Between the Pages: Is There a Collective Queer Identity? Part 3

By Al Preston

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Thus far, we’ve talked about two aspects of what I would consider parts of an unified queer identity and culture. There’s the way we talk to each other and the world and then there’s gender mess, a fundamental part of the experience of being all kinds of queer. There’s another piece to this idea that unifies LGBT+ folks as an identity which I’ve already touched on a few shared experiences. Common experiences unify people of all backgrounds. Americans have shared experiences of the American identity, for example. Americans who live in particular areas, states, and cities all share various levels of experiences due to their location. This can work for other pieces of common identifiers; the place you work, the economic class you grew up in, your ethnic identity, your race, and even your gender. All of these things can allow you to find common ground with someone else.

            It’s pretty well known that there are intersectional parts of our identity; we are the sum of our parts. Being a black man who has a blue-collar job with a wife, but no kids is a very particular set of identities that all run into each other and effect that person’s life in different ways from his white, single mom colleague.

            Of course, that means there are commonalities between each of these pieces of a person’s collective identity. Women share experiences of misogyny. Lower economic classes share hardship stories like food scarcity. College students share studying struggles and too early existential crisises.

            So, what would be the common experiences that LGBT+ folks all share? Are there shared experiences? Are there only shared experiences between gays and lesbians? Only lesbians? Do transgender folks only share experiences with each other or are there common experiences between transgender folks, gays, lesbians, and asexuals?

            If there are shared experiences, what are they? Does this even matter? Am I just saying things everyone already knew?

            To that last question, yeah obviously. Nothing I’m about to talk about may sound surprising to the LGBT+ folks reading. However, there is a reason it needs to be laid out and there is a point to be made about what these shared experiences mean for us as individuals and as a larger culture; experiences with disease, either as a descriptor or a pandemic, finding and understanding oneself, and the drive to help the community. In order to make this point, I’m going to talk about three examples of the same general topic or type. All three will be from oral histories. One will be from Making Gay History by Eric Marcus while the other two will be from our collection while.

            The important context to these three examples is that the oral history from Making Gay History was recorded sometime in the 1970s or 80s with someone who was born around 1930 or 1940. While one of the oral histories from our collection will be from a Pittsburgh queer elder recorded in 2025. The other will also be from 2025, but from a younger person.

            Three very different times, three different people, multitudes of experiences. Some shared, some not. All of whom I think identify to one degree or another with each other.

            Barbara Gittings, our first historical example was a Philadelphia native who became a foundational member of many of the lesbian focused activist groups in the nation. She and her partner, Kay Lahusen were part of the Daughters of Bilitis, The Ladder, and the first initial marches for gay rights which took place in Philadelphia. Gittings was also part of the first Pennsylvania LGBT+ Advisory Commission. Born in 1932, Gittings had a very extensive experience in being LGBT+ in America and particularly in Pennsylvania.

            Next, Scott Noxon is a former Pittsburgh bar owner. He owned and operated the Pegasus, the Sidekicks restaurant, and the Eagle. He realized he was gay in Pittsburgh and spent so much time in the bars he eventually became trusted with some of them. He still lives in the city and remembers what the bars use to be like. He also blames the loss of many of the city’s bars to the internet and the widening acceptance of LGBT+ people.

            Finally, we have Clare Joyce (she/they). Joyce was born and raised in Pittsburgh. They stepped out of the closet during the Covid pandemic where many people were stuck inside with only their computers and the internet to entertain them. Many people, left alone with their own thoughts and information right at their fingertips realized their own queerness. While Joyce is much younger than Noxon and Gittings at only around 20 years old, their experiences echo those of their elders.

            Like many other queer folks, these three narrators began their stories with the moment they discovered or realizeed their queerness. It happens at all ages and situations.

            When Marcus interviewed Gittings, she expressed many of the experiences that many queer folks her age and younger may have experienced. At eighteen, she realized that something was a little different about her. However, she didn’t have easy access to answers.

