CILIP Changing Lives Seminar Series. Seminar 1: Pride in the Profession (July 21st 2021). Keynote: Queering COVID: Lessons in Queer Resilience During the Pandemic Dr Karen G. Schneider A growing body of research points not only to challenges experienced by LGBTQIA+ people during COVID-19, but also to ways in which people have used their queer identities to survive and even thrive during this historic crisis. Dr. Karen G. Schneider shared personal, community, and scholarly aspects of queer resilience during COVID-19, as well as perspectives on living queer identity post-COVID.

1. Queering COVID
Lessons in Queer Resilience During the Pandemic
Karen G. Schneider, Ph.D.
Dean of the Library, Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, California
Member, Rainbow Round Table, American Library Association
Member, Executive Board, American Library Association
July 21, 2021

2. Oldest LGBTQ+ professional
group in the United States -
established 1970 as a task force
within the American Library
Association
This photo is the RRT contingent
at the 2001 Pride Parade in San
Francisco
Rainbow
Round Table

3. Today’s Talk
About the Author
LGBTQ+ Issues prior to COVID
Impact of COVID on the Queer Community
Insights on Resilience
3

4. Acknowledging Privilege
As a white cisgender woman who has been
able to take many basic human rights for
granted, I do not have first-hand
knowledge of other experiences such as
being BIPOC, transgender, or nonbinary. I
do know what it means to move through
life as a minoritized person and I try to
center my work with that knowledge. I am
consciously grateful for my safe journey
through the challenge of COVID.

5. ● (On the left)
● She/her pronouns
● In the Library profession off and on
since 1973
● Eight years in the Air Force, including
one year at RAF Lakenheath
● Married to Sandy, my partner of 30
years
A Bit about Me

6. 6
Santa Rosa, California
(Sonoma County in
Northern California, one
hour north of San
Francisco)

7. My Doctoral Research
● For my doctoral candidacy qualification, I interviewed 10 openly gay and lesbian
academic library leaders about claiming and maintaining identity, including the dual
struggle of wanting to be “myself” but also be “just like anyone else.”
● For my dissertation, I interviewed 10 openly gay and lesbian academic library
leaders about their leadership journeys. The short version of my findings is that for
these subjects, despite early life challenges, being “out” had a positive, kinetic,
self-reinforcing effect.
Schneider, K. G. (2016). To be real: antecedents and consequences of sexual identity disclosure by academic library directors. The
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 42(6), 719-731.
Schneider, K. G. (2017). Leadership and sexual identity of academic library leaders (Doctoral dissertation, Simmons College).

8. Data Sources for this Talk
Data sources for this presentation:
● Recent peer-reviewed studies on topics of COVID-19 and LGBTQ+
resilience, health, and economics
● Confidential conversations with previous study participants from
my LGBTQ+ research
● Personal experience and other “anecdata”

9. LGBTQ Issues in the Before Times
9

10. Current Issues Across the LGB/TNB Spectrum
Compared to similar heterosexual populations (10 - 30% higher):
● Lower income, less education
● More likely to be vulnerable to housing and food insecurity
● More likely to work in COVID-sensitive industries and/or be
designated essential workers
● Far more likely to have families that do not support their identities

11. “Almost half (45.7%) of LGBT college students have
immediate families that do not support or know their
LGBT identity” (Gonzales et al., 2021).

12. Health and Wellness Challenges
● More mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression
● Wellness issues such as smoking and substance abuse
● Medical needs for gender-affirming medicine and surgery
● Barriers to family planning
● Omnipresent minority stress

13. In the U.S., most people receive their healthcare through
employers, making them vulnerable to loss of healthcare
due to loss of employment.

14. Intersectional Implications
● Study after study indicates that BIPOC LGBTQ+ people have
higher rates of all the above concerns
● Transgender people have higher rates as well
● BIPOC/Transgender are among the most vulnerable populations

15. The research emphasizes:
community structures -- places
where queer people can find
community, can connect and
cohere
(Photo: ALA Rainbow Round Table,
San Francisco Pride Parade,
2015)
What helps?

