The Challenges LGBTQ+ Students Face During the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Danyelle] Hello everybody. Welcome to Comets Discuss, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network, where we give you mini episodes on big, trending topics. For this series we’re talking about COVID-19. With nearly every aspect of life now affected by this global pandemic, we’re interviewing UT Dallas experts — while practicing social distancing — to provide you various perspectives during this evolving situation. I’m Danyelle. Today we’re talking with Matt Winser-Johns. Matt is the assistant director of LGBT+ programs at the UT Dallas Galerstein Gender Center. Matt talks to us about challenges some LGBTQ+ students are facing as they return home due to the COVID crisis. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thanks so much for taking time away from all the work you’re doing to join us today.

[Danyelle] Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[Danyelle] First off, can you tell us a little bit about how the COVID crisis is affecting LGBTQ folks in general?

[Matt] Yes. So, this is such a hard thing to talk about because when a group is marginalized it’s hard when you’re already lacking support and then when something like this pandemic happens there’s already limited resources for the specific group. Just to give you a couple of quick frames of reference why this particular group is already vulnerable. The Human Rights Campaign gave a beautiful report called ‘Growing up LGBT in America’ back in 2019. So they said roughly 73% of LGBT youth say that they’re honest about themselves online than they are in the real world. 92% of LGBT youth say they hear negative messages about being LGBT and those top sources are from school, internet and their peers. Those are just a couple of statistics that happened before this pandemic.

[Danyelle] So what type of issues are UTD students specifically facing in homes that are non-affirming?

[Matt] I think that the biggest thing that I have heard so far from students is they went from being at UTD — which felt pretty affirming with being surrounded by other students that were affirming their identity, using the correct pronouns, the correct, you know, chosen name — and then for some of them, not all of them, they went to a home where their parents or their legal guardians or siblings either don’t know who they really are or know and are not supportive. And on top of having to do classes online and figure that out they’re also having to figure out how to go back into the closet and all the trauma that includes.

[Danyelle] So what is the journey that some of these students take when they leave their homes the first time where they’re not being affirmed and supported? What kind of journey are they experiencing when they get to UTD and they are having this area of support and this network of support?

[Matt] That’s a great question. I think a lot of the LGBTQ+ students that we encounter, you know, college campuses are the very first time that they can actually explore who they are, for a variety of reasons. They are encountering affirming resources sometimes for the first time.

[Danyelle] Do you think it was especially difficult with COVID, because it kind of happened overnight?

[Matt] A lot of our students, just in general, overnight learned that they were gonna have to completely shift their classes online and that comes with a lot of stressors. On top of that, for our students that are in the queer community they were having to come to terms with, okay I’m having to return back to an environment that for a lot of our queer students is not affirming so there’s a lot more stressors. Yes we have all these great resources available to us but you know a lot of our queer students have their not-affirming parents sitting behind them so they can’t have these, you know, Zoom meetings with their fellow students because their environment is not an accepting environment. So there’s a lot of different things that people have to think about when it comes to going back into an environment that’s not affirming.

[Danyelle] So let’s talk a little bit about community. You mentioned when students are on campus they’re able to interact with their peers and all y’all great staff at the Gender Center. How important is community and having a support network for queer folks in general outside of the crisis?

[Matt] You know, for a lot of people they don’t have a lot of queer people in their families or in their current friend groups so when they do come into a new environment where they’re able to explore who they are, you know, this is beautiful. They’re able to for the first time find other people that are like them. You know, I think it’s human nature to be drawn towards people that have like minds because it’s fun to talk to people who think like yourself or who even look like you or who identify like you so it’s so important just as humans to connect with people that are like you. So for marginalized communities such as our queer communities you know it’s so crucial to find other people that feel like you and there’s so much comfort in finding people that also don’t have affirming environments and to connect with each other like, “how did that feel for you?” And there is comfort in finding other people that have gone through very unique situations like you have. For instance in the Gender Center I love overhearing conversations from other students that are like, “oh my gosh, I went through the same thing. What did you do? Oh well, do you know about this resource? It helps me a lot.” Now that we’re forced into a virtual format it’s still very much important but it’s not the same. You know a physical space is so important but we are still trying to offer all of our services in our virtual format as much as we can but you know it is a harsh reality where we’re all having to face, how can we still connect where we can’t physically be together.

[Danyelle] What’s some advice you would have for students who might be in this situation of living in a non-affirming home and maybe not being able to partake in some of the resources that the Gender Center has if they have parents who are, like you said, looking over their shoulder?