Gittings: “I tried to find myself in legal books and encyclopedias. I found everything I possibly could. What I found was puzzling. It was me they were talking about, but it wasn’t me at all. It was very clinical; it didn’t speak of love; it didn’t have very much humanity to it. They were talking about some kind of alien condition that was a departure from the norm. It was something strange. It was possibly treatable, but possibly not. Everything I read said that we were deviants. So that’s what I thought about myself.” Pg 17

Gittings: “I don’t like bars, but I went because that was the only place I knew to find other gay people.” Pg 17

Gittings: “I also came across odd things in the books I read. For example, I read that homosexuals could not whistle. I could whistle, so I didn’t quite know what to make of that. I learned that the favorite color of homosexuals was green and my favorite color was not green. I didn’t know what to make of that either. I actually tried to mold myself according to what I thought was the role—the way—but that approach didn’t last very long.” Pg 17

            Gittings was 18 in 1950. With no internet or easy access to more accurate information about queerness. Many LGBT+ folks found these same sources. Many believed what they read because they believed that there is something wrong with them or because the authors of those sources are ‘experts’.

            However, the 50s was also a time of change. While everything she read insisted that she was something bad or wrong, she knew that wasn’t quite right. While there were so many barriers to finding other queer folks, the community found a way. Of course, the best place were the bars.

Noxon, of course, knew the bars the best. However, he didn’t begin there. Noxon felt fear coming out although he came out in the late 70s and early 80s when the LGBT+ movement had begun. While the movement had made strides, violence and abuse was still common for LGBT+ folks everywhere. Noxon and the people he met in bars had to find ways to protect themselves as they bar hopped every night.

Pittsburgh never gained a red light district or a central street that LGBT+ folks lived on. They had to traverse the streets of Pittsburgh with only each other for protection;

Noxon: “And I guess that’s how everybody comes about. One of their coming out stories are trying to find somebody else to talk to without getting beat up or yelled at or something. Yeah. It was—I was a late bloomer. I was twenty-four.”

Noxon: “I didn't want my parents to know. And the other half of that whole equation, when you came out--we were right in the middle of the AIDS problem and that was just--my first year I came out.”

Noxon: “It still wasn't--I don't want to say appreciated...it wasn't something that would run out there and talk about that they are. Everybody was still very clouded or--try to keep people from finding out who they are and what they like. I had a friend, a bar tender that I hired from Penn State. We never knew each other, and he was six foot five, all muscles. He got the shit beat out of him because he was gay at Penn state main campus. He got beat up. Somebody knew he was gay or he came out of the one gay bar there. But he's--that's how it was.”

Noxon: “When I came out, we would wait at Pegasus for; three, four, five, six people. Every--had a group. And you'd walk fast, or you would run over to Zack's Fifth Ave. Zack's Fourth Ave. Z-F-A. Because you were afraid of getting--of somebody snatching you up in their car or truck and taking you away. We'd always do that… We--six or seven--we'd walk fast. If we weren't running, we'd walk fast just in case somebody stopped their car and snatched us up.”

            That fear didn’t stop LGBT+ folks from gathering or living or finding their community. Much like Gittings, bars were a central location and a safe place to gather and protect themselves. Better yet, they weren’t run by the mob or other crime groups in Pittsburgh. They were run for queer folks by queer folks.

However, as the years passed, the bars that Gittings and Noxon found themselves and others like them started to disappear. Many from their generation attribute that loss to the success of the gay rights movement. If everyone is welcome and safe, then the role the bars played in the community isn’t as necessary. Of course, people still think bars are important. There is still a lot of fighting that needs done, especially in these very scary and uncertain times.

            While times have changed and being queer has become more tolerated in many places, including in Pittsburgh, these same struggles still echo into the new generations. Joyce may not have the same places to find themselves or people like them, but they still managed to do so.

