Consider the hobbies queer folks gather around — the first to come to mind are the “nerdy” ones. Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and many video games are great places to connect with queer people. In fact, the Renaissance fair might as well be a late pride event.
Interestingly, this generation’s queer community seems drawn to online spaces more than ever. Esports, both here on campus and more broadly, seem to be growing as spaces for queer folks. I’ve rarely felt as supported as I have when I was a part of the esports community here on campus.
There are also several hobbies that tend to be more densely populated by homophobes: sports and country music are easy examples. That said, these aren’t the most homophobic spaces around. While homophobia and transphobia often go unchallenged, it’s rare to see any of these communities truly center themselves around homophobic narratives.
Instead, the hobbies in which people gather around homophobia are often the same spaces in which queer folk gather. Tabletop games, comic communities, esports — they’re notoriously problematic. In these spaces, homophobic memes are common, livestream chats for events need to be heavily moderated for the use of slurs, and queer community leaders face as much vitriol as they do support.
Guilty Gear, a quirky fighting game franchise with a huge trans presence, is a great example of this. Many of the characters in the game are explicitly genderqueer, and the LGBTQ+ fighting game community adores it for that reason. The community is overall very LGBTQ+ friendly, but at the same time, it has more transphobia and homophobia than I’ve seen in any other game’s community.
The homophobes in these spaces are reactionaries — they respond to the presence of queer folks, women, and racial minorities with hatred exceeding that of most casual bigots. It begs the question: what is it about these hobbies that draws these people as well as many LGBTQ+ folks?
These spaces all share something in common: they’re escapes from everyday life into another world, and often a kinder one. Being young and queer can be socially isolating, whether it’s due to spaces not being friendly or just because it’s more difficult to come into your own.
Escaping into another world seems natural, especially if it allows one to present themselves how they feel inside. That’s likely how it started — a few queer folks were drawn to these hobbies, and in the process, created spaces where other LGBTQ+ folks can be themselves as well.
Reactionary homophobes are drawn to escapism as well. Young men who struggle in everyday life are sold the idea that the reason for their struggles lies in recent social progress, including progress made for LGBTQ+ rights. This is the backbone of reactionary movements. That same isolation that draws reactionaries towards hateful ideologies also draws many of them into worlds of fantasy or science fiction.
Riley Hurley 
Abdullah Farooqui