Controversial opinion here, I know, but just because you’re in a safe LGBT+/Queer space doesn’t mean you have to disclose their identity to everyone there. And people are allowed to bring their partners, regardless of their orientation, to those same spaces. 

Obviously there are certain spaces that are for specific people, but at the same time, y’all are so obsessed with micromanaging queer spaces. The only thing that should be a litmus for entry into those spaces is: “does this person want to hurt someone else in this space and I know that? Yes? Then they aren’t fucken welcome. Regardless of identity.”

I volunteered in ine of the biggest queer youth clubs as an educator / guide (there isnt a word in english for these stuff).

We had so many queer kids that brought cishet friends and some of them didnt come out later, some of them really were cishet and that is fine.

They did no harm to the queer atmosphere and when someone new joined for the first time we gave them a little tour of the club and invited them to a one on one talk with one of the volunteers.

Ive had many of these conversations with teens at the ages of 12-19 and everyone calmed down when we told them there is no criteria to being there that this is a safe space and after a short explanation and some questions where many of them just blurted out their stories.

The non queer identifying people came for years either because they just met some friends from different places along the country and it was their usual hangout or because they really needed a safe space with no judgment in their lives.

Cishet people also need safe spaces where there are no gendered expectations of them and they can play with makeup and dresses and just be calm and learn about safe sexuality and consent.

Why in the world would you kick people who need safe spaces and benefit from them out???

Queer people seeing cishet people in queer spaces not acting weird and for once seeing the atmosphere is queer and the cis person has to adapt does marvels to one’s sense of how real it feels, how you could bring this safe space outside and this culture to other friends.

Introduce some of the stuff you learned to your friends and family maybe to some willing coworker idk.

The point is that our way to smash the patriarchy, gender roles, rape culture and more shit is too bring it outside and allow allies to be there cus why the fuck not

Thanks for sharing! This really highlights a collection of reasons why it’s important to not create these arbitrary rules to who can and can’t come in. 

Also?

When I was in college, I had a cishet friend who was Christian and quietly felt homosexuality was a sin. I never heard her say so out loud….

…..which is why it STUNNED me when last year, she admitted she felt that way in college. But, she said, spending time with me in what we called the LGBTQIA+ group, to support me through a time when I was on and off suicidal, she discovered that queer people were, well….people. Who just wanted to be allowed to live. That might sound like “wow, the bar was belowground and she was doing the limbo with Satan,” but you must understand: this was 2006 in a very tiny town. Our senator had just compared homosexuality to both bestiality and pedophilia and there was a concerted push going on to write “one man, one woman” into the Constitution. Allison’s position (“I feel a certain kind of way but I’m not going to say it aloud”) was actually KINDER than most of the people around me.

And just spending time in our spaces, being around queer people, she realized “hey, what I have been told my whole life is a lie. These people are just people. Telling terrible jokes, having cookouts, fighting for basic human dignity, arguing over whether or not face painting is an appropriate college activity. There is no difference between them and me.”

Without a welcome into queer spaces, Allison might still be part of a homophobic church. Instead she helped organize her town’s first Pride parade in 2019.

“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, need to stick together.” — Tim Miller, gay performance artist

Gatekeeping kills. STOP THAT.

Lest anyone think that this is pandering to straight allies, it’s not. Straight people can exist in spaces without making it all about them, as hard as it may be to believe at certain parts of your life (and if that feels profoundly fake to you, I beg you to know some different straight people since the ones around you aren’t helping you).

Having straight people around doesn’t make a queer safe any more or less safe either, since queer people can be just as violent and horrific towards each other on the personal level that straight people can be towards us.

And that was the point i was attempting to make, that violent bigotry isn’t exclusive to cis straights. If we compartmentalize violence we guarantee the invasion of said violence because we’ll ignore blatant trojan horses.

And once again, gay people have children, and those children are sometimes cishet. Those children grow up in queer spaces. Expelling them is a really shitty thing to do, especially for kids who have never been a part of any other community