Experiences of queer women and nonbinary individuals with mental health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on mental health. Queer women and nonbinary individuals disproportionately experience mental health issues when compared to heterosexuals, often facing challenges in receiving care from providers who are sensitive to their concerns and competent in their care. Objective: To report experience of queer women and nonbinary individuals in the United States with mental health care services before and during the pandemic. Methods: Data were gathered via a 43-item survey about experiences with mental health care services before and during the pandemic that was posted on four social media sites, and flyers hung in university student centers and businesses friendly to LGBTQ individuals. Queer women and nonbinary individuals between the ages of 18 and 75 were invited to participate. Descriptive statistics and Spearman?s correlations were used for data analysis. Results: There were 175 participants who met inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. During the pandemic, more survey participants received mental health services compared with before the pandemic. How they received care significantly changed from before the pandemic (mostly in-person) to during the pandemic (mostly remote). Participants reported being seen significantly more frequently for mental health care during the pandemic compared to before. A higher percentage of participants received both psychotherapy and medication during the pandemic compared with before. They were generally satisfied with their mental health care;however, satisfaction was significantly higher during the pandemic. Conclusion: During the pandemic, compared with before, significantly more participants received mental health care and there were significantly more virtual mental health visits, more frequent mental health visits, more intensive therapies, and higher patient satisfaction. Telehealth care was perceived to be beneficial by most participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

(Re)framing the emerging mobility regime at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: Covid-19, temporality, and racial capitalism

In this paper, we examine transborder commuters' experiences (i.e. individuals who commute between U.S. and Mexican border cities frequently) during the Covid-19 pandemic, with keen attention to the links between racial capitalism and temporality. We address two interrelated issues: first, we unpack how the United States framed the pandemic through the metaphor of war and the production of the categories of 'essential work(er)' and 'essential travel' to ensure racial capitalism's surplus labor and continuation. These categories function like a double-edged sword, tying racialized populations to racial capitalism's temporality to exploit them while excluding privileged others. We argue that Covid-19's temporality conflicts with racial capitalism's temporality. While the former relies on the deceleration of everyday life, the latter depends on constant acceleration driven by profit-seeking. Using queer and feminist theoretical lenses, we then demonstrate how U.S. Covid-19 border restrictions at land ports of entry exacerbated transborder commuters' cross-border travels and privileged some based on legal status. As a result, they used public Facebook groups to navigate and comprehend new commuting conditions, disidentifying with the United States' official pandemic framing and producing their own. This shared experience catalyzed 'digital transborder kinships' or temporally-bound socialities rooted in relational care, advocacy, and knowledge production. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Mobilities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Seeing rainbows through the storms of a health condition: Making space for LGBTQ+ young people to have their identity acknowledged.

LGBTQ+ youth accessing healthcare settings manage the 'storms' of health conditions (e.g. pain, fatigue, social isolation, etc.) while navigating emerging identity exploration and understandings in settings which may have historically overlooked or disaffirmed these identities. The launch of National Health Service Rainbow Badges across the paediatric division of an inner-city hospital provided a context for staff to begin thinking about their practice, development needs and dilemmas in working with LGBTQ+ youth. Through a programme of activity that included staff training, surveys, focus groups and youth engagement, we gained insight into current practice in supporting LGBTQ+ youth and families. This paper presents our findings, ideas for responding to challenges, and areas for future development, including implications in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Queer Politics of a Pandemic: LGBTQ + People's Conceptions of COVID-19's Politicization.

Introduction: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+) people have historically been at the center of contentious political debates in the United States. The pandemic's divisive politicization has created societal stress in both hindering mitigation efforts and exacerbating social marginalization. Research has examined relatively privileged groups' COVID beliefs; however, explorations are needed into ideological processes among those marginalized by COVID, such as LGBTQ+ people, to provide a holistic framework of queer politics. Methods: Data come from in-depth interviews conducted with 43 LGBTQ+ people collected between October 2020 and January 2021. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from a larger survey on pandemic experiences. Results: Through the "underdog" framework," LGBTQ+ people held strong convictions to science-informed political beliefs, which informed their critiques of inadequate government leadership. Participants also engaged in ideological resistance to harmful individualistic rhetoric through an emphasis on collectivism. The divisive politicization of the pandemic shaped numerous social stressors that LGBTQ+ people adapted to using various strategies to maintain their mental health. Conclusions: Participants viewed American individualism and Christian nationalism as a public health threat that led to resistance to health and safety measures putting other people at risk. Findings support the underdog theory, with LGBTQ+ people elevating evidence-based science and disadvantaged groups' wellbeing by emphasizing social empathy as a collective good that supports community health. Policy Implications: Findings can inform policies and community programming that promotes equity across all social identities through the depoliticization of public health and centering LGBTQ+ people's capacity for resistance and resilience.