Joyce: “I probably should have realized sooner and the first thing I had realized was that I was not straight. But I distinctly had this moment I was definitely--because over the pandemic I spent way too much time online and I think I was scrolling through TikTok and I realized that I really liked the way (laughing) a girl looked in it and I was like; "Hum, that actually is not maybe as normal as I thought—" Normal is not the right word, but yeah. So, that was my first kind of moment. I think it took me like a week to really process that that was the truth of my life. If that makes sense? And then I was considering myself bisexual for a while.”

Joyce: “There were lots of things that looked down on it. It wasn't always homophobic things coming from straight people but sometimes it was biphobic things coming from other queer people and things like that so it was a hard identity for me to get comfortable in because it felt like something that was a little weird and a little wrong and then I was always really nervous and honestly I still am. I struggle with this that it's--maybe I don't fit into this group or queer enough. Am I queer enough? Like, what if this is--you know--what if I think I am but it's really not. Am I truly, truly fitting into this identity. If that makes sense? Because it's like if anybody else were to come to me and say that they were struggling to feel queer enough, I'd be like; "That's ridiculous.” But I guess it's something that I feel for myself.”

Joyce: “My family would never treat me differently or love me differently or anything. I have friends and I have queer friends whose parents do not react that way to things. friends who are not telling their parents things or have told their parents things and it’s definitely a big thing of conflict and these are friends that I'm really close with which I means I know their families pretty well. So, I can think of a few friends right now whose parents are--even some of my neighbors and things like that, of people who would be like; “A they? What is that we don't--I don't understand,” and maybe hit some negativity there. yeah, yeah (laughs).”

The world changed and the way people come to understand their queerness may have changed, but the questioning, the process, and the discovery of identity remained the same. Realizing something is different. Trying to find information, trying to find others like yourself. Those questions—who am I, how do I see myself—cross time, even if the methods used to discover the answers have changed. Gittings had encyclopedias. Noxon had bars and peers. Joyce had the internet.

That same discovery came with fears about being ‘found out’ or coming out to the wrong person. While Gittings and Noxon feared physical violence, Joyce still had to fear emotional and mental attacks for their identity. The methods change, but the general feelings and anxieties are shared.

Denial features heavily in their stories and others. Not in every story, of course, but those anxieties push people to deny their identity or hide it to their detriment. For Gittings and Noxon, there was a higher barrier to acceptance. For Gittings, being LGBT+ instantly meant that she was mentally ill. For Noxon, being LGBT+ meant the threat of getting AIDS which was a visible and undeniable proof that he was gay.

Being ‘diseased’ in some way meant that they could be denied work, home, and safety. Healthcare would not be helping them, and they could face real danger from people on the street. They, and many like them, struggled to hide away their ‘disease’.

Many queer folks felt forced to pretend that they were ‘normal’. The fear of violence or abuse for being queer made the closet, hiding away, feel like the only option they had. That there is something wrong with being LGBT+.

            Gittings struggled with being labeled mentally ill and all of the stigma that came with that. She and her fellow activists fought that designation for a long time.

Gittings: “The problem with the sickness label is that it’s supposedly scientific and is therefore not subject to dispute. You can argue with people who say you’re immoral because you can say that there are so many kinds of morality. There are no absolutes. Now that people don’t have the sickness label, they’re coming out with more basic reasons for being against us: ‘I don’t like you.’ ‘I don’t like the way you live.’ ‘I think you’re immoral.’ ‘I think you’re rotten.’ All of that is more honest than this ‘you’re sick’ nonsense.” Pg 180

Gittings: “These lectures were really excuses to hold a function to get together and to let people come out a little bit. The content of the lectures didn’t really matter that much…We even had Albert Ellis, who was a real stinker. People like Ellis talked about homosexuality being a sickness. And they talked about a cure or moving in the direction of cure. We’d sit there and listen and politely applaud and then go for the social hour afterward.” Pg 87-88

