By Cris Nippard
Edited by Charles Liu and Alloe Mak

i hear echoes of my queer and trans ancestors in the way people speak online. i see their impact on the Victoria’s Secret runway, on RuPaul’s Drag Race, through Twitter slang. yet no one knows their names. 

young queers often take our freedom for granted. do we know who died for us to live? who we have lost along the way?

Sylvia Rivera died in a group home in 2002 after spending her life fighting for trans rights. Marsha P Johnson’s 1992 death continues to be largely under-investigated and unsolved by law enforcement. Angie Xtravaganza died of AIDS. Sylvester died of AIDS. Alvin Ailey died of AIDS. everyone we’ve lost has been a murder. they’ve been murdered by neglect—failed by the systems put in place to serve us. young queer people have been stripped of their elders—elders who were isolated from their broader communities and left to die. despite this, we murder them again by refusing to learn from their legacies. 

i see this refusal to learn in the interactions we have with each other online. i’m scared. i’m scared when my peers don’t know what Stonewall was. i’m scared when Ballroom terms become twitter slang. i’m scared when people think you can get HIV from sharing a glass of water.

i’m scared of the irony epidemic we are living in. the way digital spaces are used, especially as queer and trans people, is powerful. gen z uses social media as a tool to learn, think, and process their emotions. but i find that we, as young queers, do not reclaim words like mother or shade to honour our past. more often than not, i see it used as a mockery of what came before us. motherquake, demon twink, messy top. would it be more funny if we weren’t continuing to die?  

to reclaim is to change. words go out of style—gay becomes queer, fairy becomes twink—and new phrases are created. there is strength in this, but to change anything is to create a new perspective of history. young people often become so accustomed to their freedom that we forget to remember how we got here.

but is it all our fault? when so many of our elders have been ripped from us, who are we supposed to learn from? there’s no one to stop us from repeating the past. we’ve been set up to fail, cursed to unconsciously follow the same rocky path as those who came before. 

since 1981, when the first case of AIDS was reported to the public, over 40 million people have died. despite their sacrifices, the same mistakes continue to be made across the globe. most young queer people know about the AIDS epidemic and, if asked, would rightfully describe it as a tragedy. so, why do so many of us continue to engage in risky sexual practices, without proper protection? 

in the late 80’s, when people began to realize HIV could be spread through unsafe sexual intercourse, young gay men often continued not to use condoms. some thought it would just be fine, that they would avoid catching it. i continue to see that behaviour in young gay men in my social circle, who don’t take precautions that are easily accessible to them. when millions of people have died for us to have access to PrEP, why not take it to be safe?

it’s a loaded question. part of the reason is because of the remaining stigma within the community, towards the community. our unwillingness to learn becomes an inability to protect our community. if we don’t know the history of our words and actions, how do we protect them from having their original meanings be lost forever? we simply cannot. our lack of care for ourselves shows a lack of respect for those we’ve lost. AIDS continues to ravage our community, but our lack of education has caused us to promote actions that harm us. despite there being a plethora of information available online, queer youth often avoid it.

we cannot continue to live in this irony epidemic. we need to honour the sacrifices of those we have lost by learning from them and working to dismantle the systems that continue to oppress us. we need to listen to our elders. to their stories and legacies and hopes and dreams. seek out what they’ve left behind for the world and spread its message. 

the echoes of my ancestors are screams. they are begging to be heard, needing to be heard.