Normally, I’d start June off with a HAPPY PRIDE MONTH, EVERYONE! post near the start of the month (but rarely on the 1st because I’m rarely that organized) and then I’d attempt to make some Pride-centric or Pride-adjacent posts throughout the month. This year, I actually started thinking about what I’d post this month slightly in advance (okay, a whole *week*!). I decided what my Top Ten(ish) lists are going to be, which book reviews I absolutely wanted to post, and then hit on the idea of reviving the interviews that launched this blog so long ago. I started reaching out to fellow LGBTQIA+ creative types, and such folks in other walks of life and careers as well, and then sending short interviews, 5-6 questions, out via email.
But as I sit here at almost 2:00 am on June 1, 2020, part of me can’t help but wonder: is posting book reviews and top ten lists and interviews with writers and artists frivolous in light of what’s going on out there right now?
Pride parades and gatherings were already cancelled (and rightfully so) to help slow the spread of Covid-19. I have friends and relatives of all walks who have been hit hard by the virus: a good friend who had it, finally tested negative, was given the all-clear, and still has days when he can’t summon the energy to walk across the room; a nephew in his early 30s who spent a week in the hospital while they tried different remedies to clear him up and whose husband also tested positive; a cousin who is a police officer in Brooklyn whose precinct almost completely tested positive in the course of a week or so; and too many more to list. I’ve watched so many people lose their jobs during the shutdown and have struggled with survivor’s guilt that I still have a full-time job that has allowed me to transition to working from home (an adjustment from the non-stop traveling the job normally entails, to be sure, but at least I still have a job).
On top of the virus, over the past few months I’ve watched threads in a number of comic book and science fiction groups I’m a member of on Facebook take decidedly anti-LGBTQIA, and especially anti-Trans*, turns (not to mention misogynistic and racist turns as well). The rhetoric has always been there among a section of every fandom, but it seemed in the first two months of Covid-19 to ratchet up considerably. Perhaps because people stuck at home have more time to lash out? I don’t know. But it was noticeable especially in how not-directly-connected-to-Covid-19 it appeared to be.
And then a few days ago George Floyd was murdered in plain sight by a police officer with a history of violence. And this weekend we’ve seen peaceful protests turn violent, with looting and property destruction. Not for the first time in our history, and probably not for the last. And Pride celebrates/memorializes the Stonewall riots, led largely by queer people of color. I do wonder how accepting the world would be of folks like me in 2020 if those riots hadn’t happened in 1969 (three years after I was born, and a good twenty years before I came out).
In light of all of this, does making posts about the things I love seem akin to rearranging deck chairs on Titanic? Am I just sticking my head in the sand to avoid how bad the world is getting?
It’s taken a lot of thinking, and a lot of false starts on this post, but I’m going to say the answer is “no.” As a number of the folks I’ve interviewed will say in posts over the coming month: continuing to share the things we love, the things that make us happy (whether that’s cute animal pictures, bad puns, or top ten favorite red-headed comic book characters), means we’re continuing to be human, continuing to try and put a little light – however dim, however short-lasting – into a world that’s growing darker by the day.
I don’t have all the answers. I can’t fix all of society’s woes. But I can do what I’m good at: which is hopefully make some people smile and provide some distraction.
So I’m planning to post a lot more often this month than I have been of late. Maybe not every day, but as many days as I can. Not every post will be about something LGBTQIA-related (for instance, tomorrow’s Reading Roundup of what I read in May), but many of them will be. And hopefully, the contents will make readers smile, or think, or both.
Stay safe, my friends.