According to a study published by “The Lesbian Bar Project”, less than 25 lesbian bars remain in the Unit- ed States today. To contrast, over 200 existed in the late 1980s. When I first read this statistic, I was shocked. After all the advancements the queer community has made within the last sever- al decades, I had assumed that the amount of queer spaces had only grown. Instead, as Queer people have become more accept- ed into the general public, our spaces and culture have also been assimilated and therefore erased. For many people who aren’t queer, our incomplete annexation into general society is seen as a good thing. When talking about this subject, I’ve had non-Queer people ask me why I didn’t want queerness to be so normalized that it wouldn’t even be acknowledged or questioned. For me, however, and for many queer people, that is not acceptance, it is erasure. My identity and sexuality are palatable as long as I fit into popular stereotypes of what a queer person looks or acts like. But as soon as I become too obvious about it, or too “weird” about it, it is no longer bearable, but strange and intimidating. I joined the Dub because I had heard that it was a very queer house and I wanted to be around people who are like me. Honestly, it has been life changing. All of those little habits and eccentricities that my straight friends accepted but did not under- stand became normalized. No one questioned why I would wear shirts that hide my chest, or why I would have to try on every piece of clothing I bought to make sure it didn’t make me appear “too feminine.” Even my pronouns were integrated seamlessly from the first time I stated them. For the first time in my life, I was in a truly queer space.
For most of my life, I didn’t have a lot of queer friends. I had straight friends who were loving and accepting, but just because I was accepted didn’t mean that I wasn’t different. I would be re- minded of my differences in little ways every single day, whether it would be me listening to my friends talk about guys in our class, or something as small as getting ready to go out and being the only one not wearing a dress, I was constantly bombarded with the fact that I was not like my friends, and even though they loved me, I felt very alone.
The feeling of acceptance that comes from being surrounded by people like you is what I can only describe as joy. Joy and love and pride and acceptance and rebellion and celebration are what makes our community. Every queer person deserves to know this feeling. I love all of my housemates with my entire being for inviting me to be apart of their home and for giving me this community here at St. Lawrence University, and I hope that someday, spaces like this aren’t so hard to find.