“We’ll dance harder and love deeper”: LGBTQIA+ resilience and resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. Two years into the pandemic, there have been over one million COVID-19 deaths in the United States alone. While the pandemic has impacted everyone, the most extreme impacts have been experienced by marginalized communities, including those who identify as LGBTQIA+. Although LGBTQIA+ people have faced the negative impacts of the pandemic, the LGBTQIA+ community may be well equipped to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic due to the historic and current societal oppression this community has endured. Using both a resilience and resistance framework, the present study explores the resilience and resistance strategies employed by LGBTQIA+ adults in the Southeast U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic through the collection and analysis of monthly diary entries and video interviews. Findings show that resilience and resistance build on the knowledge base and histories of LGBTQIA+ people, and resilience and resistance have been re-imagined for this community during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, many LGBTQIA+ people are dreaming of and re-imagining a better future, a future that social work educators and practitioners can help co-create.

"We Already Knew What Time It Was:" HIV, COVID19, and Black Transgender Women in the South

“…This focus on self-care and other positive coping skills coincided with having the confidence that they possessed the tools and resources to manage their risk and the risk they contributed to others around them, as they had practiced risk management related to HIV before COVID-19. The consequences of participants' feelings of confidence, preparedness, and resilience mirrored those in other studies, [39][40][41] demonstrating that the input of trans women of color (and members of other marginalized groups) is instrumental to developing programs to address community-specific needs. [42][43] Like research on the mental health and coping resources of transgender people, our findings indicate that negative mental health experiences and coping skills are mitigated, for all participants, by access to social support.…”