Virtual Generation Gaps and What Is “Community”

Abstract

There is a certain nostalgia some people hold regarding the stereotype of the “lesbian potluck” or the “Sunday gay brunch,” the “lesbian softball team” and the “queer camping trips” that are embedded in the memories of many LBGT individuals who came of age at the height of the Gay/Lesbian Rights Movement of the 1970s–1980s. These physical spaces where queer folks gathered to talk politics, commune with like-identified individuals, and find support and acceptance in a world that was generally hostile were a lifeline and a coming-of-age and coming-out-of-the closet cornerstone. Due to the migration to digital communication and community and an increasing cultural tolerance for LGBT people, these physical spaces are receding or have disappeared, replaced or overshadowed by listservs, social networking, dating websites, and other digital communication. However, we need to take care not to romanticize this view of the LGBT community of a bygone era. Not everyone had a potluck or a bowling group and not every LGBT social group was an ideal community of support. Still, many older LGBT people lament the loss of the physical spaces and “real-world” communities that were part of the 1970s–1990s, attributing this loss to the digital age. Whether or not the demise of these physical spaces/groups is a direct result of our digitized culture is anyone’s speculation. Whether or not a digital community can/should replace a physical space can only be determined by each individual. Many people, for various reasons, prefer and draw energy from physical groups, others prefer and draw energy from digital communities, and many use both as a way of finding community and identity in the twenty-first century.

Appendix

Focus Group Questions:

• 1. How do you define your sex/gender/sexuality identity? Why?

• 2. If you “came out” within the past ten years, what Internet resources, films, television shows or other digital texts helped you with “coming out”?

• 3. If you came out within the past ten years or so, did you come out first to someone in person or did you first come out online (e.g. a status update on Facebook, a chat room of queer-identified people, an advice website)?

• 4. How did/does the Internet facilitate your understanding of queer identity and community?

• 5. How does the Internet or other digital texts (films, television, websites) assist you in identity issues or creating a community?

• 6. What films, websites, television shows were ones that you remember in helping you understand what it meant to be queer?

• 7. How do you think things are different today for queers than before the World Wide Web?

• 8. Have you engaged in chats, dating sites, advice/confession sites or other interactive queer-focused sites? If so, what was your experience like?

• 9. If you engage in interactive queer-focused sites, how do you represent your identity in the context of those sites?

• 10. What role do digital texts/media play in your identity or community today?

• 11. If you consider yourself a political or social activist, what is the nature of your activism?

• 12. How do you engage in queer activism (if you do)?