I am in New Orleans conducting research on sissy bounce, a term used to describe the cluster of queer rappers and performers who have seemingly taken over the local homegrown hip-hop genre. The history of queer-antagonistic violence is just below the surface in this neighborhood of gay bars and rainbow flags.
where a man who was perceived as gay, Joseph Balog, was stabbed to death in 1993. I am staying on the same block of Dauphine St. During the 1973 arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar, 32 people were killed. I am living in a studio apartment in the French Quarter in New Orleans, just a few blocks from the site of what had previously been considered the most deadly mass murder of LGBTQ folks in the United States. One lone shooter has been identified, a man possibly motivated by a kiss he witnessed between two men a few days before in Miami. By the time I am reading about it, news outlets are reporting that around 50 people are dead and more than 50 others are injured. My wife texts, “Have you seen the news?” I open Facebook and find dozens of posts about the horrific event that took place overnight at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. It is Sunday morning and I wake up to a flurry of text messages and Facebook notifications.