Earlier this year, Boulder was named one of the queerest cities in the U.S. — number 10 in a list of 15, to be exact — by Adovcate.com. This list was intended to highlight “the queerness of some less expected locales.”
In a city known for having one of the most progressive transgender nondiscrimination laws in the country and a healthy history of supporting same sex marriage, the LGBTQ dating scene in Boulder must be pretty sweet, right?
Well, like some relationship statuses on Facebook, it’s complicated.
“I think that visibility is the hardest thing in the Boulder community as far as dating goes,” says Sara Connell, the trans and youth coordinator for Out Boulder, a nonprofit organization that has been serving Boulder County’s LGBTQ community since 1994.
“I think [Boulder has] a lot of structural support, we have a lot of government agencies that are willing to fund LGBT programming. We have a lot of fantastic business partners that are willing to help nonprofits like [Out Boulder] through donations or those sorts of things, but as far as the social support goes, I feel like that’s still what’s lacking a little bit in Boulder,” Connell says.
Connell, 25, identifies as a pansexual transgender woman, meaning Connell is sexually attracted to people of any sex or gender identity.
“I still feel uncomfortable holding my (current partner’s) hand in public or dancing with her at a bar [in Boulder],” she says. “I still get a lot of awkward looks and parents telling their kids not to look at us — not because we’re doing anything abrasive or because we’re being disruptive but because we’re very different than what people are used to seeing and we’re genuinely happy.”
Connell says there’s a little joke at Out Boulder that the city’s population has “taken the ‘sexual’ out of ‘homosexual’” — same sex marriage is acceptable, but signs of public affection still make people squeamish.
“In Boulder we have this duality of Boulder is super accepting and everything is great here, but also don’t make waves and kind of stay quiet a little bit,” Connell says.
Connell isn’t alone in experiencing discrimination in Boulder while trying to date. Austin Cuthbert, a 22-year-old architecture major at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the university scene can be tough for the non-heterosexual crowd.
“I’ve been with a guy before and we’ve been called faggots,” Cuthbert says. “We’re not touching, we’re just walking into a party.”
Boulder is a college town, which Cuthbert says might complicate the dating scene for folks his age.
“A lot of people don’t come out until college. The guy I’ve been dating has only been out for a year. It makes it harder to meet people too because there’s this population who has zero experience and they’re making these decisions for the first time,” Cuthbert says.
Then there’s that pesky problem of not exactly having anywhere to go — Boulder hasn’t had a dedicated LGBT bar since Yard of Ale closed in 2006 after 19 years in business.
“It’s super surprising to me, and most people, that there isn’t a gay bar here,” says Blair Stapp, a 27-yearold graphic designer who’s been living in Boulder for about two and half years. Stapp says that while she primarily dates women, she likes to use the term queer to describe her sexual orientation.
“As far as per capita goes, I would say [Boulder’s] a very LGBT town — lots of queers here,” Stapp says. “There are several queer-owned businesses, like Walnut Café and Lindsey’s Deli, places like that that are super welcoming for sure, but as far as a gay bar, it’s crazy that it doesn’t exist.”
But Stapp, who says one of her passions is creating safe places for the LGBT community to socialize, recently joined the newly created planning committee for Proposition Gay, a guerilla movement to address Boulder’s lack of queer bars.
“It’s basically a pop-up gay bar at a bar in town on the last Friday of every month,” Stapp says.
While Prop Gay, as Stapp calls it, has been running since 2009, the formation of the planning committee was a direct move to create more consistency.
“We already have a network of venues that were partnered with in the past … it’s only once a month, but at least it’s something consistent,” Stapp says.
But bars and clubs certainly aren’t the only — or best — ways to find a potential mate.
Out Boulder hosts events regularly, from fundraisers to open houses and other social events. And for the younger LGBTQ crowd, a bar obviously isn’t the answer to dating.
“I hear that from youth all the time: ‘It’s so hard to meet people. It’s so hard to date people who all of my friends haven’t already dated,’” Connell says. “And part of that is why Out Boulder is working on planning a youth spring dance, where youth from lots of different schools come together.”
Connell says that she has found the most success in online dating. When she decided to enter the online dating world, she made a conscious decision to create an honest profile.
“The most obvious challenge is the complication around when you come out as a transgender person in your dating process,” Connell says. “I think a lot of trans people are afraid of coming out really early on in the process because they feel like they’re not going to get a fair shot, that somebody isn’t going to be able to see past that identity at all to see if they would even be a good partner or not. A lot of people choose not to disclose their trans status on their dating page … but for me, it was really important for my trans status to be the first thing on my dating profile. I felt like I didn’t want to be dating anybody who didn’t already enthusiastically identify with wanting to date a transgender person.”
While Connell says there are added difficulties in dating within the LGBTQ community, she says that dating is difficult for everyone because we live in a “culture of silence.”
“We live in a culture where you’re supposed to read somebody’s body language and just guess what someone is thinking. There’s this whole set of rules and hidden stuff around dating, what you’re supposed to do and not supposed to do,” Connell says. “I feel like a lot of the negative aspects of dating come from our collective decision to not talk about what we want and clearly state our desire in a sexual relationship and also listen to other people’s desires in a sexual relationship.”
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