Viral Entanglements Biosecurity, Sexuality, and HIV/AIDS in South Korea

This article explores the treatment of queer people as biosecurity threats during the 2015 outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea. The making of corporeal threats pivoted on the common biosecurity techniques of isolation and containment, of both virus and (potentially) infected, and mirrors the protracted treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS. However, in the aftermath of the MERS-CoV outbreak, queer and HIV/AIDS activists critiqued the methods of isolation that make people into threats and reify structural violence, articulating a radical form of relationality that draws infected and noninfected, humans and viruses, together. I argue that inviting relationality, activists mobilize the same biosecurity relations thought to be dangerous. The problem of proximity becomes not only the solution but also an activist tool of social justice. The MERS-CoV outbreak became an opportunity to illustrate a different kind of living, one predicated on what I call the human-virus hybrid: the social and microbial relationships between humans and viruses. Moving through the fields of biosecurity, human-microbe relations, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS, I proffer that the human-virus hybrid provides nuanced understandings of how people considered threats live during public health crises and find innovative methods of endurance.

A Meditation on Grief in Pandemic Times

This essay considers the compounding nature of grief as the author experienced it during the COVID- 19 pandemic. The author considers how the pandemic shifted no-tions of time, alongside those of space and intimacy.

Creative compliance and selective visibility: How Chinese queer uploaders performing identities on the Douyin platform

The growth in video-sharing social media platform use has changed modes of communication, which has helped to improve the visibility of gender and sexual minority groups. This tendency became evident given the social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the use of these platforms empowers LGBTQ individuals living in China to share knowledge and experiences, receive social and emotional support and so on. Previous studies rarely interrogate Chinese queer groups' socially sanctioned performance of identities on popular video-sharing platforms such as Douyin. This article undertakes a preliminary discussion of that research gap. It examines the conditions that enable such activities and concludes with a discussion of the strategies and methods that Chinese queer uploaders use in the process. Simply put, this article explores how the queer uploaders accommodate and negotiate their identity performances within a heterosexual and mainstream popular social media environment. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Media, Culture & Society is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Queering Diasporic Desi Solidarity: South Asian Activism in US and UK Multiracial Social Movements

This article explores the linkages between queerness, racialization, activism, and community care in the South Asian diaspora. It examines activism, organizing, and social movement work practiced by queer diasporic South Asians in the UK and the United States. By analyzing the South Asian activist relationship to, and solidarity and partnership with, Black liberation activism, this article conceptualizes a framing of queer South Asian diasporic solidarity. This solidarity is framed through contrasting articulations of joint struggle, allyship, and kinship in queer communities. To articulate this struggle, the article contrasts histories of South Asian racialization, politicization, and queerness in the UK and the United States, and synthesizes first-person activist accounts of modern-day queer South Asian activists in the diaspora. Finally, it argues that queer feminist South Asian activists in both countries are employing a model of queered solidarity with Black activists and Black liberation, though in differing forms in each country, that centers queer intimacies and anti-patriarchal modes of organizing for liberation across queer communities of color.

Embodying transnational queer Black and Brown utopia in alternative QTPOC nightlife spaces

This focus explores queer Black and Brown feminist and utopian politics as imagined in modern-day alternative nightlife spaces. This is done through case studies of the QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Colour) nightlife spaces of Queertopia by the Other Village People in Johannesburg, Misery Party and Pxssy Palace in London, and Papi Juice and BK Boihood in New York. These cities are particularly lifted up as spaces of Black and Brown resistance to white dominance and racial capital, even within LGBTQIA+ spaces that implicitly or explicitly do not cater to Black and Brown queers. Through these examinations, it is argued that queer feminists of colour are embodying queer utopia through parties that centre healing, mental health, ancestral faith practices, queer Black and Brown music and dance traditions, and spaces for activists and cultural workers to gather beyond mainstream bars and nightlife. By linking these practices to transnational resistance to racial capitalism and cisheterophobia, and by particularly catering to queer people of colour involved in social movement, resistance, and cultural organising work, these parties exist as experiments in Black and Brown transnational feminist practice. This article examines the bonds that organisers and attendees of these parties build with each other across borders, both in physical nightlife spaces as well as in digital spaces conducted during COVID-19 lockdowns that explicitly brought queer people of colour together to dance and dream transnationally. It ultimately argues that these nightlife spaces are practices of imagining the possibility of utopias where queer people of colour thrive beyond borders.