16. Messaging of acceptance and
celebration from our allies
(Photo: Sonoma State University
President, Dr. Sakaki, raises the
Pride Flag for the first time on
campus, June 2021)
External support

17. LGBTQ Challenges During COVID
17

18. Impact on the Queer World
All of us on this planet are living through COVID. But for queer folks, everything
has been heightened. The following are more prevalent/acute for LGBTQ/TNB:
● Sudden loss of community networks
● Vulnerability to COVID: more likely for SGM households to include a worker
outside the home (McKay et al. 2020) and to be reliant on that worker for
housing and food security
● Reduction or loss of employment
● Disintegration/loss of basic needs: housing, health insurance (US), access
to food

19. Loss of Community Structure
“In this year, due to the COVID-19 crisis,
more than 220 Pride celebrations were
postponed or cancelled globally” (McKay
et al., 2020)
19

20. Queer-specific COVID Issues
● Loss of access to medical needs for gender-affirming medicine and
care
● Reversion “into the closet” for young people forced to return home,
with concomitant stress over fear of disclosure and the potential for
increased risk of harm
20

21. Impact on Emerging Adults
“The abrupt closure of U.S. colleges and
universities in March 2020 may have sent
many LGBT students home to unsafe or
unaccepting environments” (Gonzales et al.,
2020)
21

22. Transgender/Nonbinary People Hit Hardest
“Nearly one-third of [transgender/nonbinary) survey respondents
reported an interruption/delay in gender-affirming hormone
therapy; 11% reported having a gender-affirming surgery
canceled or postponed during the pandemic” (Kidd et al., 2021).

23. Library Workers and COVID
● Many have experienced job loss, furloughs,
reductions in work hours
● There is widespread “anecdata” that library
support staff are more likely to work during COVID
in roles with the highest potential of exposure,
such as curbside pickup
● These are the library employees who are most
economically vulnerable, and more likely to be in a
vulnerable identity such as BIPOC and/or queer

24. Insights on Resilience
24

25. “This is hard. We of all people know how to do hard.”
-- Older lesbian, Northern California
“‘I think most gay people my age are well equipped to
handle this crisis because of our experience with HIV’
(55-year-old White gay cisgender man)” (Gonzalez et al.,
2020)

26. Resilience
“The quality of being able to survive
and thrive in the face of adversity”
(Miller, 2015)
As a research direction, resilience
“counter[s] deficit-focused
narratives” (Gonzalez et al., 2020) AIDS Die-In, Maryland, 1988

27. Resilience is not the same as accepting the status quo.
“We have too many times come to support our community because nobody else
believed we deserved to live.” - Former research subject
27

28. The Elder Advantage
● Extensive experience with isolation and self-
sufficiency
● History of AIDS
● Past experience of marginalization, especially in
earlier eras
● Prepared for the need to advocate for support
Themes identified in Gonzalez et al., 2020 Michael McConnell and Jack Baker

29. Experience with Isolation and Self-Sufficiency
29
“Quite frankly, having survived the AIDS crisis through a combination of
community support, extreme safety precautions, and sheer terror, I was able to
draw upon those memories to navigate the pandemic.”
“In a word, resiliency, you can’t be openly gay in the South without being resilient.”

30. AIDS
“As a gay man, that prior to becoming a librarian was a clinician and, who
entered the post-college workforce in the mid-1980’s... I was immediately
steeped in the AIDS crisis. … To be gay (lesbian, trans, etc) before AIDS
meant you needed to often be resilient, strong, and resourceful. You needed
to be able to create our own family, social network, and social supports.”
“I saw the community come together in those days and it was much like
the way my library community came together during early COVID times.”

31. Other thoughts from the two cohorts
31
“We need to better support our trans siblings, especially those of color, if
we're going to thrive as a community.”
“It was a reminder that we continue to be a marginalized community
depending on who's in power in Washington.”
“I am very aware of the challenges many of our students encountered being
at home during spring 2020 and even in the past year, particularly trans or
nonbinary students who were less “themselves” at home for that semester.”
“Coming out of COVID, I’m more convinced that universal health care is
imperative to move the world forward in a socially just way.”

32. Changes
32
“[COVID] made me want to me more visible as a gay man. For the first time
ever, we hung our Pride Progress flag outside of our house for the entire
month of June.”
“On campus, I think I’d like to be a better mentor for the LGBT community.”
“Having survived losses… I am determined to live more freely as an out
LGBTQ person.”

33. Me and Lucy in front of Sonoma State
University Library
That’s a Wrap!
Special thanks to:
Yvonne Morris and Natalie Jones, CILIP
Tracie Hall, ALA Executive Director
The 20 anonymous cohorts
The researchers everywhere who are
studying COVID during COVID