Orlando

[Heather]

As some of you may know, a horrible mass hate crime happened in Orlando between last night and today at the Pulse nightclub.

Our hearts are broken, and we're feeling all the things you do when something so terrible like this happens. If you need a space to talk about it, we're here. We have also opened the chat line for the day if anyone wants to use that resource as well.

Please know you are all deeply loved and supported. If there's anything we can do for anyone, whether you're in Orlando or not, know anyone involved or not, ask.

[Heather]

We have added a page of ways to help and ways to get help -- both for those who are local and those who are not -- here: http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/heather_ ... t_services

[Heather]

Hopefully this feels okay, but I'd like to start about just some of the tips-of-the-icebergs of how I'm feeling:
• I can't count how many friends and partners I have initially met at gay bars, or had our social lives really revolve around them. I just can't imagine -- even though I know this isn't the first time in history this has happened, not by a long shot -- having the safety of those spaces taken away from me and people I love.

• I can't deal (I can, but it's not easy), with LGBTQ lives being DEpoliticized in this, this being made to be about something else that isn't about those targeted and victimized, especially when our lives have so often been politicized against our will and in a way used against us.

• The Islamophobia and xenophobia being inserted to this as if a) there are not Muslim LGBTQ people and b) bigotry of all kinds isn't exactly the problem is just too much.

• I know that those who were killed or harmed will undoubtedly mostly be young people. This is such extra heartbreak for me, in so many ways.

• There's that thing with something like this, too, where you're hurting so much, but you also have to be guarding your heart hugely to buffer it from all of the bigotry and ignorance that informs responses to an attack like this and even looks to escalate it.

[Jacob]

I think the combination of what happened and the press coverage including here in the UK just makes me feel really alone. For me and many people I know homophobia/transphobia/queerphobia and those forces which burst into violence this weekend in Orlando, are things we've sadly felt from family members and those who are close. To see it reach that horrifying extreme and for commentary to completely overlook the homophobia those deaths were rooted in is so isolating.

Also, coming from a middle eastern background (even if not a muslim one) homophobia is a big deal and to hear so many voices saying this is about Islam, or because of religion/culture just reinforces the way queer people feel out-of-touch with their own culture. Ignoring queer muslims and queer middle-easterners existence just really really hurts.

That said I'm really glad that I have people in my life I can talk to about this and who aren't like that.

[Sunshine]

I'd really like to say something, anything, to express sympathy (that's too weak a word, but I can't think of any better right now) with the victims and their families. But I don't know what to say. I don't have words that are adequate for something so horrific.

It's times like these where I wish I were religious so that I could pray for people. I feel completely helpless.

All I can offer, I guess, is that if anyone around here who hasn't completely lost their words wants to talk, I am willing to listen and respond.

[Redskies]

I confess I'm one of the people who isn't very fond of the phenomenon of offering prayers as a contribution to a rough situation - so, Sunshine, I don't feel that anything is lost by your lack of prayer Especially when the rough situation is rooted in systemic wrongs, like this hate crime expressing and reflecting bigotry and prejudice, it often feels very much like the person offering prayers is opting out of being any part of acknowledging or addressing those systemic wrongs. Especially when it's about a marginalised community, like queer folk are. It can feel like people are making the right noises until it goes away and they can ignore our oppression again. It can feel like that, even when the person offering prayers truly didn't mean it that way. Maybe it's extra-loaded for queer folk, too, as "pray for us" has too often been a tool of bigotry, a signal that our existence is wrong and that they'd have us change.

(Folk who have prayer as a way of life, who use prayer for personal comfort, who use prayer for guidance to action: I see you. Hopefully it's clear that's not about you - it's about the phenomenon of prayer-as-an-answer, for want of better phrasing.)

