‘We have to be on guard a lot’: Why safety comes first for so many LGBTQ travelers

Mason Aid looks for a Starbucks coffee shop on every road trip.

It’s not for the coffee.

“I schedule bathroom breaks around Starbucks locations because I know that they have gender-neutral bathrooms,” said Aid, who is nonbinary transmasculine. “That makes a big difference.”

They’ve already started planning where they’ll stop and how they’ll present at rest stops on their 13-hour drive to Rocky Mountain National Park this summer.

“Am I going to wear a binder or am I going to wear a sports bra and let myself pass as a masculine woman so that I feel more safe?” they said. “It’s a whole navigation.”

Safety comes first for many LGBTQ travelers when deciding where to go and how they’ll get there, not just on vacation.

“Being trans means that you have to consider safety in the way that you are perceived and navigate all of these things, when you leave your home for anything,” said Bani Amor, a genderqueer travel writer. “We don’t just think about these things when we cross borders.”

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“You just never know who’s going to act a certain way,” Amor said, noting that they’ve felt unsafe both at home in New York and on the road. “So we have to be on guard a lot of the time.”

Some destinations are an “automatic no” for them, like countries that criminalize their identity.

“Will there be places that I might not enter, nations because of that? I think absolutely, because how will I hide myself?” Amor added. “Do we want to keep these barriers from letting us go places? Often we don’t have a choice at all.”

According to Human Rights Watch, at least nine countries have laws targeting transgender and gender-nonconforming people, and at least 68 countries criminalize same-sex relations.

“In general, the laws are much more severe for locals than tourists,” said travel researcher Asher Fergusson, though tourists aren’t immune.

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Fergusson and his wife Lyric created the LGBTQ+ Travel Safety Index in 2019 to help travelers understand local attitudes and laws around the world. The couple updates the rankings each year, adding transgender murder statistics to this year’s criteria.

“You know, many countries rely on tourism money,” Fergusson said. “Most resorts are very welcoming to LGBTQ travelers, even though the local government may not be that favorable.”

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‘Not going back in the closet’

That’s not enough for Robbie Pierce’s family.

“If there are places that are passing laws against us, those are places that are not going to get our tourism money,” Pierce said. “Somewhere like Egypt, like I want to see the pyramids, but they put gay men in prison there, so we’re just not going to go there.”

He’d rather see pyramids in Mexico.

“Even if there’s a way to travel kind of on the (down low) … we’re not going back in the closet just to travel,” he said.

Yesmin Doeschot and Angelique Kokkelkorn would love to go to the Maldives but don’t feel it’s safe and, like Pierce, don’t want to hide their identities when they travel. One of the taglines on their @rainbowsandairplanes Instagram account is “exploring the world without closets.”

“We don’t want people to hold back,” Doeschot said.

The Dutch couple tried holding back while vacationing in Turkey, where LGBTQ locals have been targeted even though homosexuality is legal. Doeschot’s dad, who is Turkish, warned them to avoid public displays of affection, so they did for about a week and a half.

“I was so sick of it, not doing the things we normally do,” Kokkelkorn said. “After that, we had a talk about it, and we said to each other, ‘we’re never doing this again,’ acting different than normal.”

They said looks from strangers made them feel uncomfortable but not unsafe.

“They can give you ‘the look’ like you’re disgusting or it’s not normal that you walk hand-in-hands,” Kokkelkorn said.

“I don’t mind people giving me the stare,” Doeschot said. “It won’t hurt me.”

‘We just have to be brave’

Words, however, can sting, as Pierce’s family experienced on an Amtrak trip from Los Angeles to Oakland in April.

He and his husband, Neal Broverman, had hyped up the trip for their son and foster daughter and were enjoying the relaxing ride when he said a stranger – who had been sitting a few rows back – came up to them and started shouting while the train was stopped in San Jose.

“The first thing he said… ‘Marriage is between a man and a woman, and these are not your parents. These people steal you. They’re pedophiles,’ ” Pierce recalled.

