Platforms and Portraits: How I Built a Queer, Disabled Life Online And Fought to Reclaim It - It Gets Better Canada

How I Built a Queer, Disabled Life Online And Fought to Reclaim It

Online communities and spaces were an essential tool for me growing up as a queer and disabled person. Growing up in Edmonton, there were no spaces for me to express my queerness and disability healthily, so platforms like Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram connected me to stories, photography, art, activism, and ideas that relate to who I was. I started to develop ways to express myself creatively and emotionally in ways that my disability prevented me from doing so. My disability limited my speech, which made me shy and reserved in real life, but social media allowed me to communicate without the fear of being misunderstood. I built friendships and community with people who taught me how to safely maneuver these platforms and protect myself mentally and emotionally, as these online spaces were unregulated when I was growing up. Exposure to social media and people has led me to become a photographic artist, which I am currently on.

As I started to work as a photographer with the Edmonton drag artists and started to share my work, and those artists shared my work, I started to develop a following with people in Alberta. The drag scene in Alberta was small but mighty, and I was able to connect with people online and then work with and meet some beautiful and wonderful people in real life. I was able to share my stories online about my disability and gender, which allowed me to share parts of me I was scared to share in person. Social media has become a bridge between the digital and physical community, and the physical community has made me feel so welcomed and loved.

"that bridge helped me become more social and not afraid of speaking with my speech impediment"

Because of this, my friends and other community members were aware of my access needs and crafted spaces where I can speak freely. I remember on a night out, people had approached me to ask if I was that photographed a certain drag queen or artist, and it was surreal to be spotted as such, but it was a welcomed surprise. Social media has allowed me to platform and access parts of me I was afraid of, and that transferred over to the physical environment, which was so loving and welcoming.

During the spring of 2018, a bar in Edmonton, where I heard horror stories of women and queer people feeling unsafe and harmed in that bar, started to promote a pride event in June. To my knowledge, that bar hasn’t had a queer event before, which shows their intent to make profits off of Pride season was made clear. I didn’t want my queer friends and others to go into a space where they might face harm, and the venue ultimately does not care about them. I wrote an open letter on Facebook to the bar, asking them to show that they cared about the LGBTQ+ population of Edmonton, rather than the apparent move to make a profit. I asked them to host more queer events and become a part of the community rather than a hostile environment. The post gained some traction, which led to the harmful messages to come through.

Always sent from anonymous accounts, the roughly 25+ messages were filled with slurs and threats, which I tried to ignore and block immediately. I didn’t want to give them life by engaging with or sharing them with family and friends. However, that was enough to sour my perception of the relationships on social media platforms. I thought I was containing the anxiety and fear from those messages at bay, but it started to spill over and affect my relationships. I started to limit my interactions online, made my accounts private, and began to lose what bridges connections in real life. Even with the connections I had previously made, I couldn’t shake the worry that they might be linked to those anonymous messages. I know they weren’t, but amid the cloud of isolation, I began to doubt the connections I formed. Even when people approach me in real life, I start to feel fear when they ask me about my work. Community-building, a significant source of joy and the thing that initially made me feel confident, became a point of anxiety and fear.

I’ll admit that it took me a long time to recover and understand the gravity of the situation that I faced. It took a close friend to point out that I was removing myself from social events and ask me if something had happened. I shared what happened and they validated the fear and anxiety, but encouraged me to reconnect with the people who helped me make that post. I slowly reconnected with those online friends and communities who helped me grow and blossom. I put in the effort of trusting and remembering how those people made me feel loved. It was a long journey, but I’m glad I did as it helped me heal and continue to grow as an artist, activist, and person.

A propos de l'auteur

Liam Mackenzie is a multidisciplinary artist who creates using photography, videography, fashion, drag, and physical fabrication. The frequent elements in his work are camp, maximalism, nature, humour, and decay. The two main motifs that Liam tends to use to explore the preservation and celebration of queerness and disability and the cultural relationship between bodies, gender, and sex. Liam is drawn to strong graphic elements, flamboyancy, and eccentricity.

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