How the Queer Community is Fighting COVID19
Welcome to our COVID19 reality. A reality where an invisible plague wreaks insurmountable havoc with every step and breath we take. A phenomenon so large and daunting that it has left millions of individuals homeless, fighting for their lives, faced with stacking odds, grieving in solitude with heartwrenching loss. Having lost their jobs, completely unable to afford living expenses, pushed to make risky decisions regarding their health and exposure for the sake of their livelihood. Completely distanced from their emotional support systems they’ve fortified and relied on for years. These are the effects of COVID19.
Sadly, for the queer community, this isn’t anything new. This is but another chapter in the book that marks unresolved injustices within in 21st century where our entire beings and way of life were put in jeopardy. From the HIV and AIDs crisis in the 1980s to hundreds of years of systemic homophobia. We still face social and legislative issues embedded within the core of our society maintained by lawmakers and governing political bodies, that keep the queer community fragmented, underrepresented, and unhelped by a system that is supposed to provide policy, aid, and visibility.
Specifically, within this new COVID19 reality we live in today, many queer individuals are facing double-downed effects with co-morbidities a huge percentage of the general population simply don’t have to deal with. Factors like the increase chance of contracting HIV, which increases their likelihood of developing terminal illnesses such as cancers and lung diseases; as well as higher chances of substance abuse and addiction associated with different lifestyle choices taken to cope with the perpetuation of unresolved systemic issues, plaguing their job prospects, livelihood, and ability to receive medical treatment. It’s implications and relevance to the ecosystem of digital media and society are vast and extremely poignant as it sheds light on how marginalized populations are often forced to create and be their own resources, and more so how these publics navigate visibility within institutions that constantly undermine and under advocate for equality in treatment and aid.
Through my research on how the queer community is combating COVID19, I observed a cyclic pattern of cis, hetero, and eurocentric domination within attempts to advocate and support. Factors that continue to not only misinform and misdiagnose many issues within the community in terms of doling out aid for queer individuals and navigating their resources within the helm of a pandemic but dismantles many efforts by the queer community to build up viable and sustainable infrastructures within itself, to efficiently and accurately access and address issues.
Access
Through analyzing how queer people are working as a networked community to navigate access, allows us to understand a piece of the puzzle in terms of visibility and the means of gathering resources for queer individuals during COVID19. When discussing access I’m alluding to both the ability for queer individuals to access help and the community’s ability to utilize digital networks that are more accessible to provide care for each other due to the lack of governmental aid. Within our discussions and readings regarding disability and access, we narrowed in on the overarching narrative of disabled content, as told by the ableist mainstream. Within dominant cultures visual and auditory rhetoric, we often see differently-abled individuals within the context of needing sympathy or help. These narratives are often pushed within legislation and create a space in which “rehabilitation”, essentially the process of “fixing” or assimilating differently-abled individuals to abled bodies, is the priority, and goal for all differently-abled individuals. A desire or means of aspiration to be fixed or changed into “seeming” abled. As Barnes points out in “Disabling Imagery and the Media” there is a need for “growing awareness among disabled people that the problems they encounter are due to institutional discrimination and that media distortions of the experience of disability contribute significantly to the discriminatory process.” Moreso, as a result of forcing differently-abled individuals into improper molds, we as a community are not only damaging the psyche of differently-abled persons and their understanding of achievement, but we are creating an exclusionary and discriminatory framework in which differently-abled individuals have to resort to mediums outside of the ones created by establishments to express themselves and fight for better visibility. We, by continuing this kind of false representation are adding to the distortion.
With this in mind, as society and government at large constantly distorts the image of differently-abled individuals many turn to social media to express themselves in a fuller way. In this light social media is not only seen as a revolutionary act but as a medium that has great potential for representation as it is easier to navigate and connect with a community that is comprised of individuals who have also lived through what it feels and means to be differently-abled. But even with representation from digital spaces aiding the richness of differently-abled narratives told within digital media, there is a constant and looming barrier of palatability that acts as a gatekeeper, strategically filtering out narratives that “don’t suit”, or “appeal” to a white, cis-gendered, and ableist society.
