Cheers verses Ghetto

We had an interesting discussion at one of our meeting on LGBT elder care; it started out with a comment by one of the gay members of the committee. He said that he didn’t like when he was at a straight bar and getting hit by women. The conversation morphed how there is a limited number of gay bars in the Hartford area to would you go to a LGBT retirement community.

The discussion then switched how we are now getting marriage equality and ending discrimination in the work place but at the same time we want to hang out with our friends and most of the time our friends are gay or lesbian or trans.

I said it is the “Cheers” affect,

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

Or in our case where everyone is trans, where you can go and not have a label… “And this is Dave my trans* friend” we don’t want to be the trans* friend we just want to be a friend. We want to be in a place where we can be ourselves and let our guard down. Is this a ghetto? Or is it just “Cheers”

I always said that this effect was more pronounced the less you integrate into society, that is why there are Chinatowns and Little Italy where you are among people who share the same characteristics and culture as you. You don’t have to worry about people calling you names or painting your door with racial epitaphs. For us if you happen to be a six foot five trans-woman you sometimes want to go where you can let your hair down and just be yourself. But on the other hand if you are a five foot four trans-woman who can easily integrate into society you might not want to go there.

Though out history there have been “gay districts,” the Castro district in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York City, Soho in London, and for the rich gays, Palm Springs.

Is it wrong to want to be with your own kind?

The Stranger in the 1999 article “Seattle Next Gay Ghetto” said,

The closest most gays and lesbians ever come to finding a promised land is moving to the Gay Ghetto -- an urban neighborhood that is populated by, and reasonably tolerates, a large number of queers.

As the LGBT people integrates into the straight society the concept of a community is disappearing and it is being replaced by a picket fence and a flower garden in suburbia.

Also at the LGBT Elder’s meeting we talked about “gay senior housing” complexes with the group evenly divided if they would want to retire to a LGBT complex, some saw it as a way to meet friends who are like us while other saw it as a “ghetto.” One gay man in the group complained that as gays and lesbians become more accepted in the general population gay bars closing making it harder to find a partner, that when he goes to a straight bar he keeps getting hit on by women.

In the article “The growth of gay retirement homes” Aidan Lewis points out the growth of LGBT retirement communities,

As gay rights advance across the US, there is one group that feels it has long been neglected and isolated - the elderly. But that may now be changing, with a series of retirement housing projects opening to serve the gay community.

Before she moved house, Lucretia Kirby suffered homophobic verbal harassment and menacing notes pushed under her door. On one occasion, she and her partner Sandra were physically beaten and had to seek treatment in hospital.

That all changed in October, when she got a place in Spirit on Lake, an apartment block in Minneapolis marketed to elderly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT/GLBT) people.

"It's more than what I expected it to be. I thought it was just going to be another apartment complex and I was surprised that we've become a community - we know just about everybody by first name," says Kirby, a 58-year-old former teacher and nun who left her convent after falling in love with one of the other sisters. "I just feel blessed."

I know a lesbian couple who are living in a 55+ community and they have no problems with their neighbors. And that leads to the question what if it was a single gay male or a single lesbian woman, would they want to live in a straight community? Would they rather live in a LGBT 55 and over community where they socialize with other gays and lesbians?

And for us no matter where we live we will probably be a minority of one or two. So this week’s question…

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