Editor’s Letter: The Vacation Privilege Is Real

As a journalist, I'm lucky. Sure, 2017 was another tough year to be in the media, since the public's trust in us is low and divided by partisanship. The most powerful man in the country brands journalists "fakes" and "liars," and many people don't realize how hard it is to do what we do. But, after the great magazine die-off of the 2000s, I know I'm lucky to be here, still talking to you.

I'll also never take for granted the great opportunities we get from being journalists -- whether it's access to information or being able to occasionally hobnob with people the world admires (whom we get to think of as colleagues and friends). No experience, though, has had a greater impact on me, and many of the staffers at The Advocate, than being able to travel to amazing destinations. Most of my working-class family have never left the country -- or even the state they live in. Money and time to travel are privileges. My extended family is too busy making ends meet and raising their kids.

Yet, as a journalist, I often get sent to beautiful places (sometimes with my spouse), eat wonderful food, and have amazing experiences that feel life-changing. My transgender husband has been on eight Olivia cruises (it's usually him and a gay couple making up the only male travelers among 2,000 queer women). We've been to nearly every U.S. state, plus the Virgin Islands, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Turks and Caicos, Grand Cayman, Belize, Aruba, Curacao, Barbados, and our neighbors Mexico and Canada. My longtime dream is to go to Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam -- and after meeting a young gay activist from China earlier this year, it's on my wish list, too.

I'm not bragging (well, I sort of am) but mostly I'm admitting my privilege and owning up to the fact that those of us lucky enough to travel owe something to the places we visit (and the people and animals that live there).

Traveling changes people. It makes our world smaller. Scientists at the Smithsonian's Human Origins Project say that the genetic difference between individual humans in different countries and of different races today is minuscule (about 0.1 percent). That's something you truly understand when you travel.

In Curacao, I once met a group of queer women who took me to a lesbian bar where we danced and laughed and drank. These were Afro-Caribbean women, mostly Catholic but some Jewish, butches and femmes and gender-nonconforming. It reminded me very much of an American lesbian bar in the 1990s. Their concerns revolved around their physical safety as out queers, their ability to survive economically and independently from men, achieving family acceptance, and finding love.

Our issues may seem significantly different from afar, but when you drill it down, they really aren't. We may have more resources and -- for those who are gender normative and have white-passing privilege like me -- more safety in the U.S. But our issues at the core are very similar.

You don't see that, though, until you travel and talk to people who dress, worship, eat, talk and look different from yourself. If there's any way you can travel, please do, even if it's just within the U.S. If you only read headlines, it's easy to confuse places like Texas with the sum of its Republican leaders's backwards actions, which as activist Monica Roberts of the Trans United Fund reminded me recently, means you overlook decades of progressive activism and the vibrant queer culture of cities like Dallas, Austin, and Houston. And, if you only watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta, you miss out on why that city became the black queer capital of the South.

Most importantly, travel changes us in ways we can never explain. It's a reason why travelers are less fearful of women in hijabs, of people with different skin colors, of foods made from parts of animals we've never even seen before.

The world has had a tough year, between climate change, natural and man-made disasters, and political turmoil. So as they say on the plane: put on your oxygen mask first, and then help others do the same. Take the travel industry's lead and help out the places you love, if you can. An easy way? Send cash. A better way? Book a trip there. Consider it a two-for-one for your soul.

Happy travels!