I DO think that Sunshine raises something really important, and a big need, with talking about feeling so helpless. That's something I feel like I see a lot when something terrible happens in one of our broader communities, when it isn't really connected to us personally. We can care very much indeed, and deeply want to do something, need to do something, even, but feel very lost about what, and that helpless feeling can make us feel worse. So, maybe it helps to talk a bit about what we, as very ordinary people, Can do, into the future? If people want that, I'm sure we can do that.

My own feelings about this are still finding themselves. What I'm beginning to get is that I'm ANGRY. Angry about the act, the destruction and pain caused just by bigotry and hatred. Angry at the waste - the future lives lost, and the impact on the people still here, for nothing. Angry at the bigotry and hatred directed at us and about us. Angry at the LGBTQ erasure that's happening in some places - obscuring that this was at a gay club. Angry that some people are using it to aim bigotry and hatred at others, including some of our own - homophobic violence being used as an islamophobic or xenophobic weapon, HELL NO. Angry that at a time where I would find care and a rejection of violence and harm most healing, some people are using the original hurt to stoke more violence and put up more divisions. Angry that someone's needless actions made me -and so many others - feel sad and world-shaken.

[Karyn]

Like Redskies, I'm not entirely sure what all my feelings are, but a lot of the emotion I can identify (for the moment anyway) is angry. So very, very angry, and for a lot of the same reasons Redskies already mentioned. In a way, I'm also tired and a bit hopeless: feeling that no matter what anyone does, things aren't going to get better. Part of that is the fact that for the LGBTQ community here in Australia, this comes after several months of very public homophobia targeted primarily at the people who run an organization called the Safe Schools Coalition designed to reduce homophobia/biphobia/transphobia in schools. After months of horrible homophobic tweets and Facebook posts and speeches in Parliament from right-wing politicians, and reading almost daily articles in the main right-wing newspaper here about how LGBTQ people are a threat and a danger, this just feels like the straw that broke the camel's back. Last night, I almost put a fist through my computer screen when I saw a tweet from a candidate running for federal office, a tweet in which he offered his condolences to the victims in Orlando and their families, and then in the same sentence reiterated that gay marriage was a threat to the children.

There's also been plenty of Islamophobia and xenophobia as a result of this as well; Heather and Redskies have pretty much summed up my feelings on this aspect too but it's definitely adding to the anger and the frustration I'm feeling.

[Sunshine]

I feel as if I should be angry, but lack the strength. Or the hope. I just feel very sad and helpless. I don't understand, I cannot understand, how a human being can commit such a crime. What could he possibly gain by this? It makes no sense, no sense at all.

I also feel very scared for the people I love. That something like this will happen to one of them. That a madman full of hate will just kill them, for no reason, just because he can.

[Redskies]

I think it Is absolutely incomprehensible, to the vast majority of people. That's immensely hard to deal with, but i also try to take heart from it: that so many people would not only never do it, they can't even comprehend.

I understand, when trying to grasp something in it, going to the place where someone just can't possibly have been sane - very literally - to do such a thing. But the terrible thing, and yes, so much harder and sickening, is that much more often with such things, the person was sane, by all common measures. Madness isn't correlated with hatefulness. Hatefulness seems to be its own thing and its own reason. I wanted to say that because sometimes it seems that the narrative around hateful and violent actions gets taken towards mental illness instead, and that both lets off the people who support hatred and prejudice (but they wouldn't support That extent of violence, oh no), and puts mentally ill people in line for more prejudice and danger.

[Sunshine]

Just posting again to make this thread be the most recent one and show up right away when anybody comes to the board. Also to say I am very sorry, didn't want to imply people with mental illness are more violent than anybody else (which they really aren't, folks. That's a common misconception).

I guess what I meant when I said "madman" was that I can't wrap my mind around calling a person who hates other people so badly that he goes out and shoots them sane. Doesn't mean the person in question can't or shouldn't be held responsible for their actions!

[Heather]

Homophobia is serious business, alas. And it is so deep, and so hateful for some that yes, this IS how it makes them feel and what it can incline them to do, especially when weapons are within reach.

