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“There were a lot of non-bar activities starting up … so you had other ways to be gay than just going to a bar for a long time. There were organizations for Latino gays … Asian American gays and Black gays,” Krone said. You could go to the gay men’s softball team, the lesbian softball team … the Massachusetts Lesbian Gay Political caucus.
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“You didn’t have to go to a bar just only to meet queer people. The gay rights movement was the first of many blows to gay bars, along with the AIDS crisis and the rise of the internet, said Mark Krone, a board member of The History Project, a nonprofit that documents New England’s LGBTQ+ history. While historically, especially between the ‘50s and the ‘70s, Boston’s gay nightlife scene was booming with bars like Sporters in Beacon Hill and Buddies in Back Bay, the number of spaces has declined. “When kids, especially teenagers college students, are told that they can be themselves, but they don’t see anywhere to feel themselves with other people like themselves, it can perpetuate the feelings of isolation … that have always existed,” said Kristopher Cannon, an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University and an expert in queer theory, who uses he and they pronouns. Cities like New York City and San Francisco boast vibrant LGTBQ+ populations, each with queer havens like the East Village and the Castro, respectively, but Boston has no reputation up to this caliber, potentially to the detriment of younger generations. Many college-aged youths fall into this category, and despite Boston housing 35 colleges and universities, queer people have few options to go out and gather with one another. If you’re under 21, the options are even slimmer.Īccording to a Gallup poll in 2020, one in six members of Generation Z - those born after 1997 - identify within the LGBTQ+ community, making it the queerest generation to date. With a handful of nightlife options like Club Café or DBar and a lack of a designated “gay neighborhood,” there’s nowhere that younger, Generation Z queer people can gather or find one another. I know what Boston has to offer.”įinding physical spaces for younger queer people in Greater Boston is often a struggle. So every time I return home, I’m not excited to find community and explore. “In the same way that I feel like Boston, right now, doesn’t have a lot to offer queer people, I feel the same way about creatives and people making art. “We all have our own assumptions of what Boston is and how it makes us feel and what we feel like we can get out of it,” Messan said. mainly because the options are sparse and not made for creative-minded people like him. Now that he’s out, graduated and living in Brooklyn, Messan says he still doesn’t seek out queer spaces when he comes back to visit his family in Lynn, Mass. After that, Messan realized he couldn’t hide who he was anymore. He felt like he could finally experience what straight people usually found much more quickly: intense, flirtatious banter and a natural connection. “Why is it that Cambridge is this amazing bubble, this amazing utopia? But I didn’t feel safe enough or valid enough or affirmed enough to come out.”ĭuring his first two weeks at Williams, he had his first hookup with a guy, which affirmed his sexuality. “There’s a reason why I didn’t come out until I left,” Messan said. When he moved out of Cambridge and away from home, he finally grasped his identity.
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He knew that he was attracted to men and never hid from queerer- or feminine-performing spaces, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone. But he still wasn’t out.įor him, it felt like he didn’t have a sexuality - people asked him if he was gay in middle school, but in high school, nobody brought it up. Growing up, he became heavily involved in Boston’s theater and dance community, spaces that he says are often coded as queer. Kester Messan, 23, didn’t come out as gay until he arrived at Williams College in 2017.īorn in Togo, he and his family moved to Boston when he was six years old, first settling in Roxbury, then Cambridge. Photo of the LGBTQIA flag outside of the Boston Public Library.