lifeonq.com

The LGBT Web is All G with Little L, B or T

Blogging is a lot of work. Sometimes I ask myself if all this effort has any value to me or to the queer world. Life on Q is currently a non-commercial site. I’m not earning any money with advertising or reader donations. But I keep blogging away, hoping that others like me will find the blog or hear a podcast, ultimately creating a forum where the LGBT community can explore and discuss the ideas and issues that really affect our lives. Ultimately, I hope to support this effort through affiliate programs and Web ads that will make the effort worth the time I invest. Life on Q steals a lot of bandwidth from my paid writing and consulting gigs. In the meantime, I keep blogging on, taking advantage of a platform for expressing my thoughts and sharing information I feel is important to the LGBT community. I don’t attempt to provide comprehensive news. I leave that to the for-profit efforts like Southern Voice here in Atlanta and national media like The Advocate. I read their content, and I appreciate their efforts. I just wish their was more meat in a lot of what many of them dish.

Today I took a tour of some of the leading gay and lesbian Websites and LGBT blogs out there to see what I might add to the conversation. What I found reinforced for me the reasons I started Life on Q. The gay Web and the gay blogosphere are decidedly gay, with very little lesbian, bisexual or transgender content. And what’s worse, a lot of the queer Web content strikes me as shallow. I mean seriously, how many fashion and celebrity and gossip features do we need? What about the ideas and issues that really affect the queer community? And what do all the “hot guys of the day” photos mean to me?

Gay Websites Are Light on Lesbians, Bi’s and Trannies

On The Advocate Insider blog, I clicked on their lesbian category to see what kind of coverage came up. Their last post on lesbian-specific issues was almost six months ago (May 25, 2007, to be exact). Their youth-oriented blog GenQ is better, but would be better named GenG, as it is decidedly boy-centric. At Curve, the most successful lesbian magazine, there’s respectable coverage of important issues. But overall, it tends to be all The L Word, all the time. Curve has no blog. At Out magazine today, their Website has not a single photo of a woman, nor any articles on women on their homepage. No blog there either.

LGBT Blogs are Better

AOL’s QueerSighted blog does a better job at balancing gay and lesbian issues, but there’s little bi or transgender content, and most of their blog posts lean heavily toward celebrity dish and pop culture. To their credit, there are some good posts on politics. Who’s doing a good job? I respect Queerty’s coverage of politics, hate crime and gay rights. Their meat is well done. Interestingly, they did not make the finalist cut for the 2007 Weblog Awards. (Voting is open through November 8, if you care to cast a click for your choice. Life on Q, less than a year old, is not on the list.) And Pam’s hot on important issues at Pam’s House Blend, a Weblog award winner for best LGBT blog in 2005 and 2006. For transgender blogging, I read T-Equality, the National Center for Transgender Equality’s blog. I have not run across any bisexual-specific blogs. Surely they’re out there. If you have one or know of one you like, post a comment. These are by no means all the blogs out there, nor am I declaring these are the best there are. These are the ones I’ve personally run across and revisited over time.

I am convinced that there’s an appetite for more than pop culture. I think issues like politics, health and wellness, spirituality and workplace issues matter more than yet another gay personals site. I long ago got tired of reading the most successful gay magazines starting from the back of the book, because lesbian coverage was always relegated to the last couple of pages. I think alternative culture deserves a voice too, featuring “non-mainstream” LGBT artists.

My plan for Life on Q is not to replace national, for-profit queer media. It’s not to outblog the other LGBT bloggers, or out-podcasting other queercasters. It’s a project rooted in a desire to start dialog and share stories about everyday life as it exists for all the working, parenting, worshiping, voting, thinking queers out there. It’s an effort to build community and create greater involvement and activism in the issues and movements that affect how we live and how we’re treated–by our government, our churches and our communities at large. I hope you’ll stick with me, and participate, in a Life on Q.