When we gathered over Zoom to plan stories about LGBTQ+ lives, Esquire’s Market Editor Alfonso Fernandez Navas said something so profound and significant that we will quote it in full:
“Can we, like, have fun?”
It is not an exaggeration to say that Alfonso’s request inspired a real and welcome shift in perspective. So much of the narrative around the queer experience is centered around trauma. Illness and alienation. The pain of finding your true self, by yourself, in a hostile world, and the pain of living in a world that is swinging back toward that hostility.
And it is important to remember those things. We have to know where we’ve been.
But we also have to know where we are. We have to acknowledge that we survived what’s come before, and we have to celebrate being alive to face what’s ahead.
We simply have to celebrate.