Validating communities: Exploring queer joy at

BY CONNOR MARTIN

Many interviewees also questioned whether there even is such a thing as a unified or singular “queer community” to build upon.

“I don't think there's a ‘queer community,’ I think there’s queer communities,” Nikash Harapanahalli (SFS ’24) said. “There are communities that are both racialized, that are put into different groups based off of identities, that are a part and parcel of who they are, with queerness being something in conversation with those other identities.”

The unpaid and time-consuming work of leading queer affinity spaces often falls into the hands of queer students that hold the privilege and thus the bandwidth to do it—which at a predominately white and wealthy institution often means white, cisgender, affluent, gay men. The result is these affinity groups like GU Pride often engineer spaces to intentionally or unintentionally exclude

When people of color date outside of their own racialized community, they can experience eroticization that can make dating prohibitive, or even harmful—a dynamic present in straight and queer relationships alike. “There is unfortunately a tendency to see queer people of color as bodies, as fetish, as to fetishize them and to eroticize them, or even to not date them at all,” Harapanahalli said. “I think the unfortunate reality is that, as a queer person of color, I’m a person of color before anything else.”

Even when students date within their own racialized communities, there are challenges.

“There are still barriers of internalized racism, homophobia, toxic masculinity that you have to also parse through,” Henry said. These are dynamics that make all kinds of dating difficult; however, they feel incredibly acute in queer communities due to the compounding nature of oppression. This acuteness is only complicated by fractured queer communities and a disconnect to LGBTQ+ history on campus.

Queer Hoyas are isolated from their history because they’re rarely exposed to it—university advertising doesn’t mention it, it isn’t readily accessible on most Georgetown websites, and it’s not discussed during New Student Orientation.

“We really lack the ability to be able to sit within our history, and that pulls us farther away from our sense of community,” Henry observed. According to them, this lack of knowledge has tangible impacts on the present day; when queer students don’t understand what was required on the path to achieving acceptance, equality, and resources here at Georgetown, they don’t fully grasp the gravity of continuing this work.

“I also want people to remember that our queer ancestors really fought for our right to be open and for me to even do this interview,” Yamamoto said.

On April 30, 1980, two student groups—the Gay People of Georgetown University (GPGU), which would evolve into GU Pride, and the Gay Rights Coalition of Georgetown University Law Center (GRC-GULC)—filed a lawsuit with the D.C. Superior Court accusing the university of unlawful discrimination after Georgetown rejected multiple efforts to form an officially recognized LGBTQ+ student group throughout the 1970s. After eight years of legal battles, the university capitulated, agreeing to grant equal access to university benefits for LGBTQ+ student groups but not official recognition until years later. A major institutional victory, the win did not necessarily reflect a cultural shift toward queer students.