Similarly, the queer community faces issues of conflict and opposition. Cis-gendered heteronormativity dominates the influence of public opinion, telling our stories to the population from a skewed, apathetic lens that often minimizes our struggles and erases our faces altogether from media. This disconnection and erasure pulls apart any form of unity and comradery between the establishment and the community, often leaving the queer community to fend for itself and create self-sustaining means of advocating and seeking help. In an article written on THEM entitled “Prostitution is the Social Safety Net in This Country”: Sex Workers Speak Out About Coronavirus, we are given the opportunity to widen our understanding of how queer sex workers are affected by COVID19 in relation to dealing with the heavy blow of double discrimination. Having both their ability to access a community and aid taken away from them as a result of FOSTA-SESTA, a legislative mandate that attempts to crack down underaged sex trafficking by profiling all sex workers, even consenting adults as violators and criminals, and the generally negative perception many individuals have about the field of sex work. The article notes as a result of these perceptions and regulations “sex workers are now developing their own survival techniques. There are numerous international crisis funds and crowdfunding efforts now collecting money specifically for sex workers facing economic disaster. Many are exploring online revenue sources, like camming, texting, and phone sex lines.” Moreover, despite having their ability to communicate digitally as a networked public taken away from them and many paths to financial independence severed, sex workers remain fervent and proactive, helping each other crowdfund and providing emotional support to each other like different abled individuals are often forced help themselves through activism or modifying appliances and gear that was not designed with their bodies in mind. Jenny Ross, a sex worker explains “The great thing about sex workers is we’re very community-minded, a lot of sex workers support members in their community financially. … We help each other. We’re marginalized and misunderstood and we know how it is for each other.”
Visibility in Publics
With access comes visibility, hand in hand. For queer individuals, the statistics of comorbidities related to COVID19 that threatening their existence are staggering, heartwrenching, and terrifying, yet it seems like most of the population remains both uninformed and unmoved to perform any action to help the community. Dr. Peter Meacher, chief medical officer of the New York Callen-Lorde Health Center in the article “How Coronavirus is Affecting the LGBTQ+ Community, From Drag Queens to the HIV+” discusses some of the harsh realities the community faces regarding their increased susceptibility to contracting COVID19.
He states, nearly “40% of those hospitalized with the Coronavirus had cardiovascular disease or cerebrovascular disease, which people with HIV are about 1.5 to two times more likely to develop than those that aren’t living with the virus.” As Meacher discusses, even within underlying diseases that cause susceptibility there lies a huge disparity between the general population and the queer community. As HIV disproportionally affects the queer community at a higher rate in comparison to the heterosexual population, the risks of developing complications due to the disease are disproportionately higher as well. Things like being prone to contracting terminal illnesses like cancer and developing life-threatening respiratory issues dramatically increase due to the likelihood of these individuals being immune-compromised, making queer individuals, extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 infections. And alongside these co-morbidities is smoking and its adverse effects in relation to COVID19. According to the LGBT Cancer Network, “LGBTQ people smoke at rates 50% higher than the general population, which could be detrimental if a respiratory illness like COVID-19 is contracted.”
Going back to HIV, this factor alone helps to perpetuate an us vs them narrative isolating and detaching queer individuals from the general population. This process of isolation further complicates the ability to remain visible in the public eye as well as discourages queer individuals from seeking institutional aid via healthcare. As USA Today’s “LGBTQ community may be ‘particularly vulnerable’ to coronavirus pandemic. Here’s why.” article notes, “health care discrimination in America, including denial of care, unwelcoming attitudes, and lack of understanding from staff and providers means LGBTQ people may be more reluctant to seek medical care.” The article continues to impress the upsetting effects of institutional suppression, stating there are “more than 3 million LGBTQ+ elderly people living in the U.S. who are already less likely than their heterosexual and cisgender peers to reach out to health and aging providers, like senior centers, meal programs, and other programs designed to ensure their health and wellness because they fear discrimination and harassment.” This fear of being discriminated, and physically and verbally harassed coupled with the general public’s perception of HIV seeing it as a “gay disease” inhibits visibility and viable socio-economic impact by binding queer individuals to limited sources.
In terms of visibility, its mediums and affects, the piece “Bitch slut skank cunt patterned resistance to women’s visibility” artfully directs its focus on digital media in terms of its ability to be both a facilitator of visibility, telling a richer narrative of what it means to be a queer person navigating COVID19 and as a potential perpetuator of institutionalized inequality.