What Do We Long For? Refllections on Feminist Movements for Social Justice

In this collective essay, we contemplate tipping points including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, and gendered and racialized forms of state violence through our reflections on shifting meanings of and movements for social justice, shaped by our own lived experiences. Inspired by the writings of feminist scholars and activists including Grace Lee Boggs, adrienne maree brown, Dean Spade, bell hooks, and others, we grapple with the meanings of social justice in contemporary contexts.

An Unexpected Gift: Oral History and the Documentation of Michfest

Focusing on the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the author analyzes experiencing the unexpected in her attempt to document the history of that event. Unsuccessfully, she tried to conduct interviews with the event organizer, Lisa Vogel. However, during the period of distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vogel announced that she would share stories about the festival in live broadcasts on Facebook. The author followed these online events, which she considered to be versions of interviews that formed a magical and ephemeral space of sharing communal stories for wider audiences. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Game with or without Rules: 15th Congress of Société Internationale d'Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF)

The review of the 15th Congress of Société Internationale d'Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF) distinguishes major trends in the development of anthropology, ethnology, and folklore which are characterized primarily by a bigger extent of interdisciplinarity, involvement of adjacent disciplines, politization, and socialization of the traditional spheres of scholarly interests. The SIEF Congress was meant to take place offline in Helsinki, Finland, June 19–24, 2021, but due to COVID-19 restrictions was transformed into an online event. Familiar SIEF Congress themes were grouped into 18 streams (Archives and Sources, Narratives, Food, Material Culture and Museums, etc.), and supplemented by emerging themes (Posthumanism, Intersectionality), with over 1000 papers in total. The panel organized by the SIEF working group Frankophone and the stream Mobility and Migration are discussed in detail. Many presentations covered COVID-19 Internet-memes—as well as folklore and the transformation of rituals over the course of the pandemic. The authors discuss positive and negative consequences of holding a big academic event online. Overall, a broadening of the geography of the participants is observed, which enlarges the scope of the traditions studied and correspondingly invites new problems for discussion. © 2023, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Queer Privacy Protection: Challenges and the Fight within Libraries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced libraries to shift their service-delivery model online, infiltrating countless interactions-from storytime to reference questions to social groups-into digital mediation, typically by third-party platforms outside the library's control, generating mineable, persistent digital traces. One community particularly vulnerable to the impacts of surveillance is the queer community, where an outing, at least in the United States, imposes a potential loss of housing and employment and may subject the outed person to violence. Libraries-particularly public and school libraries-have once again become sites of conflict and resistance, with queer people and materials increasingly coming under attack both physically and legally. A primary shield by which libraries try to protect their patrons from such attacks is "privacy." Librarians, as professionals, proclaim a commitment to privacy embedded in such documents as the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institution's Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment. However, these ideals exist in broader systems-including legal and cultural structures-which constrain and complicate abstract commitments to privacy. This article examines the challenges of queer digital privacy within libraries in the United States, focusing on the polysemous, boundary-crossing nature of queerness, the digital and the material, privacy, and libraries (as both concepts and institutions). In particular, this article demonstrates how binary-bound, individual-rights-oriented legal approaches to privacy have arisen, and been mediated, by cis-heteronormative patriarchal values and how the sociotechnical materialities in which they occurred (such as paper-based recordkeeping) are fundamentally incompatible with queer privacy needs.

A brief response to Anderson & Knee (2020) queer isolation or queering isolation?

Comments on the original article by A. R. Anderson and E. Knee (see record 2020-49749-001) by encouraging readers to embolden themselves with queer theory for its liberatory intent and potential. In particular, this article troubles notions of queer space and time to illuminate the ways queers are not hapless victims to gentrification (amidst COVID-19 or otherwise) and encourages us to continue imagining and enacting more hopeful, equitable futurities (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Introduction: A call to action for affirming all LGBTQ+ students in higher education

This introductory chapter provides a brief description about the book and its subsequent chapters. The book covers the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, and other marginalized student communities, in the narrative about supporting LGBTQ+ students in higher education. In 2021, LGBTQ+ college students are struggling in the midst of two pandemics, COVID-19 pandemic and the systemic racism, violence, and murders of Black people at the hands of police officers in the United States. Colleges and universities are also grappling with precisely how to challenge systemic racism on their campuses while managing the stress of navigating a public health pandemic in residential university and college settings. The book provides university faculty, staff, administrators, and students with more information on LGBTQ+ college students, who have been typically neglected or ignored in discussions about the wellness and needs of LGBTQ+ college students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

COVID19 geographies: activities and activisms of those opposed to or concerned about changes to sexual and gendered legislation and cultures

