A viral Boston Globe article about a local lesbian bar known as Last Ditch in Massachusetts, preyed on stereotypes about the queer community, without sharing the nuances and depth of understanding it required to do the story justice. Published on the 22nd of September The Boston Globe published an article “A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose.” The article put a community rupture, centred on a small-town lesbian bar, on the global map. It began after the bar, whose owner works four jobs and is struggling to repay a loan after fellow owners left the project, made mask-wearing – usually a requirement to enter the space – optional on Saturdays. Many responses from the local community to this decision were of anger from a feeling of betrayal.
The Globe article begins with a collage of the comments from Last Ditch’s Instagram announcement, showing how a pile on ensued, with the journalist detailing in great volume the anger that builds.
The effect on the reader is to overwhelm and oversaturate, and does little justice to the true nuances in this local community. The article saw backlash from the mainstream fall onto Last Ditch and every queer person associated.
The Boston Globe greatly profited from the article with a surge in subscriptions. It did so by selling a prejudiced and lazy queer stereotype: of an unstable and hostile community. The deeper questions of what happened in Massachusetts were left unanswered: Why did this happen? And who really are these people, outside of the characters they play in this story?
If the Globe had taken time to answer these questions perhaps something more important about queer communities could have emerged. Something about the ways we struggle and the conflicts worth fighting over.
The article brings to light all of the issues the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated; the economic hardships, disability, and ways they are multiplied in LGBTQIA+ people. Notably, the way it covered the story is also a textbook example of the ways mainstream media aren’t willing to talk about our community.
"Over time I have seen the financial strains that choke co-operatives into a more capitalist mindset, and - as I shielded with an immunocompromised person, seeing no one for two years, except under extreme caution during the pandemic - I have felt the loneliness and resentment that builds in isolation from the very people you need the most. "
Writer
When I lived in a city with a big queer community, back in 2018, I worked in a co-operative cafe. We were mostly queers, leftists, and disabled colleagues, trying to build something bigger than a business venture. Whatever we managed to achieve for the community, we fed and paid ourselves for over a decade. This is actually a huge accomplishment. Keeping a queer venue going over a long period of time, maintaining the economic values of a co-op, and creating material, tangible support for people is uncommon in cities like mine. I was proud to work there.
Over time I have seen the financial strains that choke co-operatives into a more capitalist mindset, and – as I shielded with an immunocompromised person, seeing no one for two years, except under extreme caution during the pandemic – I have felt the loneliness and resentment that builds in isolation from the very people you need the most.
These issues are not singular to queer people. The pandemic wreaked havoc on local venues and businesses across the UK. The number of Covid-19-related deaths in the UK is tragically high and likely under-reported due to lack of uniformity in categorising COVID deaths. The struggle to discern the right decision, to negotiate the lockdown and the need to return to public spaces, and conflicts that threaten suppression to be resolved, are the tones of 2021-2023.
And of course, after the lockdown ended and society returned to ‘normal ’, conversations never opened up later about what the right choice was back then, who made it, and what was its price with little interest in public for the UK COVID enquires.
When queer people make commitments to each other it is because we have to. We need each other to survive. We are, often, our only family and our only net to fall back on. The economic pressure this puts on social relations is immense. Mainstream society can, perhaps, only understand it through the lens of a crisis they have lived through, like Covid-19. But their own ineptitude to resolving conflict, which we know is a responsibility largely handed to police and government bodies, is obvious to me in how they react to ours.
What we attempt to confront, like disability and public spaces, prison abolition and justice, breaks ground where wider society is unwilling to go. It is probably easier to laugh at us, humiliate and harass us, for trying what they do not attempt. It certainly makes them money to expose us on right-wing and centrist media platforms.
A study last year reported that LGBTQIA+ news in the US is in crisis. The articles written about us are difficult to challenge or correct. We rely on honourable journalists to tell accurate stories.
Not long after the Globe article was published, the original organiser from Last Ditch called it ‘abysmal journalism, and a disorganised article’. In the end it had not been helpful for anyone involved. Nor has it promoted any useful conversation around disability, COVID, or the struggles of local businesses.
Instead its an example of the boots on our necks continuing to press down harder, and we fight, sometimes viciously, over the only options we have left. The last venues standing in a city. The little funds available. Meanwhile the mainstream media is more interested in how funny we are than in our struggles to find a way through together.
This article is part of a QueerAF and Inclusive Journalism Cymru partnership dedicated to uplifting Welsh LGBTQIA+ emerging and marginalised journalists.
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