Sobieraj explains “New internet and communications technologies (ICTs) have facilitated the construction of new public spaces–digital publics–with the potential for great inclusivity. Ideally, these tools allow users to establish discursive arenas where women, and men from marginalized groups, whose freedom in public spaces has always been precarious, can enter, explore, and share freely. To some extent, this is true. Such spaces have proven to be valuable sources of solidarity for those from disadvantaged groups (e.g., Bonilla & Rosa,2015; Keller,2012; Rapp, Button, Fleury-Steiner, & Fleury-Steiner,2010). As digital publics mature, however, it becomes increasingly clear that these are new cites of contention over power and meaning, where inequalities can be eroded, but also reinforced.”
Within the same vein, as queer individuals utilize digital spaces in order to gain inclusion, visibility and a more accessible public space which allows them to facilitate discussion regarding issues that are often minimized and erased in both government and mainstream media outlets, there is a possibility that within this same act we are eroding our progress by conforming to stigmatizing modes of attaining it. As solidarity is often won by trading in rich multifaceted representation for narratives catered to soothe the cis-gendered heteronormative, white mainstream media culture. Within the context of COVID19, this narrative operates to display the queer community as self-sufficient, and undeserving of mainstream attention, pressuring queer individuals to not only attempt to create visibility for themselves but force them to “step up” and provide care for one another while their resources are limited. Narratives of the homeless, ethnic minorities and individuals who have “eccentric” professions are pushed to the side and ignored as their stories are too unapproachable and foreign to be palatable.
The Issue Framing and Empathy
In light of how we as a society created this toxic “unapproachable” and “unpalatable” mainstream consciousness surrounding “queer COVID19 issues” I wanted to delve into anthropology, culture, and empathy. In the TEDxMidAtlanticSalon talk by Nat Kendall-Taylor entitled “How words change minds: The science of storytelling” we begin to approach how interconnected culture and social framing are. Culture being this ephemeral unifying entity of society that is foundational to developing our perceptions, values, and beliefs, and framing, the underlying social denotation that grounds these abstract thoughts and allows us to form universal understandings of these elements. These are essential to our understanding and navigating complex social issues, as in our case understanding the process of how the queer community in dealing with COVID19. As Nat notes, culture initiates these shared patterns of thinking that we indefinitely carry with us when we engage with one another, and this subsequently, if not challenged complicates our perceptions. As he asserts “understanding is frame dependent.” and interestingly enough the frame of empathy, which is often used in discussing marginalized group’s attributes to lower support.
Not only is lower support harmful to visibility, but as Carolyn Pedwell argues in “Is our Culture of Empathy Perpetuating Inequality?” can contribute to systemic inequality and violence. Pedwell asserts that “even in more benign empathic narratives, the repeated mapping of the “empathizer” and “sufferer” onto social and political hierarchies reinforces inequality. Privileged (middle class, white, and/or Western) people cultivate their affective capacities and skills, but the less privileged (poor, non-white and/or non-Western) “other” remains simply the object of empathy — their own emotional complexities are never engaged.” As Pedwell alludes to, as we discuss queer issues within an empathetic frame we are inadvertently mapping queer individuals into the sufferer and other character, giving into the political hierarchy and power structures that already misrepresent and offer support from a lens of pity. Not only is this severely hindering viable support for the community but it can often ensue brutality. Pedwell explains withing prisons “claiming intimate knowledge of “the other” can also contribute to violence. After 9/11, Raphael Patai’s book “The Arab Mind” — a now-infamous account of Arab culture and psychology — furnished US military officials with ideas for torture at Abu Ghraib. Accessing other people’s psychic worlds became a technique of control and violence rather than understanding and sympathy. A torturer empathizes with her victims to determine what will be most humiliating to them. Empathy can thus become weaponized.” Without proper care and understanding empathy, a seemingly harmless and potentially beneficial characteristic can be weaponized and used against the community that it was supposed to help. Within the queer community during the COVID19 pandemic, perhaps issues regarding aid and visibility were seen through the lens of empathy, leading individuals who saw themselves as removed or unaffected to develop a type of superiority complex that inadvertently was used to control and distort media coverage creating a lack of support for queer individuals.