COVID19 is inherently geographical in its impact on society. Not only has it deepened pre-existing inequalities and further isolated groups that rely on physical spaces, such as LGBTQ people, the pandemic required a restructuring of multiple forms of time–space relations including activism. Using interview and questionnaires responses from early 2021, we explore the impact of COVID19 on the activities of those expressing concerns about, and opposition to, socio-legal changes related to sexualities and genders in Canada, Great Britian and Ireland. Participants' perceptions of the effects of COVID19 regimes (lockdowns and restrictions) highlight four key trends. First, the biggest group of questionnaire respondents understood their views/activities as unchanging. Second, some participants noted a disengagement with sexual and gender politics. Third, those who were activists before/during COVID19 noted challenges in continuing their activities online with the loss of face-to-face interactions, and how they negotiated new spatialities. Finally, for some participants COVID19 regimes meant either newly engaging in, or increasing their pre-pandemic, activism with time to ‘research' and to develop their activities. Further work is needed to investigate if our findings are similar to other groups engaged in other forms of activism and the longitudinal effects and implications of COVID19 geographies on activism.

LGBTQ+ College Students' Relationship Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Research suggests that COVID-19-related restrictions affected individuals' ability to engage in relationship maintenance behaviors and have led to poorer romantic relationship quality. Poor relationship quality may be especially problematic for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and otherwise non-heterosexual or-cisgender (LGBTQ+) college students, who often lack family support and are at greater risk for mental health issues. We used a social exchange theory lens to examine correlates of relationship satisfaction for LGBTQ+ college students during the early months of the pandemic. The analytic sample consists of 175 LGBTQ+ students (Mage = 20.5) who completed an online survey and reported being in a romantic relationship. Our findings demonstrate that LGBTQ+ students with more supportive partners were more satisfied with their relationships. These results can inform clinicians how to better support LGBTQ+ college couples when they experience relationship stress. © 2023 Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood and SAGE Publishing.

Introduction: Events and well-being

The concept of well-being, and subjective wellbeing in particular, is gaining more and more attention from national governments in an attempt to understand the aspects of life that make people happy and contented and, as a consequence improve societal well-being. The majority of the research in this special issue was conducted pre-COVID-19. The year 2020 has undoubtedly shone a light on the vital role that gatherings and events play in well-being. This is evidenced in a variety of ways through the work of our contributors, which serves to further highlight the inevitable sense of loss felt when getting together is no longer possible. The effects of social isolation on well-being are well documented and will no doubt be the focus of much events research in coming years. The 12 articles in this special issue provide critical, theoretical, and empirical insights into the complex relationship between events and wellbeing. They range from a critical review of subjective well-being and events to investigations of well-being of sport events participants, queer and drag event participants, as well as the role of events in enhancing well-being for families, ethnic minority migrant communities, and church communities. The special issue has clearly tapped into a rich seam of multidisciplinary research within events that focuses on the personal and social benefits of these important social occasions coalescing under the broad theme of "well-being." There are many more articles we could have included, but as we were limited to 12 we would like to thank all the others who supported the issue with their submissions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Queer isolation or queering isolation? Reflecting upon the ramifications of COVID-19 on the future of queer leisure spaces

The introduction of "social distancing" and quarantine orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have temporarily limited the ability for queer communities to engage in physical forms of social leisure. This pandemic also serves as a reminder of the importance of leisure spaces for queer communities and their unique leisure experiences. Given this opportunity to (re)examine the importance of queer leisure spaces, this paper will take a critical look at the impact this pandemic has had on queer leisure provision and the ramifications for queer leisure and queering leisure in a post-pandemic world. This paper will examine the current absence of queer leisure outlets, portrayal of public queer spaces, how the response to the sudden elimination of queer leisure spaces can inform our current understanding of leisure, and potential lessons about the connection between physical social engagement and queer leisure spaces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Creating Time for LGBT+ Disabled Youth: Co-production Outside Chrononormativity

This article explores how ‘chrononormative' constructions of time shape research and offers an approach to co-production and research involvement that draws on insights from trans, queer, and disability studies. The article presents early reflections on an NIHR School for Social Care–funded research study, approved prior to but developed under the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, investigating personal support, sexuality, and gender in young disabled adults' lives. This project has been supported by a Participatory Advisory Group (PAG) of LGBT+ young disabled adults and we reflect on how engagement with the PAG has shaped our understanding of debates around time and involvement in co-production discourse. Our engagement with trans, queer, and disability theory allows us to think about the constraints on time that such involvement has pushed against as we have sought to account for the diverse needs of the body-minds of the PAG in pandemic times. We suggest that this may speak to opening up the diversity and accessibility of co-production across other research contexts and intend this piece to encourage these conversations. The article thus offers a critical exploration of themes of time, embodiment, and identity in the way in which co-production is enacted in funded research. © The Author(s) 2023.