Towards a Global Queer Consciousness
The Project of 'Queering The Map'
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Consider this: a map that vibrates with sensation. That is an especially evocative description of a fascinating digital archiving project called “Queering The Map.” First created by Lucas LaRochelle in 2017, the site went viral in 2018 and now hosts thousands of queer musings/confessions/memories from around the world. The project is an interactive map of the world wherein users can add accounts of their own experiences or thoughts and attach them to specific locations. The site’s description describes Queering The Map as “a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space,” which “works to generate affinities across difference and beyond borders.”
The site “functions as a living archive of queer life,” and any and all interpretations of what constitutes a “queer experience” are admissible. The submissions that have been archived on the site can be separated into several broad categories. There are accounts of sexual or intimate encounters, which presumably occur in both public and private spaces (summer of 98, got my first handy from a boy on the baseball team). In a related vein, there are many accounts of “firsts,” whether it be first kisses (a very common occurrence), first loves, first coming-outs, or the like. According to researcher Taylor Raffa, 43% of the posts she surveyed described a “first” of some kind.
Some of the posts describe falling in love, while plenty of others describe heartbreak. Some posts represent confessions or coming-outs, either a re-telling of a confession to someone else or an anonymous confession told to other users (I think I might be ace). Some posts represent a user’s dream for the future, while others reminisce about the past. A number of posts serve as markings of where a user was born or grew up but is as-of-yet unable to return to (You know, maybe one of these years, I can go back home). Some posts are simply messages of support to people living in countries where being queer or trans is especially dangerous (you give me courage).
LaRochelle’s description of the site as a “counter-mapping platform” is significant. Queering The Map serves to challenge and reframe the dominant narratives about space and queerness and how those two things intersect. Michael Brown and Larry Knopp write that queer interrogations of geography serve to “uncloset spaces that are otherwise heteronormatively represented.” What Queering The Map does is illustrate that any space can be queer once queer people populate it, from a beach in South Africa to a farm in Austria. The site allows global queer and trans folks to declare their existence in spaces where their presence is far from a given.
Even more striking is how the site imbues a normally stagnant image – a world map – with so much emotion. The emotions represented on the map run the gamut. Raffa found that 56% of the posts had a positive emotional sentiment, 13% were neutral, 26% were mixed, and 5% were negative. One of the most arresting tensions in the emotional field is the distinction between hope and regret. i come here to dream of my gay future. i feel like its impossible but i will try as hard as i can to achieve it writes a user in Uzbekistan. I should have kissed you while I had the chance writes a user in Indonesia.
A number of posts describe the experience of being a diasporic queer or trans person and having a complicated relationship with the notion of home. One day, Somalia will accept me for who I am, and I will come back to visit. For now, I will love Somalia from afar, one user writes. Examples such as these serve as ghostly reminders of places where queerness was not allowed to flourish. These posts illustrate a painful tension between the past and the future – a longing for a past that may have never existed and a future that has not yet come to pass.
Love also features prominently on the map, with hundreds of users posting about first loves, crushes, and heartbreaks (i dreamt about a girl / a girl made me so beautifully nervous). Some of these posts describe love stories that have long ended, while others celebrate a love that is still going strong. Others describe not romantic kinship, but the experience of finding a group of people who are entirely supportive. It’s clear that location hugely factors into these relationships. Several users in long-distance relationships have positioned their love stories in the middle of the ocean in order to represent the distance between them and their loved one. Even when users are posting about relationships that have ended, there is often a sense of gratitude expressed for what the relationship meant to that person. (I hope wherever you are in life now you find happiness. And, thank you).
Not all of the stories recorded on the map are happy ones, of course. There are also stories of violence, prejudices, and displacement. While some users describe affirming experiences of coming out, others describe being met with rejection, or being expelled from school (Here I realized just how homophobic my entire family was). Others describe a general experience of mental suffering as a result of their environment (I wish I was born somewhere else / I can’t take this anymore). Others still characterize their ability to survive a homophobic environment as a triumph and find it imperative to make their presence known (I survived).
There are some real implications for what a map like this can provide for our community. Some users have used the site as a place to share advice. When one user in central Russia posted about their fear of dying alone, several other users marked themselves nearby in order to offer words of support and share their own experiences. One user in Morocco advised other users not to come out to homophobic Muslim family members until they were financially independent. The map also serves as an implicit guide for which spaces are and aren’t safe for queer and trans folks. Though the map is not precise in its delineations of safe vs unsafe spaces, the full picture provides a potentially useful account of where and how queers have been able to flourish in the world.
On an ideological level, the map engenders a sense of global queer community. In his influential 1983 book, political scientist Benedict Anderson proposed the idea of “imagined communities.” Anderson used this concept as a way to analyze the formation of nationalism, a construction that he maintained emerged as a result of print capitalism. Despite the often destructive results of nationalism, we can also think of an imagined community in a more productive manner.
In the case of an imagined global queer community, the productive aspect therein is the creation of a sense of solidarity, which in this case is opposed to the homogeneity that nationalism generally requires. Posters and readers of the map are able to explore experiences and situations very different from their own while also making connections across borders and across cultures. Though not perfect – the map is easily susceptible to spamming – it’s a useful tool for building these sorts of connections.
While there have been efforts in the past to enliven a sense of queer lineage by unearthing the stories of our queer ancestors, this map instead reaches laterally, expanding our consciousness in a different direction. This move is especially important for queer and trans folks because we do not usually grow up around others like us and community can be difficult to come by. What Queering The Map proves is that this sense of isolation is more illusory than we might have thought.