Gittings: “Because gay people were considered mentally sick, people turned to psychiatrists for answers to the question of homosexuality. What causes it? What can we do about it? How can we eliminate it? … Religion and law were the other two groups that had their hands on us. So besides being sick, we were sinful and criminal. But the sickness label infected everything that we said and made it difficult for us to have any credibility for anything we said for ourselves. The sickness issue was paramount. … It made great sense to us that we shouldn’t wait around for the experts to declare us normal. But in the early days of the movement, many gay people believed they were sick. And even those who didn’t agree still felt that we had to wait for the experts to change their minds.” Pg 146         

            LGBT+ activists had a lot stacked against them. Not only were they sick, they were morally wrong as religious leaders constantly insisted. Internalized hatred and external hatred, are barriers that needed overcome.

            Finding each other was part of the solution. For Gittings, that led her to activism. To making a difference, to making new avenues for other lesbians to find each other. The idea of fighting back oppression seemed out of reach regardless of her motivation. Then, a very influential work was published.

All of this activism didn’t lead to instant support. It took a long time before just the label of mental illness to be removed in the DSM V, a handbook for psychologists to diagnosis particular mental illnesses. Gittings helped heavily in getting that changed. She also created new roads for LGBT+ folks, but especially lesbians, to talk, meet, and become educated.

Noxon and the gay men and women he knew still had illness looming over their head, however this time instead of mental illness labels, the AIDS epidemic ended in thousands of deaths. A disease thought to be a good thing from the very people who could stop it. AIDS was rampant in gay men communities, those with drug addictions, and communities of color.

The fear that AIDS caused, the knowledge that someone you know could be alive today but gone tomorrow filled the community;

Noxon: “He was dead by January fourteenth. Didn't know a thing. Somebody back then would have a spot here or there and somebody would say; "What's on your back?" and he had a spot there and it's like, it's too late. You were screwed. Because they had nothing that would fight it. That's how it was back in those days.”

Noxon: “…we made a big panel for the [AIDS] Quilt. The panels for the Quilt are six by-six by three. They're the size of a grave, that's what they are. There's all kinds of different things when you present one into the main quilt. You have your own quilt, but it'll be sown into the main one. That night it was here;it was in a convention center and we were first in line. And here I am just freaking--my boyfriend Joe was on this side of me. The quilt was coming down my arm and down his arm. We were walking like straight on.”

Pittsburgh participated in the nationwide study to combat AIDS. The Pitt Men’s Study occurred in the bars and led to the medicine and knowledge we have about AIDS today. Pittsburgh, while still deeply effected by the disease, was an outlier among the test cities of the study. As Pittsburgh was one of the few cities in the nation that had more people returning to the city with AIDS than were getting infected with AIDS within the city.

More people were coming home to Pittsburgh to die than people were being reported getting AIDS in the city itself. It became a control city, a place where regulations and health concerns were taken seriously and followed through. The lessons learned from the AIDS epidemic continue to keep the city, both queer and straight, safe;

Noxon: “When this [Covid] pandemic came through you remember seeing the first things on the news about it. And where was the first thing you saw? You saw the zoo. Remember how they had the people coming in who had--helicopters and drones overhead and the people were coming in and there's masks on and they had them a clipboard and a pen and, "Fill this out and move up.” And then they rolled up your sleeve and you got put over there for ten or fifteen minutes. "Thanks for stopping."’

Central Outreach Wellness Center, a clinic made because a doctor lost her uncle to AIDS and who caters to the LGBT+ community and sexual health made it their goal to keep everyone healthy. They have made healthcare available and costs as low as they can.

Surviving the crisis left many queer folks in Pittsburgh wondering about the people they lost. The nation’s gay men struggled to recover from the devastation AIDS caused. The Pitt Men’s Study and clinics like Central Outreach Wellness Center have saved lives in creating and spreading medications that allow those with HIV and AIDS to live longer lives and preventing people from ever getting sick in the first place.

