queer community thanks to technology

Talking to XA today, i learned more and more about how everyone in the lesbian circle met each other -- through complicated, extended relations, where one person introduces another friend to another friend, who meets another friend... Somehow, you find your way in to the community. I met XA through an acquaintance's friend's friend.

She first came out 7 or 8 years ago, back in '98. That was really the beginning of it all, she says. There were no lala community back then. No clubs/bars, no circles, except for maybe some tiny circle of friends of an older generation that she doesn't know about. She got a computer earlier than most people, and she went online and researched it. Through lala chatrooms, she met people, and then slowly met up in person and became good friends. That's how the community got started. She told me about this one time, at Ren Min Guang Chang/People's Square, where I go practically everyday, she met up with two other women for the first time in person. And from then on, the group acquired more and more people. Sometimes the new people get along with the group, and become good friends, some of whom I met at the bar last weekend. Sometimes the new people don't get along with the group, so sooner or later they aren't welcome anymore, and they're left to their own devices, since there aren't other groups to choose from. There's only one. XA described that first meeting at People's Square, half-jokingly, as a "historic" moment, and it's true. It's unbelievable. I feel like I'm standing in the face of such vital history, talking to a friend who happens to have been there from the beginning of it all, in such a casual atmosphere. It's kinda like a fairy tale, how computers enabled the beginning of a social phenomenon that changes the lives of many women. Technology stimulated the start of a community that's growing like wild fire now.