This isn’t exactly what I meant, but the answer to his question is plain to anyone familiar with LGBTQ+ history: Our community has long been bullied, beaten, and peppered with homophobic slurs, and this is something I still experience in San Francisco today.
If you’ve ever met me, I believe you’ll agree, he was on the right track.Īnyhow, he was getting tripped up on the word “safe” - wondering why queer people would feel physically endangered in a bar outside of the Castro. Some time ago, I got into an argument with the editor of a local magazine about the meaning of the term “safe space.” The editor, who described his newsroom as “depressingly straight,” had taken a coffee meeting with me in an effort to gay things up a bit.