So why are we doing this you might ask? Why is it that we know that the frame of empathy statistically creates lower engagement around subjects but yet it remains the most popular frame in discussing visibility within marginalized communities? Moreover, the empathy frame can create much more harm than decreasing engagement. With pushing the narrative of the help and the helpless, queer people, especially throughout this extremely uncertain time are being further diminished, isolated, and undermined. Unfortunately, the answer to my question is more complex than it is straightforward. But definitely, moving forward, I believe there will be more efforts to challenge the notion of using empathy as the default frame when discussing issues that pertain to marginalized populations, as if empathy truly increases the likely hood of weaponizing emotions, it could explain in part why the community faces a great deal of pushback, violence, and injustice when issues surface. Within this lense, I see empathy as another instrument used to police and maintain injustice. An instrument that helps perpetuate a system that sees queer individuals as distant cohabitants, on an unequal playing field facilitated by cis, hetero, and European populations. In the same light, I believe that empathy inhibits true emancipation from these systemic injustices, and needs to be re-evaluated in order for queer and other marginalized groups to be able to access unbiased representation.
In Conclusion
Overall, COVID19 has shed light on systemic issues the community has been dealing with for decades. Issues like inequality within treatment, access, and discrimination in healthcare that were foreshadowed by similar institutional neglect some 40 years ago during the HIV crisis of the 1980’s. These underlying and unresolved issues only now seem more blatant within the COVID19 reality we are living in, as resources and the community are tried and tested. The strain to remain visible and the scarcity of stable resources have only become more prominent and dire as queer individuals are already at a socioeconomic disadvantage as they are tied to this narrative of helplessness perpetuated by mainstream culture. This compromised aid has forced the queer community to become their own support in both advocacy and providing care within their own community, offering support services and informational packets, much like established healthcare providers and businesses would. As a public, the queer community offers us insights regarding the complexities of navigating social space within the digital and legislative world; highlighting the need to reframe on a societal level how we perceive marginalized individuals and their stories. Within digital spaces, it is clear that there still remains a huge gap between empathy and deliberate, well-informed action. This second coming of unresolved pain and isolative suffering that COVID brought upon the community only further impresses the need to bridge the gap and come together to navigate how we can support each other in an equal and unbiased way.
Notes
Barnes, C. (1992). An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.
Baume, M., Sanders, W., Shakti, A., & Goodman, E. (2020, March 19). Sex Workers Speak Out About Coronavirus. Retrieved from https://www.them.us/story/sex-workers-speak-out-about-coronavirus#intcid=recommendations_default-similar2_c10b2281-a13d-4039-914f-83f0d8186019_text2vec1_text2VecSimilarity
Blum, S. (2020, March 9). How Coronavirus Is Impacting the LGBTQ Community. Retrieved from https://www.them.us/story/coronavirus-lgbtq-community-hiv
Eadens, S. (2020, March 18). LGBTQ community may be ‘particularly vulnerable’ to coronavirus pandemic. Here’s why. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/18/lgbtq-coronavirus-community-vulnerable-covid-19-pandemic/2863813001/
How words change minds: The science of storytelling. (2017). Retrieved from How words change minds: The science of storytelling
Kuhr, E. (2020, April 6). Coronavirus pandemic a perfect storm for LGBTQ homeless youth. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/coronavirus-pandemic-perfect-storm-lgbtq-homeless-youth-n1176206
Pedwell, C. (2017, October 3). Is Our Culture of Empathy Perpetuating Inequality?: Essay. Retrieved from https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/07/17/culture-empathy-perpetuating-inequality/ideas/nexus/
Reid-Smith, T. (2020, March 16). Spreading hope: LGBT people are organizing to fight coronavirus together. Retrieved from https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/spreading-hope-lgbt-people-are-organizing-to-fight-coronavirus-together/
Shakti, A. (2018, April 10). SESTA-FOSTA Proves Lawmakers Don’t See Sex Workers Like Me As Human. Retrieved from https://www.them.us/story/sesta-fosta-backpage-sex-workers
Sobieraj, S. (2017, July 13). Bitch, slut, skank, cunt: patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1348535?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Wareham, J. (2020, April 3). Unique Impact Of Coronavirus On LGBT Community ‘Will Disproportionally Affect Us’. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/03/24/the-unique-impact-of-coronavirus-on-uk-lgbt-community-will-disproportionally-affect-them/#2595196ab401