Joyce may not have to fear AIDS because of these new medications. They may not be told that they are mentally ill when they came out of the closet. However, that stigma still haunts the lives of younger generations. The idea that being LGBT+ is wrong, bad, ‘sick’ continues to be thrown around, but in different ways; ‘it’s just a phase,’ ‘I don’t agree with your lifestyle.’

Joyce: “A lot of people who grow up in Pittsburgh stay in Pittsburgh and hey, that's what I want to do too. I love the city, I think it's awesome but there's certain people like adults who I know who have stayed there. It almost--not everyone. Some people are so open-minded but some people in a way feel more small minded and less open to things and a little stubborn. Feel stuck in a past mind set and I think I run into more of those people in Pittsburgh than I have in other places.”

Joyce: “I always feel terrible saying this but it's something I had to work through because at the end of the day the person I was hating on the most was myself. Which is terrible, but it was these thoughts of; ‘That's not normal,’ ‘That's not really something I want to be,’ ‘That's weird.’”

The fear of being abnormal, being wrong or perhaps ‘sick’ in some way continues to echo from the past. Fear of others knowing, internal struggles, and external struggles all very well founded. There’s a history of this fear and those fears being realized. Before the last decade or so, when being LGBT+ were more widely accepted in many, many ways, there were dangers in being out, dangers in telling people.

However, you can see that there are important differences. That Joyce does feel welcome in places and among family. That there are groups that they could easily find others like them and those groups weren’t in bars, they weren’t in cruising spots. They were in colleges and in towns. In coffee shops and stores.

The work people like Gittings and Noxon did to make their homes and the nation safe allowed Joyce to feel safer coming out of the closet. Certainly removing queerness from the DSM V and Noxon helping to curate a welcoming and caring LGBT+ community in Pittsburgh allows Joyce to tell employers, friends, and family that they are queer.

That work, the desire to create a better and safer world for themselves was shared between Gittings and Noxon. Even Joyce feels the desire for stronger and deeper community connections.

            Of course, Gittings had a much harder time. Being activists as LGBT+ people wasn’t something widely talked about or done. For many years, queer folks remained hidden in their bars. However, Gittings was a motivated young adult at just the right time.

Gittings: “I found Cory’s book in 1953 and that’s what got me started in the movement. The Homosexual in America was fascinating because it was very much a call to arms. Cory said that we ought to be working to gain our equality and our civil rights. He said that we were a legitimate minority like any other minority group. At that time it was a very challenging book because it was saying, in effect, that we could stand up and do something for ourselves and change our situation.” Pg 6

Gittings: “This was a subject that was still very much taboo, and just to be publishing a magazine about it was quite a breakthrough.” Pg 61

Gittings: “It was thrilling. You knew you were doing something momentous. People would stare at you. They had never seen self-declared homosexuals parading with signs.” Pg 105

Gittings: “Believe it or not, there was a genuine fear that we would be raided by the police, even at our more distinguished public events where we had name people from the law and the ministry and the mental health professions. It didn’t happen, but it was an ever-present fear.” Pg 87

            That kind of motivation led Gittings, her lover, and other LGBT+ folks to begin finding ways to push back against the ways queer folks were described. They pushed and pushed, finding ways to become visible.

            For example, Gittings became a founding member of the Liberation Day March which was an LGBT+ demonstration that proceeded Pride Parades. They would gather in Philadelphia in their best and nicest clothes and silently parade with signs calling for equal rights.

            The idea was that they needed to present themselves as the most average looking Americans. The less they lived up to the insanity labels or immoral labels placed upon them, then the less the general public would see them as those immoral things.

            Gathering LGBT+ people but also educating about queerness always came with danger. In many places, being LGBT+ was illegal. Bars were still being violently raided by the police, transgender folks and drag kings and queens were still being arrested for wearing clothes of the opposite genders. The fear that even while educating or being welcomed in events didn’t alleviate the fear and trauma from many many bar raids.

