As a queer woman in a city that has frequently been described to me by locals as “dangerous,” working among a community of artists who have experienced violence and tragedy firsthand and going to bars late at night without any companions, I knew my spouse was already worried about my safety.īecause we live in a rape culture and because I was raised to not travel alone or drink too much or wear anything too revealing or do anything to put myself in a position where I could be targeted - some of which are things that my fieldwork requires of me - I sometimes worry about my safety. I will spend a few weeks interviewing artists, visiting archives, speaking with locals and, yes, attending bounce nights at local clubs. I am in New Orleans conducting research on sissy bounce, a term used to describe the cluster of queer rappers and performers who have seemingly taken over the local homegrown hip-hop genre. The history of queer-antagonistic violence is just below the surface in this neighborhood of gay bars and rainbow flags. where a man who was perceived as gay, Joseph Balog, was stabbed to death in 1993. I am staying on the same block of Dauphine St. During the 1973 arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar, 32 people were killed. I am living in a studio apartment in the French Quarter in New Orleans, just a few blocks from the site of what had previously been considered the most deadly mass murder of LGBTQ folks in the United States. One lone shooter has been identified, a man possibly motivated by a kiss he witnessed between two men a few days before in Miami. By the time I am reading about it, news outlets are reporting that around 50 people are dead and more than 50 others are injured.
My wife texts, “Have you seen the news?” I open Facebook and find dozens of posts about the horrific event that took place overnight at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. It is Sunday morning and I wake up to a flurry of text messages and Facebook notifications.