics are crucial in understanding the foundation of our growing epidemic of intra-community violence. With influence comes power, and with power comes the opportunity for abuse. With their power, leaders have the ability to coerce other LGBT people into sex, and can target members of the community with less social capital. After all, who is likely to be believed -- the younger, freshly out, or barely known survivor, or the perpetrator who organized your most recent on-campus protest?
Perpetrators will abuse their power by restricting the availability of queer and trans*-friendly spaces, often occupied by influential leaders (who gain influence by perpetually taking up space). Prolific leaders can push survivors out of community spaces by virtue of their merely being physically present. How could our leaders, who stand for equality and justice, allow the presence of known perpetrators?
The answer is that leaders are usually friends with other leaders. These friendships are not shallow; many influential figures in the community have suffered through identity development together. It’s hard to comprehend when the first queer person you fucked, the first person who taught you that you could fuck, the person who cried with you, made gender fluidity acceptable, self love radical and possible, is a perpetrator of sexual assault. It’s hard to process that a mythical crop-top wearing symbol of possibility could inflict harm so grave, so earth shattering, on a fellow member of the community. The incongruities of these experiences give perpetrators the power to shift survivor narratives in their favor. Perpetrators may say that it was simply a “misunderstanding.” They may appropriate social justice rhetoric, proclaiming that the survivor is “abusing their privilege” or “denying their sexual autonomy.” And because of their emotionally deep connections, leaders will believe these stories, or will at the very least do mental gymnastics to fit the violence into their heuristics of community love. The perpetrator’s twisted narrative is then retold, rippling through the community to form conflicting truths that drown the survivor’s story.
This influence holds true even for those who are not close to the perpetrator. A leader’s public character seems solid in the face of their activism. LGBT members therefore hesitate to believe that perpetrators are “capable” of violence or harassment. Doubt becomes a powerful instrument in the prevention of collective action.
Through all of the delegitimization, all the desperate clawing for our beloved community, the leaders who denounce these narratives will do absolutely nothing. The social capital they hold is precious to them; they would rather allow this blistering wound to fester than to rock their socially-padded boats. They may proclaim their belief in survivor narratives. They may support anti-violence events and discussions. But will they show up? When the waves of abuse and truth arise, will they stand at the edge of the tide with survivors and their allies, starting critical discussions with their fellow leaders? As they have proven through non-action, they will be the first to run away.
And so survivors are quietly tucked into the corners of social isolation -- shamed, humiliated, reputations destroyed while their perpetrators laugh in our safe spaces, surrounded by allies.
Because of the pain of our queer realities, we want to pick up the pieces of our found families, to sorely believe in the wholeness of our community. We want to return to that party, where we can trace the blue streaks on the wall back to a queer dreaming state. But the truth is that there is no place to return to. Those flashing lights and sticky floors obscure a darker reality: that our community was never whole to begin with.