Jovan: I went to a space in Dallas. Most of the music they play is in Spanish. The space is so inclusive. It’s people who look like me and speak the language I speak. That is safety. A sense of community. People are looking out for me, and I am looking out for them, but we are holding each other accountable.
white people.’ It is so automatic at this point. Jovan: There was a time in my life when I didn’t want to identify my queerness with the spaces that I was in. I wanted to go to a lot of different bars. I went to a bar at the Stockyards. I brought a guy with me. We were kissing at the bar. We were followed. By the time I got to my car, all of my windows are bashed. I want to try these spaces. They aren’t always safe. It made me wonder what a safe space means. For me, one person can’t make a space safe. One owner can’t. It is a community effort. It is people looking out for one another. As a Mexican queer person, I know that this city is going to trust the white person first. I feel like I’m always going to be the perpetrator or the person who started it. G: You do an assessment. How many white people are there? How many queer people
Summer of Cirque
appear to be in there? That’s the first thing I look for. If I felt safe enough, I might sit by myself or I might move on. If anything were to go down, I’m always going to be the problem. Because of my immigration status, it doesn’t matter if I am in the right. How much am I going to be allowed to be myself without putting myself and others in danger? Jess: Besides the rainbows there, [Urban Cowboy] didn’t feel like it was any safer than a regular straight bar. There should be spaces that are close to where we live. We were talking about maybe going out in the future. We talked about going all the way to Dallas because there are places in Dallas that would be safe for us. As far as Fort Worth, I don’t feel there are any. B: I never felt that I had a space here as a brown person. Growing into my queerness, that adds another level. I have escaped to
M: Do we create bars ourselves? Do we create change from within? Is there room for us to maneuver these structures that have been in place for decades that stem from white supremacy? G: We have all of these gay spaces where there are older white men who feign [to have experienced] discrimination but completely fail to understand the intersection of being Mexican, brown, Black, a lesbian, or transgender. That’s what Fort Worth is missing. A safe space for everyone would mean that these white people start to recognize how all of these things intersect. They are always missing that point of how we can make a safe space for everyone else. Jovan: The gay rights movement happened because a Black trans woman [Marsha P.
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Fort Worth’s gay-friendly bars are often packed with cisgender white males, which can leave Black and brown members of the LGBTQ+ community feeling left out.
G: One person cannot make a space safe. An establishment can never be the part of it that makes it safe. What makes it safe is a community. If you can come to a place and know that everyone has your back and everyone would defend you, that is what makes a safe space.
J U LY 1 4 - 2 0 , 2 0 2 1
M: We know what the culture is in Fort Worth. You see a lot of older white gay men [in queer-friendly bars]. Because these spaces are some of the only spaces that are queer-centered, we try to have a good time. We’ll go, but I feel like we keep to ourselves. It is never a conscious direct thing where we are like, ‘Oh, here are these
What does a safe space look and feel like?
FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY
What is gay bar culture like in Fort Worth? What do you have to think about when going out?
Dallas to try to find my space over there. It’s not concentrated in Fort Worth. Fort Worth has a specific way of going about it. As far as white dominance, cis male dominance, that’s worldwide.
Edward Brown
institute dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, found that LGBTQ+ people continue to face disproportionately high levels of discrimination and other challenges. Just over 1,500 self-identified LGBTQ+ adults were interviewed for the survey. More than one in three LGBTQ+ Americans faced discrimination of some kind in the past year, according to the survey. Half of respondents reported “moderate or significant negative psychological impacts” as the result of past discrimination. Republican state lawmakers are currently working to codify discrimination against transgender teenagers. One of Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priorities in the current special legislative session is a bill to ban public school athletes from competing on teams that align with the youth’s gender identity. Texas led the nation in the filing of anti-LGBTQ+ bills this past session, according to Equality Texas, a political advocacy organization that supports the full equality of the Texas LGBTQ+ community. One week after the incident at The Urban Cowboy Saloon, B, G, Jess, Jovan, and M (he/him) met me at Liberty Lounge on the Near Southside to discuss what safe spaces for marginalized groups can and should look like. M, who is Latinx, wasn’t at Urban Cowboy that evening, but he has had similar experiences, he said.
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