Take Young Queer Women Seriously

Queer culture has manifested itself in nightlife as early as the 1930s. Gathering to mix and mingle, queer people of all shapes and sizes congregate in bars and clubs. These venues not only help queer people meet, but also facilitate safe environments for a group of people often left to their own devices when it comes to building a community. Unfortunately, many of these spaces are catered to queer men by default. 

Over the past year, I have read a number of articles about the decline in queer spaces for women all over the country. This comes as no surprise to me. I moved to New York this year only to find even less spaces carved out for queer women than I had expected. The fact that I can count on three fingers the only lesbian bars in all of New York City is a testament to the fading trend of queer female spaces across the nation. I can only imagine how few spaces are left for queer women in more rural areas.

Before moving to New York, I grew up between a small beach town in San Diego and an equally small suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. Neither place offered much representation when it came to queer women. Very few openly queer people attended my small, private, Christian high school, and even fewer of the out queer people I knew were women. Therefore, I was excited by the prospect of attending a women’s college and living in a large city, hoping the combination would offer more opportunity to build a queer community for myself.

I’m sure you’ve heard the narrative before—girl escapes Christian private high school suppressing any deviation from compulsive heterosexuality only to realize… she’s queer! This, however, isn’t my story.

Although my high school greatly lacked in representation, I realized I was queer long before leaving. It was coming to New York that made me realize how much of a community I actually lacked. I didn’t realize I wanted a queer community until I experienced it, and now I can’t imagine my life without one.

Not only was my school lacking any sort of queer community, the greater city of San Diego also lacked in LGBTQ+ pride. Although the city has Hillcrest—a historically gay part of town—it feels outdated, and centered around an older generation. It is also largely male dominated, and as a young queer woman I never felt like there was a space for me in Hillcrest.

This trend of queer spaces catering to an older, white, male crowd isn’t new.

Most queer spaces, even in New York, cater to white men. Within the LGBTQ+ community, most things default to maleness and whiteness. If you search the city for gay bars, you’ll find most filled with only gay men. When most queer and/or gay spaces are compulsively male, it becomes isolating for women and nonbinary folk. There is somehow the assumption that gay men and women have their queerness in common and that that is enough, but there is a gap here—a lack of exclusively queer spaces for women.

Some would argue that the remedy for this issue is creating more general queer spaces where all are welcomed; however, I believe carving out space for people of specific intersectional identities may be a more effective way to build community. The sad truth is, while few designated spaces exist for queer women, even fewer exist for queer people of color. The LGBTQ+ community has unfortunately adopted systems of power that value masculinity, maleness, and whiteness above all other identities. Most queer spaces are made for white men, and this is a huge problem. Not all gay people are white men! Spaces for communities based on identity should not just be a privilege reserved for the apparent majority.

Part of this decline in spaces for queer women comes from a generational gap—many young queer women are doing away with labels and opting for a my-sexuality-is-fluid-and-I-hate-labels approach. Because of this it may seem as though queer spaces specifically for women are no longer necessary. I beg to differ. To dismiss spaces made specifically for queer women is to erase the distinction of intersectional experience. It infers that all queer people experience the world similarly, when this is not at all the case. While I have pride in belonging to a greater LGBTQ+ community, I have very little in common with the older gay men I often meet in gay bars.

There is a case to be made for traditional labels of sexuality. Although the shift away from labels is progressive in that it acknowledges how fluid human sexuality can be, it can also be argued there is some internalized homophobia in wanting to distance oneself from terms like lesbian and gay. I identify as queer, but I also embrace the terms bisexual, lesbian, and gay to counteract the stigma associated with these terms. I have mixed feelings about the no labels approach many young queer women are taking today. While sexuality is by no means fixed, there is a certain power in reclaiming terms like lesbian, dyke, and queer.

As more and more young people are identifying with sexualities outside of heterosexuality, it’s affecting how queer communities are forming.

There appears less need for separate areas of town to be designated as gay areas—as fun as they are—for they seem a byproduct of more dire times, when many public spaces felt unsafe and unwelcoming to queer people. Today, young queer people are connecting in more innovative ways: through dating apps, social media, and mutual friends. It almost seems as though the need for queer-only spaces is dying down as identities become more complex and nuanced. There is, however, no substitute for a physical gathering space, and while less space is being carved out for queer women, this doesn’t mean we don’t need the space. Seeing that we are already a demographic not taken seriously, often patronized as confused, hyper-sexualized, or seen as going through a phase—young queer women are constructing community where there is none.

That’s not to say in modern times there aren’t still a lot of lingering issues for young queer women. One example is the underlying idea that we don’t have any agency over our own sexuality. As I mentioned before, young queer women are consistently patronized and hyper-sexualized. I remember one night at a gay bar—packed with mostly white men—an older man came up to me and asked if I was a lesbian. He continued to say that he was surprised to see me and my friends in this space, as most lesbians he knew were uglier, older, and “more masculine.”

Although I would like to believe that this older gay man was trying to compliment me and my friends by creating a dichotomy (think: you’re not like other lesbians, you’re attractive, feminine, and young!), in reality he was perpetuating a dangerous stereotype and deepening a pre-existing wound in the queer community. This addresses a deeper issue not just affecting young queer women, but all young women. This idea that “you’re too pretty to be gay” is a thinly-veiled comment implying that we should be interested in men simply because they are interested in us. This erases young women’s agency over their individual sexualities, and perpetuates the outdated notion that women are only queer because they’ve failed to capture the attention of a man.

By looking closely at the comments young queer women often receive, it becomes apparent that what may seem like a harmless joke or even an attempted compliment, actually impede taking young women seriously.

The stereotype against young queer women being that we are confused only perpetuates and makes it acceptable to not take us seriously. Implying queer women are confused is part of a greater cultural conversation in which femininity is equivocated with frivolity and stupidity, and queerness with uncertainty and disorder. 

So let’s take young queer women seriously. We might surprise you.