[Matt] That’s a great question. I think it’s so important to remember that even though you might be in a non-affirming environment or household, there are still affirming resources all around you. Find those. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people that can help you. I’ll give you a great example. For instance, The Trevor Project, which is a wonderful resource, 24/7 hotline that really helps queer youth that are thinking about suicide or depression, anything along those lines. It helps those people find refuge. So for instance when this pandemic occurred the CEO Amit Paley said that their call volume literally doubled and he actually said in a recent podcast, which is going to be linked on our website after this discussion, he said there’s just so many young people who were impacted and scared and frightened in an unsafe or challenging situation and many of them are reaching out for help just to talk and talk about what they’re going through. He said, “Our calls have gone from 3,000 a week to more than 6,000 a week. However we’re still able to handle this call volume with our volunteers. Many of these young people are distraught leaving accepting college environments and it can be especially painful for those who are transgender.” And the beauty, for instance with the Trevor Project, is they were already a remote resource so they’re able to handle this online situation. So please continue to reach out to the different resources. We have linked them all on the Gender Center website. Continue to reach out to the Gender Center. Our Student Counseling Center is still meeting with students in a virtual format through Microsoft Teams. We are still very much virtually opened and please continue to reach out. That’s my biggest piece of advice is that when you don’t reach out, that’s when we don’t know that you need help. So we really need our LGBT plus students to reach out.

[Danyelle] So I know the Gender Center is super active on social media. Are any students able to interact with you guys through that medium?

[Matt] Absolutely. So the Gender Center has been doing a variety of different things that we can still interact with our queer communities online. So for instance we still have our podcast club that meets every other week. We also do a Netflix party every week where we watch gender equity and queer content and we have a live chat function that we talk about the movies and we also drop resources in our chat function while we’re doing that. And like I mentioned before we have our virtual office hours Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00 p.m. Any time any student needs to talk we are available in those office hours to talk and then lastly we have online mini workshops that we talk about gender equity and LGBT+ content to train our campus — students, faculty and staff — to still update our campus on the up-to-date information that people need to know when we are talking about our queer communities.

[Danyelle] Have you received any feedback from any students who felt apprehensive about reaching out to you guys and then did and then were like, you know what, this is this is great, this is helping me keep going even though I may be back in the closet at home?

[Matt] Do you know what? We actually received a comment on Twitter last week that completely warmed my heart. I’m gonna try to paraphrase it. It just basically said, “In this complete negative world I can at least come to the Gender Center social media for some positivity.” And a simple comment like that just showed our staff that, okay, our purpose right now is to not only give out these important resources but to also show our students, faculty and staff at UT Dallas that we’re gonna keep on sharing positive messages about embracing who you really are and how important it is to show up and to embrace who you are. It really encouraged our staff to know that we are still making an impact even if we’re doing it virtually.

[Danyelle] Can we talk a little bit about other ways that social media may help connect the queer communities?

[Matt] So I think social media is a completely beautiful medium for our queer communities. I know that social media can have a lot of negative components but there have been so many great things about social media especially in this pandemic. Through Tik Tok, through Instagram, I have just been seeing so many amazing queer influencers really speak out and show the world that despite how many people think about the queer community, that we are showing up and we are showing who we are and how important it is to be visible. So I think one specific thing that I particularly love about social media is, you know, the fact about the hashtags? You could actually connect with different communities and explore your identity their different hashtags. So for instance if you are exploring your gender identity — and when we’re talking about gender identity we’re talking about one’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither — and that is something that you can really explore through different hashtags. So if an influencer talks about being gender fluid you can click on the hashtag gender fluid, learn more about that and then maybe you say, well is that something that I think that I might identify as? And you know you can explore your own identity through social media and learn more about yourself.

[Danyelle] So Matt do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave our listeners with?

[Matt] Yes, I would just love everyone to know at UT Dallas, however you identify, the Gender Center is here for you and if there’s any resource we can connect you to we would be more than happy to. I know that we really focus on gender equity and LGBT+ issues but however you identify, whoever you are, our services are open to you — students, faculty and staff — and we are here for the entire campus before, during and after this pandemic.

[Danyelle] Thank you so much. We really appreciate everything that the Gender Center is doing and we really appreciate you for joining us today on this episode.

[Matt] Thank you so much for having me and I hope you have a great day.

[Danyelle] Thanks again for joining us. Check out the show notes for links to resources Matt shared with us. Thanks for joining us. Comets Discuss is brought to you by the UT Dallas Office of Communications. A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Mannish for our music. Be sure to check out our other show at utdallas.edu/cometcast. For the most up-to-date news at UT Dallas visit the university’s official COVID-19 information web page. Take care and stay healthy. Whoosh!