“Gay Bashing” in Sacred Space: Lesbian Feminism and the Rise of Digital Violence

What happens when our digital sacred spaces become violent and incite trauma or trigger reminders of traumatic experiences? This project will delve into these questions as we begin to think about trauma in digital spaces for the Lesbian-Feminist. For example, we scroll through Facebook and see that an uncle has posted a homophobic article. The logical response to this, the response that our spiritual selves tell us to follow through on, is to delete this person from our Facebook friends. Clicking the delete button is a virtual action, yet a very real and physical manifestation of losing family and friends because of their homophobia or sexism. In digital sacred spaces in particular, there is a tension between self-preservation and engaging so as to educate and bring about understanding. If we cannot even occupy the same digital spaces, how can we ever grow to occupy the same physical spaces?