The Tragedy of Queer Bubbes

James Boswell once summed up the tragedy of the LGBT community: we do not have Jewish grandmothers (from “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,” 1980).

These “bubbes” are more than matriarchs. They are our elders—keepers of memory, storytellers of legacy, the ones who splash iodine on our wounds and slap Vicks on our chests while telling us to toughen up. Their medicine isn’t just for healing; it’s for living.

In any healthy society, roles move in cycles. The young make mistakes. Parents raise children. The generation just ahead—our bubbes—steps in when the mistakes get too messy and ensures the species keeps improving.

When I was younger, I sought out older gay men as my bubbes. They gave me a sense of where we came from, guidance on how to grow into my queerness, and a lesson in what it meant to be part of a community. My mentors had lived through the “purple menace” scare of the 1950s, the terror and grief of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s, and the endless cycles of backlash that come with queer visibility. They told me stories of Judy Garland, Harvey Milk, Quentin Crisp. And when I was a messy, unhinged, narcissistic activist, they gave me both encouragement and scolding—the tough love of people who had already made the mistakes I was about to repeat.

Of course, not everyone adored my fearlessness (or recklessness). I probably rubbed some mid-career Marys the wrong way. But I had the sense to check in with my queer bubbes from time to time, and that saved me.

It is also the job of mid-career adults to get annoyed by the youth. That’s the cycle. And it’s the job of elders to keep perspective, to balance the impatience of the young with the endurance of experience.

Which brings me to the present.

I will say something that many think but few dare to: trans and non-binary kids can, at times, be insufferable in their arrogance, narcissism, and demands.

I don’t blame them for this. I blame the bulk of Christian adults in our society for spreading the poison that homosexuality is “bad behavior” and trans identity a “confused choice.” They’ve left entire generations of queer kids without stable elders to ground them, to tell them the difference between healthy pride and fragile arrogance.

And while we’re here, I find “bro culture” equally insufferable. Evangelical toxic individualism and attacks on stable masculinity have left us with an entire class of lost-boy man-children replicating “Lord of the Flies” via YouTube and Reddit. Except this time there is no naval officer arriving to rescue Ralph and Piggy. And while it would be jejune to drop a boulder on Andrew Tate, it’s tempting.

Speaking of arrogance and narcissism—back to me.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop in San Diego, in the heart of the gayborhood. At a long round table next to me sit a mixed-race, intergenerational group of trans women at various stages of transition. At one end is a Black woman in her seventies, bald, with glasses resting on her brow. She wears an orange blouse that perfectly complements her complexion and purse—a woman who knows who she is. At the other end is another Black woman, maybe twenty years younger, with long burgundy curls cascading almost to her waist. Between them are younger women: some polished, some in beanies and sweats, all mid-journey.

At several points, the elder got stern. “Grow up,” she told them. “Get a thicker skin. The opinions of others aren’t your responsibility. No one will mess with you if you know who you are.”

That was a bubbe holding court. Doing her job. Passing down medicine.

The question is not whether we need elders. We do. The question is: who will you step up and be a bubbe for?