It’s become increasingly important for the crypto space to veer queerer and for queer communities to adapt. The isolation Davies felt in the NFT space is one I hear repeated by queer crypto creators time and time again. And Dawnia’s experience with IRL queer community is one many crypto queers are familiar with, too. When she began minting, she also began to lose friends: “There were so many hit-pieces about crypto-NFTs around that time and I feel like so many queer folks, who had months prior decried the ‘plastic straws’ debacle as corporations shifting the blame of systemic issues to the average consumer, latched onto them. I felt really betrayed, to be honest.” The hypocrisy was apparent. If she instead took a job with one of the corporations mostly responsible for the destruction of the planet, she knows the response would have been different. “I would have been met with congratulations, or at worst ‘you have to do what ya gotta do to survive in this capitalist system.’”
In queer spaces, we often talk about joy. The joy of community, friendship, love, gender euphoria. That joy is genuine, but the emphasis is often just as much a coping mechanism. Queer people are not homogenous, and even in our own spaces, isolation is king. People who live in smaller communities get hit the hardest, but even someone like myself, living where I do, knowing that I could probably go a week without interacting with a cishet person if I really tried, can struggle with finding community. Being the only trans person in a room of cis queers, for example. There are a million variations, coming down to gender, sexuality, race, religion, politics, economic class–you name it. It’s hard to encounter queer people who are queer in exactly the way that you are. That’s why so many of us already turn to online spaces for community, to meet people who understand us. It’s such a lonely lifestyle is a classic line used to scare us into rescinding our truths, dangling the ultimatum of rejection over our heads. You want to be queer? Sure. But you’ll be alone and you’ll be sad. Good luck.
It’s not accurate to solely characterize queerness as loneliness. Finding your people is hard, but when you do, they’re your family. It’s complicated, and as queer creators in the NFT space experience isolation from two sides, change becomes essential on each end. “I’ve not received much flack for it in a while,” Dawia said, which eased my mind. “I’m not sure if this means attitudes are changing or attention spans are just short, or if I successfully weeded out the detractors.” If NFT art can succeed on one of its central tenets, building community through peer to peer connective webs, perhaps it can cut through some of the early vitriol and skepticism.
So who wins in Web3? In many instances to date, it’s the people who have always won. But values are changing, and while people in the NFT space are responsible for uplifting their own communities, the real driver of progress comes from outside, and it’s not impossible. I think back to “The Lesbian Bar Project’s” Decentraland event, this merging of spaces that until recently have felt antithetical. Bars hold a specific place in the hearts of queer people, in our histories. In the United States, lesbian bars are disappearing. I mentioned earlier that Ginger’s was the only lesbian bar in Brooklyn–a second opened in my neighborhood just this month. In Manhattan, there are two. One in Queens hosts pop-up events, and it’s been trying to fund a permanent space for the better part of two years. With so few places to gather, what’s been the community’s response? To adapt. One of the most popular lesbian spots in Brooklyn is a weekly party hosted at a straight bar in Williamsburg, one with a big backyard and a clientele that usually conjures too many images of college for my taste. But every Wednesday night, it’s transformed into a sapphic haven. In my own neighborhood, there are few queer bars proper, but because a high population of queer people call it home, most bars are queer bars as long as the right people show up, and the cishets are so used to it by now that they barely blink when we roll in. A dedicated space has value, absolutely. But in the absence of what we need, we’re pretty skilled at crafting alternatives, as long as we’re not meeting hostility on the outside.