When he told the man to stay away from his family, Pierce said “he started yelling ‘That’s not a family’ ” and got “louder and louder.”

Pierce said he took his kids to another train car while his husband kept the man in sight. Amtrak employees and local authorities eventually removed the man, and Amtrak issued a statement condemning the incident, which it called a “reprehensible act of hate.” 

Amtrak confirmed to USA TODAY it “requested criminal charges against the individual and will submit a request to ban the individual once processed.”

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The man’s words, however, hung in the air for Pierce’s kids, who he said cried through the night.

“They had so many questions about why is this man doing that, why was he saying those things. My son even asked ‘What’s a pedophile?’ ” Pierce said. “And they’re very concerned: What if this happened again?”

It’s happened before. Pierce said another man previously accosted his family in Los Angeles, accusing them of stealing their son, and a woman called the police on Pierce at a playground when she suspected he wasn’t his son’s father.

“People can identify that we’re not a biological family, and I just think that puts us in danger,” he said.

Asked if they would ever run into anyone like this again, Pierce told his son: “‘Little man, there will be. I’m sorry. There will, but we’re just going to be stronger every time, and we will. We just have to be brave. We can’t let those people stop us from from living.”

‘Live your life’

“Sometimes you are afraid to leave home,” said Amor. “And sometimes you’re just like, I want to live my life.”

For Amor and many other travelers, that starts with looking up the experiences of other LGBTQ travelers and locals.

“Look for your people,” they said. “Thank goodness we have social media in a way that I didn’t have when I was younger. You can find people, find those spaces, find those little community groups.”

“Perceiving that risk level, trying to take care of ourselves as best as we can, arm ourselves with resources and education,” they added. “Sometimes the means not going to places. Sometimes that means taking some risks so we can just move about this world freely, as everyone should have the right to.”

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Mason Aid wants LGBTQ travelers to feel safe in all spaces, including the outdoors.

Aid is particularly passionate about rural areas and the outdoors.

“For queer people, especially in regards to getting out in nature and camping and hiking and those sorts of activities, I feel like we need to claim those spaces just as much as we claim the urban spaces and say ‘This belongs to us, too,’ ” they said. “We belong here.”

Aid acknowledged it’s not easy and can be uncomfortable.

“We have to take care of ourselves and do what feels safe for us,” they said. “But I think pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone is a good thing because … I truly believe that most people are not bigoted. They’re ignorant. They just don’t know any better, and I can forgive ignorance. I can’t forgive bigotry.”

If there is any uncertainty about the attitudes of a particular place, Kokkelkorn and Doeschot test the waters.

“First walking hands-in-hands,” Kokkelkorn said. “And if that’s OK, then she can give me a hug for something. And if that’s OK, then a kiss is also good.”

By sharing their relationship on social media, they hope to inspire others LGBTQ people to embrace the world fully as themselves.

“Explore and live your life,” Doeschot said. “Do what you want to do.”

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How to be an ally

Fellow travelers can help make spaces safer.

“Don’t just think about your own personal needs when you travel,” Amor said. “Think about who is not in the space racially, physically, gender-wise, and ‘Am I moving in solidarity with my consumer choices and with how I interact socially with all kinds of people without also making assumptions?’ Education is really important, as is taking action and standing up.”

Amor also thinks of the LGBTQ locals who live in the places they consider visiting.

“For a lot of us, we just want to go on vacation, but for queer people in those places, they’re just trying to live,” they said. “How can we make this world a freer place for all of us?”

Aid suggested showing allyship in small ways.

“If you meet someone … you can say ‘Hey, I’m whatever. I use she/her pronouns,’ and that gives me the space to offer my pronouns,” they said. “Those little signals of ‘Hey, I’m a safe person’ go a long way to (help) your fellow travelers to feel safe and comfortable.”

They said just one safe person can help make or break a trip.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gay travel destinations: No matter the place, here’s what happens