Beyond The Binary: Building a Queer and Trans Community

“As someone fairly new to the second-largest city in the United States, and as a freshly out, nonbinary person, I’m absolutely not sure where I belong, let alone how to tangibly identify and embrace my queer and trans community here.”

That’s a quote from a column I wrote for OFM’s 2021 Pride Issue, titled “Pride in Isolation: Searching for My Queer Community.” A year later, that statement still feels somewhat true, though I don’t think I was really focusing on the right parts of the conversation.

I have no intent on rehashing the same points of a year-old column. With another pandemic year in the books, and even more time alone in my little studio apartment with my cat and Macbook Pro, I want to instead dive into the complex, rewarding, and often lonely experience of embracing my gender during such a distinct time in our history. 

(I was also miraculously able to make some queer and trans friends at the end of it all! But more on that later.)

I know I’m not alone in the timing of my coming out. There were a ton of trans folks who had their gender awakening during the pandemic. When we’re spending so much time with ourselves, tracing over our lives, our identities, and the way we show up in the world, we’re bound to come out with some revelations.

The tricky part? We come out to ourselves, to our families and friends, to the internet, and then what? We’re still in a pandemic. As much as we might have wanted to rush out into the world, fully embracing and exploring this element of ourselves among a supportive collection of trans community members, that isn’t always possible, especially navigating the restrictions of 2020 and 2021.

For me, I was living in a new city during a pandemic. For trans folks across the country, there may be no visible trans or queer community to embrace—Also, those folks clearly have to deal with COVID-19 and its limitations, too.

After coming to terms with my gender and coming out publicly, I remember that immediate “What now?” feeling. I was out; I was confident, invigorated even, but I was just alone in my apartment again. I had all a collection of Trans Feelings™ I wanted to explore but no one to actually turn to in my IRL community.

I found solace in my Colorado queer community as I newly navigated living as an out nonbinary person last year. My smartphone was a crucial tool. I connected heavily with the trans folks I knew in Denver and Fort Collins, even if it was just a quick FaceTime or a ferocious, back-and-forth DM session traversing the triumphs and tribulations of being trans and queer.

I found friends in people I’d never met or spoken with before. Listening to trans creators like Jeffrey Marsh and Matisse DuPont talk about their experiences, or gender as a whole, allowed me to start thinking about myself and my gender in a way I might not have otherwise. Scrolling on my TikTok “For You” Page, filled with queer and trans voices, helped me to process my own experience. 

It’s surely not the same thing, but embracing my digital and Colorado communities reminded me of what I might have felt if I was surrounded by other, living breathing trans people having similar conversations. It also further motivated me to branch out in my real life, even though it was a challenge after so much isolation.

The fact that I didn’t know “where I belong” or how exactly to embrace my queer and trans community here last June didn’t stop it from happening, but I did have to go out on a few limbs. 

I posted to the meet-up app Lex last summer simply telling folks that I was looking for more friends. Just that post connected me to two of my closest LA friends today, one who is also nonbinary. 

The back-and-forth I longed for watching queer and trans folks through my smartphone is now a regular occurence when I chat with Raquel. You can even hear exactly what I’m talking about: We did a whole episode for their podcast, Raquel’s Cosmic Joke, about our experiences coming out and living as nonbinary people.

My heavier-than-usual social media use through the pandemic (and need to keep tabs on people from high school and college I barely talked to at the time) also ended up paying off. A fellow nonbinary colleague at the Colorado State University radio station, and I would DM on Instagram from time to time, replying to one another’s stories and generally shooting the shit through the first months of the pandemic. 

Sometime after moving to LA, I discovered they lived here with their partner. Once COVID numbers began to dip last year, I was able to safely make it over to their Pasadena pad for a number of queer movie nights where, wouldn’t you know it, I met more queer people!

I similarly realized a queer YouTuber—whom I met on the site back in 2006 through our shared love of making Kingdom Hearts parodies and music videos—also lives here with his partner. Making a digital friend over a niche interest as a teenager unexpectedly led to another friendship more than 15 years later.

Though, I’m already in my head like, “Keegan, not everyone just finds out they have people they know already living in their city. Not everyone lives in ‘LA’

My point is that, even though it took some time, I suddenly have more local queer friends than I can count on both hands. It’s surely still growing, but my community is innately blossoming, and I hardly even realized it until I interrogated it further. As uncomfortable and sometimes even unnatural as it’s felt to shed my pandemic cocoon, joining an app to make friends, meeting up with new people in-person, pushing myself to attend a queer comedy night midweek—Whatever method, it seems to be working.

That said, do I have all the answers? I now have living, breathing trans friends in my immediate community—Is my gender and identity suddenly, fully realized? Do I now know everything there is to know?

Of course not. 

If I had to rewrite that blurb from last June, I’d say, “I’m not sure where I belong, but I’m enjoying figuring it out and embracing my ever-growing queer and trans community here.”

If you’re a person like me, coming into their transness or queerness during the pandemic, know that there are indeed ways to continue this conversation with yourself. The rest will come. And, even once you find yourself surrounded by fellow LGBTQs, the exploration presses on.

This month and looking forward, rather than harping on what’s missing, I’m eager to hold all of the beautiful queer people in my LA, Colorado, and digital communities close, and I look forward to uncovering all of the exciting unknowns in the future.

Happy Pride Month, fam!