I'm personally still trying to process all of this, but the very first place I would have gone when this happened (if I wasn't also working), was a gay bar, because these truly are places that feel like homes for many of us. Alas, where I live now doesn't have one, so it took until a few minutes ago for me to finally be able to get myself into the city to come to one. Now that I'm here, I barely have words to talk about how soothed I feel simply just being here with people who get it in all the ways: get how many of us are grieving right now, and all we're grieving for.

In the city (Seattle) today, I also walked by a wonderful women holding a "Hugs for Queers" sign, and the mere sight of her brought me to tears. I'm so glad people can still be so wonderful, and so grateful for people out there who can work it out to have their own grief and agony and still be so wonderful.

[Peonies]

I still don't know how to process this. This happens when I hear of most violent attacks in the news, but this time it really hit home for me. These were young adults my age who were out having fun with friends and the types of places I visit. Other than the grief for the lives lost, I am realizing that it could be anyone. It could be your friend, family member or even yourself.

The night of the shooting I was at a club in another city with friends. We were laughing, dancing and having fun. We were the same age as a lot of these victims. We woke up the next morning to this news.

I am truly struggling with processing this. Young people at a night club, college students on a college campus, people at a concert in Paris, people at an airport, flying, and even elementary school students in their classrooms at school. Where does it end?

[Sam W]

Peonies, I hear you. Events like this are always awful, but when it hits so close to home it doubles the shock and pain of the thing. I wish I had an answer to where it ends. I've tried, if nothing else, to use what happened as a reminder to reach out to the other LGBT in my life and tell them I love them. It's not much, but it's something.

[Redskies]

(I promise this is Orlando-centred, it gets there) What I got today, completely out of the blue and completely unexpected, is that I miss my mum - she died a few years ago - and I WISH I could talk to her about this. That's really from nowhere - I've had a bunch of life stuff since she's been gone where people typically get hit by that, but I haven't in a major way, I think because I've always known what she would say, so I had that. I don't know what she would say to me now. I have no idea, and I wish I could hear it. We had issues, yes, but in terms of crap from the rest of the world, the overwhelming majority of the time, she was rock solid, and she knew how I felt even if neither of us understood it. I just want to say, someone did something terrible, a bunch of other (mostly homophobic, and some other stripes of bigoted) people are making it worse, and a lot of us are really hurting, mum, please say something that helps.

It's the absence on the other end of that that is making me cry.

Just a massive gap, that's so strong the nothingness becomes a painful tangible Something.

And I think, there are a Lot of reasons why some other folk here will be feeling an absence too, and you're probably feeling as lost and as devastated as I am. Maybe the person you want to talk to - queer or not - isn't here any more, or isn't in your life any more. Maybe your person is homophobic, and would be unsafe, or simply as comforting as a concrete block. Maybe they're being clueless and can't grasp that you're feeling things about this and that it's in some way personal to you. Maybe your person isn't acknowledging this as a hate crime, and that LGBTQ+ folk are feeling it more. Maybe your person hasn't thought to check in with you or see if you want any TLC, and you feel unsupported and hurt. Maybe your person Would be there, but they absolutely can't. Maybe there isn't anyone you can think of, and you wish there was.

All of that absence hurts like hell, and compounds the original hurt. For people feeling it too, I haven't got a single word of wisdom for how to deal; just know you're not alone in being there and feeling the way you are.

I'm not sure how many older folk/parents/guardians/mentors read the boards, but for any who do: if you can manage to be a safe person about a queer hate crime, STEP UP. You don't want your young person feeling or writing about missing you the way I did above about my mum when you're still alive.
(Not so young myself any more, but the point stands.)

[Snorkmaiden]

I don't have a lot of words for what happened. They all seem to come up short. But I want to offer my heartfelt sympathy and support to all those affected. I'm so, so sorry.

Hate crimes suck to high heavens.