            In Pittsburgh, the bar owners worked together to help their community, doing their best to protect their community. They bribed the police to prevent them from raiding their bars. They held events that fundraised for the members of their community suffering the most or to ensure no one felt alone on big holidays.

Noxon: “We'd come together for Christmas and Thanksgiving and do fundraisers. We'd get to see everybody.”

Noxon: “Everyone was still on point. Look out. You know? There was--one person I haven't found out who she is--when I came out there was a giant trans woman that would be down here on liberty. There was quiet a few prostitutes too straight gay. But she was a drag queen extraordinaire. Six-five with heels and everything. She was standing near that parking garage by Pegasus and take up most of one of those whole squares there. And she'd be working or something with her hand up here. And people would stop and pull over and she'd walk over to the window. She had more balls than anybody. I'd be so afraid to have hot water thrown at me. But she'd walk over to the window, "How you doing baby?" She's doing her thing (laughs).”

Their community was the most important thing to them. Not only were they the patrons paying for their bills, but they were there with their fellow LGBT+ folks. They only gained from protecting each other. This made an LGBT+ community that was relatively welcoming to all and helped each other at every turn. When one lesbian bar burned dow due to an accidental fire in a neighboring building, another bar stepped up and gave them an entire floor of their building to continue to serve their community.

However, those efforts, the work put in by Gittings and Noxon to make a safer society for LGBT+ folks meant that the landscape for finding other queer folks changed by the time Joyce realized their identity. The fear they fought so hard to combat still exists, albeit to a lesser degree, and the places they went to find kinship changed.

Joyce: “I think some of the people I knew in high school who were out as you know, whatever. Were not always the most well liked people in my high school and while they were not people I had issues with, some of them were my friends, I think that kind of played into my internalized homophobia a bit. That, oh this person is bisexual or whatever, and all these people are making fun of them for--it was never like; ‘Haha you're not straight.’ But they would--I don't think were well liked or popular or whatever and I had no desire to be popular or anything, but I think it fed into my internalized homophobia. That was weird, that it was kind of an outcast identity yeah. Once I got to college and I also met more queer people I found the courage in me to join my schools pride organization so I met a lot of people there and specifically the executive board for my school’s pride club felt like role models to me because they were just like true leaders with their identities and so helpful and you know, listening ears to whatever people had going on. So, I would say better assisted my coming out to myself.”

History echoes in many ways, but you can see how much progress has been made, and where it is still lacking. Fears have continued on, they continue to plague new generations of LGBT+ folks, however, the work and efforts of the previous generations have made the world a safer and better place. A place where many LGBT+ folks fear being out less and less, who know they can find somewhere safe and safe people. Who can continue their work with more leg room than ever before.

Joyce realized their experience and those of someone who identifies as LGBT+ were very similar. They felt gender dysphoria, realized their romantic attractions. They knew people in school and at college who identified as LGBT+ and felt similar feelings and fears to both Noxon and Gittings when it came to understanding their own gender and sexuality.

Noxon survived a crisis that seemed to only target people like him. He fought alongside fellow bar owners to protect and serve a disenfranchised community. However, his work and efforts only benefited from the ground work Gittings and her peers laid years before AIDS.

            Gittings’s role in the beginning of the LGBT+ movement and the time period in which she lived is pivotal to how we view the movement and LGBT+ people today. While there was a point where she and other ‘old guard’ activists were pushed out of some spaces by the new activists of the Gay Liberation Front, she and her partner continued to be activists.

            Her experiences as a queer person are timeless, even if some of the dangers she faced are different because of her great work. They are experiences that have continued on. An inability to find good information about queerness from some professional sources that refuse to see queerness in any other way, the fear of being outed, hated, and abused still persists to frame out identity. The ability to find safety in queer spaces, accusations of immorality and sickness continue to haunt LGBT+ people by misinformed and bad actors.

            While that means there is so much more work to be done, it also means that there is something each of these three people would find in common if they were to talk about their experiences. There are elements to their stories that echo each other and creates kinships across generations.