How My Queer Chosen Family Got Me Through COVID
During COVID, I felt more disconnected from the LGBTIQA+ community than I’d felt before I came out almost ten years prior.
If you were to ask a queer person to recall a moment they felt truly valid and comfortable with their sexuality or gender identity, the chances are that moment would include other queer people.
When I was in my early twenties I remember spending an entire afternoon with a handsome stranger in the darkened halls of a sex-on-premises venue, debating the merits of Janet Jackson’s iconic discography. (For those following at home, her nineties releases remain untouchable; janet. and The Velvet Rope are the blueprints.)
Although the stranger and I had never met before and would never meet again, there was something particularly affirming about spending hours with another queer person in an exclusively queer space. It gave us licence to be unashamedly ourselves in a way that many other people and spaces did not.
When queer people begin to explore their identities, it can often feel akin to swimming in open water without a life jacket. There are still so many pockets of Australian society that relegate us to the margins, and while things like marriage equality, birth certificate reform, and outlawing conversion practices might make it easier for parts of our community to be out and proud, homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic attitudes certainly haven’t vanished with the flick of a pen.
That’s why our ‘chosen families’ are so important.
The queer people we meet and form long-lasting bonds with anchor us when we feel unsure about ourselves, celebrate the parts of us that have historically been branded as ‘lesser than’ or second-class, and remind us that we’re not alone.
It is because of this that they have also helped many of us get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
When we first went into lockdown early last year to curb the spread of the virus, so many LGBTIQA+ spaces — from our cultural events and Pride parades to our bars and ‘hook-up’ apps — became off limits overnight.
Where once we could enjoy a screening of Drag Race at the local gay bar with friends or march behind the Dykes on Bikes at Pride, we now found the doors to these spaces were closed shut with a shiny padlock.
And for queers like me who had relied on them to connect with our beautiful and diverse LGBTIQA+ community, it was devastating. These sanctuaries had empowered me to feel comfortable with my sexuality, and we were being cut off from them with no end in sight.
The restrictions and closures put in place as part of Australia’s COVID-19 response were of course necessary to protect our health and reduce the risk of infections or deaths, and they were largely effective in doing so.
But in a way, this also felt like a casualty of the pandemic.
Earlier this month researchers at La Trobe University released the Writing Themselves In report, which detailed the results of a national survey of more than 6,000 young LGBTQA+ people.
The survey found that despite young queer people feeling increasingly supported by their friends and teachers after coming out, they still disproportionately faced harassment, homelessness, and mental health issues.
The statistics speak for themselves: in the past year alone, 60.2 per cent of young LGBTQA+ people reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexuality or gender identity. Over 40 per cent had experienced verbal harassment. And nearly one in four (22.8 per cent) had experienced sexual harassment or assault.
Nearly one in four (23.6%) had experienced homelessness at some point, in most cases due to family rejection. Over 80 per cent had reported high or very high levels of psychological distress. And tragically, 10.1 per cent had attempted suicide in the past year.
What these survey results make clear is that for so many queer people, it still doesn’t feel “okay to be gay”, or bi, or trans, outside of LGBTIQA+ specific spaces. So to be prevented from accessing these spaces during the pandemic, albeit for important public health reasons, would have taken a toll on the mental health and well-being of many queer people around the country.
I know it certainly impacted mine. And would have more so, had it not been for the support and solace I found in my chosen family.
In Victoria, where our lockdowns were among the longest and harshest in the world, I spent the first few months coping with our new reality the same way I imagine others did: over-spending on food delivery, masturbating, watching the 1995 classic Waiting to Exhale for the one hundredth time, and scrolling through photos I’d taken at an old Gaytimes Festival in an effort to remember what queer life was like pre-pandemic.
It was an insular existence, and I was grieving. Grieving the sudden loss of what had previously brought marginalised queer people in search of connection and belonging together.
Truthfully, I was feeling more disconnected from the LGBTIQA+ community than I’d felt before I came out almost ten years prior. That is, until I finally picked up the phone and reached out to my queer friend, Chrisi.
Initially, we sent sporadic messages back and forth sharing chana masala recipes and wondering whether Australia was home to anything similar to ‘The Dinah’*. (*An annual five-day festival in Palm Springs that sees 20,000 lesbians converge in the Californian desert.)
Then we began sending each other queer books to read via post as a way to get through the COVID-induced isolation people were experiencing the world over. (Think Oprah’s Book Club, if Oprah exclusively read memoirs about queers navigating sex, relationships, and identity.)
By the middle of lockdown number two, we were messaging almost every day, checking in on each other’s mental health and providing a virtual shoulder to lean on.
It helped.
I then started tuning into a virtual drag night each Sunday with my partner. The event would see queens from around Melbourne don wigs and bright red lipstick to perform camp classics from their living rooms as part of a lip-sync tournament. We as the audience were able to interact and cheer them on from our own living rooms, in real time.
That helped too.
And then finally, when restrictions allowed it, I enjoyed daily walks with queer buddies that lived inside my five kilometre radius, where we effectively bridged the gap months of separation had created and looked forward to a time we could see the wider community again.
These people — my partner, Chrisi, my queer friends — helped me to get through those lockdowns in a way only they could; by providing me with a connection to the LGBTIQA+ community that I’d sorely missed. In lieu of being able to dance and get sweaty together in a grungy club at 3AM or head to our local cinema to check out the year’s queer film festival offerings, they reminded me that while our spaces may shut down or change, our chosen families continue to sustain us.
They were my lifeline, as I imagine chosen families have been for so many queer people over the past year.
And while it’s true that the idea of there being people outside of your biological family who can support, nurture, and empower you isn’t necessarily a new one, this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has brought the importance of those people for queers into sharp relief.
Matthew Wade is an award-winning journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of the national LGBTIQA+ masthead Star Observer. He has written for publications such as SBS, Archer Magazine and The Age, and hosted various news and current affairs programs on JOY 94.9. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewRWade.