Episode #23 – Queer Travel Beyond the Rainbow Flag

In this episode of the Solo Female Travelers Podcast, Anastasia is joined by Meg Ten Eyck, founder and CEO of Every Queer and a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ travel and inclusion. Together, they explore what it really means for a destination to be welcoming and affirming to queer travelers, beyond rainbow flags, Pride campaigns, and LGBTQ-friendly marketing.

Meg shares her experience traveling to more than 80 countries and explains how queer travelers often have to make safety and visibility calculations that other travelers may never consider. They discuss researching destinations, deciding when to disclose your identity, traveling with trans and non-binary companions, evaluating whether hotels and tourism businesses genuinely support LGBTQ+ travelers, and the different meanings of Pride around the world. Meg also shares some of the destinations that have surprised her, including Jordan, and highlights welcoming places for first-time LGBTQ+ travelers.

The conversation is ultimately about finding confidence, community, and belonging while traveling. Meg encourages travelers to start small, take manageable steps, use the resources available to them, and remember that there are queer communities and welcoming people all over the world. This episode is especially useful for queer women, trans and non-binary travelers, and anyone who wants to travel more confidently while understanding the realities of LGBTQ+ travel.

About Meg Ten Eyck:

Transcript:

Anastasia: Hello and welcome to the Solo Female Travelers Podcast. I’m one of the hosts, Anastasia, and today we’re looking past all the rainbow flags, the pride campaigns, and LGBTQ-friendly labels to talk about what makes a destination feel genuinely welcoming and affirming to queer travelers. 

I recently had the privilege of joining the rest of our solo female travelers team in what is our headquarters in Spain, in the small seaside town of Sitges and it just happened to be during Pride. And Sitges is known around the world as an LGBTQ+ destination and attending Pride really gave me a chance to experience that side of the town for myself. It all felt very free and welcoming and just beautiful. But it also made me pause and think a little bit more deeply about how difficult it can be for a traveler preparing and researching for a trip at a destination that may be not as welcoming and to understand what the experience may actually feel like for them as a queer person. For LGBTQ+ travelers, especially those traveling solo, physical safety is only one part of the picture. There’s also the question of feeling seen and respected and being able to explore without constantly calculating how much of yourself feels safe to reveal. And this is exactly why we want to have this conversation with today’s guest. Welcome, Meg.

Meg Ten Eyck is the founder and CEO of Every Queer, a platform that brings together LGBTQ+ travel media, consulting events and tours. She has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of travel, queer culture, community, and activism. She has visited more than 80 countries and her work has reached tens of millions of people. She is also chairman of the board of directors of the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association, and her expertise has been cited in major international tourism reports. Through her work, Meg challenges the travel industry to look beyond marketing and consider what inclusion means in practice how destinations and businesses support LGBTQ+ communities, and what queer travelers actually experience once they arrive. And before we begin, I also wanted to mention that I saw that Oprah Daily recently included you among 10 leading travel advisors and recognized you. And Every Queer’s best LGBTQ+ travel picks. So congratulations on that.

Meg: Thank you.

Anastasia: Yes, of course. And thank you so much again for joining me. And how about we start off with talking about how you got into this work.

Meg: Sure. So I was a legislative lobbyist before I got into travel. I worked on programs and support for LGBTQ youth on both a state and federal level. So I worked in youth suicide prevention, anti-bullying initiatives, safe schools initiatives across a series of pretty well-known LGBTQ nonprofits. As you can probably imagine. It was intense, you know, youth suicide prevention and all of that is not exactly light work. So I burned out pretty heavily and simultaneously got offered a job in South Korea. 

So I moved to South Korea. This is at this point like 17 years ago. So this is a long time. and I started every queer. And at the time it was more, you know, just Chronicling my adventures while living in another country and what that meant for me as a queer person who at the time was married to somebody who’s gender non-conforming and non-binary. And because of my background and activism, I was talking about travel in a way that just hadn’t really hit the internet yet. At the time, the only LGBTQ+ travel content was really gay men’s travel content and a very specific subset of gay men. And it was more marketing than talking about, you know, identity or social acceptance or the politics of being queer in different parts of the world. So what I was doing really hadn’t been done yet, and we pretty quickly went viral. So we spent years and years doing written content, and then as social media evolved and changed, we got into the social media side with photo and video content. And now we have a team that does media consulting events and group tours around the world. So, you know, a lot has happened over the last almost twenty years. We’ve evolved, we changed with the internet, we’ve grown and I’ve learned a lot both as a traveler, a queer woman, and as an entrepreneur.

Anastasia: So when do you I know you said it was a long time ago, of course there was a huge content gap, but when did you also realize that it was not just a content gap, but also a larger problem in general in the travel industry as far as inclusion of queer people?

Meg: Probably the avalanche of emails. Like we started publishing, you know, and the internet, especially at the time, was pretty wild, wild west. And I started kind of realizing, people are reading this, you know, we could see the analytics and see kind of some of the numbers coming in. And so I started thinking about it more from the beginning. It was very like, Dear Diary, I had an adventure today. And then I was like, maybe I should make this more useful for the people who are actually reading it. So it became more like things to do, places that are welcoming, queer owned businesses, where you can go, you know, affirming hotels, things like that. And people started to email us and just be like, Hey, you know, I’m insert identity here and me and my partner are going to insert place here. And like half the time it was like, Well, I don’t know, I haven’t been there, right? But I would try to help them in terms of researching the political acceptance and like pointing them in the right direction to find an idea of how somebody with their background and identities may feel or be treated in those different destinations. And that’s when I kind of realized, this could be something. 

We’re about 10 months into, you know, full content. and I got an email from somebody who’s still a close colleague to this day, who at the time was working for a media company called Gay Star News. It was a newspaper and website in Europe. And he kind of messaged me and was like, on the off chance, do you want to go to every pride in Europe this summer? We don’t have a lot of money. We have probably like a thousand dollars per pride, but like I never said yes fast enough. Like, if I could have just blurted yes at this email. And at the time I was like, wow, I’m gonna get paid to travel. I get to experience queer people in all of these different countries and I get to share this with my audience and kind of explain like yes you can do this. It was life-changing for me and really set me off on the right tone of realizing not only could this be my passion and this, you know, my why could be my community, but also this is a way that I could make a living and share my joy with my community. 

Anastasia: That’s incredible. So what year was that that you traveled to all of the prides.

Meg: That would’ve been twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen. So yeah, quite a while ago. We started in the beginning. The concept of independent media existed, but at the time it was still very much print and mainstream media and social media was in its infancy. So like content creator, influencer, blogger, independent publisher, all of these things that are labels I’ve worn throughout the years just frankly didn’t exist. So I was just doing it for the love of the game.

Anastasia: Yeah, and so interestingly enough, I was going to ask you towards the end of our interview about pride and pride locations and just in general. I know June is like the Pride month and we just had big celebrations around the world, but I also saw you had an article talking about how just because June is over, it doesn’t mean that pride is over and there’s so many other destinations to potentially go to throughout the year. I was gonna ask you, do you have any favorites or any of the ones that you’re still traveling to this year.

Meg: Well pride travel is a really interesting topic because I think a lot of people kind of paint pride with one brush stroke. And I think in order for people to understand which pride is right for them, they have to understand what their intentions are behind attending those prides. So we celebrate Pride at the end of June as a remembrance for the Stonewall riots, which happened on the last Sunday of June in 1969. So the first pride was in New York City, which is my hometown, right? So Stonewall was my local gay bar. and for a lot of other people, Stonewall is an international monument, which of course it absolutely is. 

The first prides were big city prides with just, you know, a huge amount of LGBTQ+ people coming in order to be seen and to be visible. And now we are more than 50 years post-Stonewall. And in some of these destinations, like New York City. The fight for visibility is not necessarily as strong as the fight for legal rights, the fight for inclusion of queer and trans people, the fight for gender non-conforming people. But also in these big cities, we have, you know, the corporate-sponsored seven-hour-long pride parades, which are a beautiful thing when you’re thinking about how far they’ve come from the first non-permitted, non-protected, just straight march, you know, down the village. So when you’re thinking about the legacy of pride, you have these huge ones, which I think is what people think of nowadays. They think pride, they think Marriott-sponsored float with, guys in Speedos and Rainbow Flags. And while that is true, there are a lot of other types of pride as well. Pride is, yes, a parade, but most queer people don’t. When like we think of pride, we don’t even think of the parade. We think of all of the events that surround it. And in fact, like for me, I think of the parade as mostly for straight people and families. And pride for me is the community events, it’s the parties, it’s my friends’ barbecue in their backyard. It’s all of those things coming together. 

But there are other kinds of pride as well. There’s still the backyard barbecue or the local park barbecue pride that’s happening. And we’re in an era of reclaiming pride. Because we went so far swing to the corporate side. That so many people were like, this should be about our family. So pride for us is an opportunity to celebrate, it’s an opportunity to organize, it’s an opportunity to come together and witness the atrocities and the deaths that have happened in our community and mourn the people who’ve died in hate crimes. And it’s also a family reunion. Because still to this day, a lot of queer people are rejected by our families of birth. And so we form our own families and our own communities. So you have a huge corporate sponsor, you have a kind of backyard barbecue. And then you also have the ones that are active. Dangerous civil protests against governments that are repressive regimes. We still have pride celebrated around the world where attendees have to be masked, where people need surveillance, guards, all kinds of things because they don’t have freedom of expression and they don’t have freedom of identity. So, you know, I am concerned when we’re talking about pride, especially as a travel opportunity, that we’re not seeing the nuances of it and we’re not thinking about, well, what is my goal here as a travel opportunity? Am I trying to be part of a resistance movement? Am I trying to, you know, form bonds and build community? Am I trying to have the best party I’ve ever seen? Am I trying to be like one ant and a million queer people surrounding me? So I think the question really starts with the intention and then we answer it from there.

Anastasia: Sure, I think there’s probably a reason to go both ways, right? Maybe you do wanna just go party and maybe a next trip will be a more

Meg: And that’s a beautiful thing, right? There’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s really just being self-aware and understanding what you need to fill your cup.

Anastasia: Right. And so on that note, since you brought up just the fact that even traveling to a specific place can be an act of resistance or pride can be an act of resistance, we’re quite familiar with this topic in general. We recently had a podcast with Fatima in regards to Afghanistan and Afghanistan travel and whether it’s ethical to travel and support local or is it just better to not at all? So I know this topic for LGBTQ is even more layered and certain places the laws maybe are completely against LGBTQ, but you also recently said, in a recent interview you said, you know, if we didn’t go anywhere, then there’d be nowhere to go, pretty much. And so I just wanted to see how you recommend people do their research. How do they choose where they think that they can go to or maybe not?

Meg: So I do want to start this conversation by just acknowledging both every queer and the International LGBTQ travel association have the same perspective and policy on anti-queer travel bans, which is we don’t believe in them. We do not believe that queer people so okay, we’ll back up here first. There’s a difference between an organizational policy and an individual policy, right? So I do not believe in travel bans because queer people live in every city, state, country, municipality in the world. I don’t believe in travel bans because they actually hurt local queer people more than they help, because queer people are baked into the fabrics of society. And we know that travel is cultural exchange. 

We know that based on Glisson’s research, that having firsthand exposure to just one member of the LGBTQ+ community is more likely to sway and change policy perspectives and social acceptance than nearly anything else. And so when you have queer travelers coming into a destination, you become that first person that so many people experience. I don’t believe in travel bans because of some of the most beautiful and culturally rich parts of the world are challenging for a wide variety of different demographics. And as a queer woman myself, if I were to compound every identity that I have, or for some of my colleagues who are queer and trans and black and all of these other identities, it would limit the amount of cultural exchange that we could experience to a minute point because there is no queer utopia, right? There are places that have better social acceptance and better policies than others. There are places that you know, we are optimistic that we will be safe and welcoming. But even in my hometown of New York City, which is the birthplace of the LGBTQ movement, we still have hate crimes, we still have intolerance, we still have homophobia and transphobia. 

So I don’t ever support that conversation around banning travel because boycotts only work in places where you have democracy, you have freedom of expression, and you have capitalism. And there are far less places that fit all three of those than a lot of us might think. So, sure, like, at an individual level, every queer person, every person of diversity. That is an individual choice. You don’t have to go anywhere that you don’t want to. And I love queer people saying, This is not for me. And the reality is like I travel at a volume. I’ve, you know, I’ve been to more than 80 countries, right? And many of them I’ve been five, 10, 15 times. So for me, the conversation is much more real around would I go and support, if I was invited to do queer activism and Saudi, that would be a tough conversation for me because women got the right to drive like seven seconds ago, right? because of the way that they treat queer people. But I also am aware that I am in a position. Position of leadership and authority on a global level, and someone has to be first. And because I present with privilege, because of my different identities, it’s a conversation that would be challenging for me, but it’s not an immediate no. Whereas most people, when they’re talking about travel, they’re talking about a vacation. And that is a very different scale. 

And so, you know, if you’ve got 25 countries on your bucket list and you choose to put the ones that are a little bit more concerning at the bottom of the bucket list, I’m not gonna judge you and I’m not gonna preach to you and tell you that that’s right or that’s wrong, but I’m coming from this at a global organizational structure rather than an individual decision-making process as a queer person. That being said, some of my best travel experiences have been in places where people kind of raise their eyebrow and say, you brought a group of queer people there. And I do think the travel that changes you is the travel that challenges you. So it’s kind of a long-winded response to your question, but I have a lot of thoughts on it.

Anastasia: No, no, that’s great. And I think that’s the thing. Just because the country is labeled as maybe not so queer friendly, but the local people probably are completely different once you actually go and they’re probably a lot more welcoming than you’d realize.

Meg: Well a lot of people also don’t understand that like there’s massive differences in individual countries, right? Like the difference between rural Arkansas and New York City, a lot of people inherently can understand that. But then when the conversation is about Cairo versus rural Egypt, then it gets like a little, I’m not sure about that. And in a lot of countries we have a really well beaten tourism path. Where they’re used to seeing foreigners and foreigners are completely insulated. Now, there is some consideration that traveling queer people are not always treated the same as local queer people, and that is of concern. But I think that a lot of the conversation around this is rooted in racism and Islamophobia more than it is in actual fear for LGBTQ+ people. And I always try to take an intersectional approach to this conversation.

Anastasia: Right. There is just no way to know for sure. And what I think one person’s experience may be a completely different experience for someone else.

I did want to talk also about I saw that you recently led a workshop for Skyscanner in Edinburgh about what you called the queer visibility of calculation. You pointed out that coming out is rarely like a single event, so it can happen in a doctor’s office, a hotel lobby in an Uber and when someone is traveling, we don’t even think about this, but there is this calculation that queer people have to do all the time in their regular life, but then also when traveling. And the numbers help show the scale of this. So bear with me as I spout out a few numbers here. But a recent survey, cited that in 2020, they found that 95% of LGBTQ+ business travelers had hidden their sexual orientation while traveling, and including 57% of those who did so for safety. It also found that 85% had changed their accommodations because they felt unsafe compared to 53% of non-LGBTQ+ respondents. 

And so I was curious, what does deciding to come out or avoid coming out actually look like during a trip? When someone might just say to a queer person, well just don’t disclose it, or what are those everyday things that people just don’t think about maybe when it comes to queer travel?

Meg: You’ve seen my comment section, huh? Yeah, I think that sentiment just ignores the fact that queerness is cultural and that there are many, many queer people who identify as cisgender or transgender or non-binary who can’t pass as straight and cisgender. There’s so many people in my life who identify as gay or lesbian and still you would know, and some of these things are rooted in stereotypes and some of them are truths of our culture. And there are some people like one of my colleagues who is a six foot tall masculine presenting person who is incredibly androgynous. And we always joke, like, well, you know, you could still put on a dress. And somebody would be like, well, who’s the gay in the dress? Right. It’s not about clothing or presentation. It’s part of our culture and who we are. And you can’t just snap turn that off. 

Now, for me, I am incredibly feminine. I could choose not to tell people. And it does provide me the opportunity to be in spaces and have conversations that are more transparent than my gender non-conforming colleagues would have in different countries and in different destinations. So it allows me to kind of be like a secret agent behind the scenes, if you will, while simultaneously traveling with friends and colleagues who are gender nonconforming allows me to be witness to their experience and provide a platform and voice for them. So yeah, it’s like first, you know, you just not everybody has the privilege to just not tell anyone. We get comments all the time like, just don’t make out, respect the culture. And I’m like, Okay, like your ignorance to our community is showing in innumerable ways with those kinds of comments to the point where I don’t even engage with them anymore. 

But that being said, there’s, you know, a lot of people who would never want to be closeted and never want to, you know, ever be faced with that conversation. And I can understand that as well. And I have been out since I came out in 1998, so it’s been a long time. And I have been asked if I’m actually gay while running a queer business, while being in leadership globally for the LGBTQ+ community. Probably once a week my entire life. So I am used to having 

Anastasia: Yeah, you’re not gay enough, sorry.

Meg: Right. It’s like how much clout do you want here? And so, you know, there are some people who are just based off of their appearance are going to be able and that’s what that presentation for Skyscanner is about, about the kind of double edged sword of visibility versus invisibility, right? Like in certain parts of the world, certain contexts, certain communities, you know, I can’t tell you how many times I have walked into meetings and they say, the chairman of the board of the LGBTQ+ travel association is going to be here and they don’t say my name or my pronouns. And they do not expect somebody who looks like me. Right. And I’ve had this happen innumerable times. They are not expecting a young feminine woman. They’re expecting an older gay man who is white, right? They have a very solid visual. And on the flip side of it, in terms of respectability politics, right, that impacts people’s perception of my decision making, my leadership, all of those things. 

And then I also have colleagues who are trans or gender not conforming who have to decide: is this going to be safe for me? Is somebody going to try to hurt me? You know, one of my colleagues, we have to plan every single trip around: is there an individual? stall bathroom. And that becomes a much more physical, medical, urgent kind of decision-making process. Is this going to be safe for me? And that’s, you know, on a global level, we have to have those considerations when we’re hosting group trips. More than 50% of our group trip travelers are trans or non-binary. And we have to decide, you know, is this a safe place for them to be able to use the facilities? And so many aspects of the travel experience are gendered. The first time I went to Istanbul, I was with my colleague who is very, very gender nonconforming and passes as male despite identifying as female. and we really wanted to have the experience of going into, some of the mosques and having the experience of being able to see that part of the culture. And we had to make the decision. I wanted to be as respectful as possible. So I chose to wear the hijab, as is custom. And then we had to have the conversation of, you know, by the letter, the rule, Linz should have worn a hijab. But if Linz wore a hijab, most people would assume that she was male, despite being born female. So then it would have been like her gender identity is best, I should wear the hijab to be respectful. But we knew if she wore the hijab, the local people would be like, why is that dude wearing a hijab? Right. So gender is more nuanced and complicated than that. And sometimes you have to make the decision that prioritizes how best you can present respectfully your personal safety and what you are willing to kind of compromise for yourself in order to have a cultural experience. 

I think a lot of people’s expectations for somebody who’s 97 years old is going to be a little bit different than somebody who’s 17 years old in terms of LGBTQ equality. And there are times while traveling where you will be the first queer or trans person that this person has ever met. And it’s not coming from a place of negativity or ill intention. It’s truly a place where I have never crossed this path before. And so each individual person has to decide. Am I willing to do this? Do I feel safe? Is this a teachable moment or is this an opportunity that I feel comfortable with, sharing and disclosing? So it’s incredibly personal and individual and I think harm reduction at every turn. I will choose safety of my guests, safety of myself, safety of my colleagues first and foremost. 

But there are times where, you know, we choose to put ourselves in surprising places and we bring guests all over the world and it’s honestly like charming and hilarious watching them realize they are in a queer space in a place that they don’t realize. So, like for example, we did the trek to Everest Space Camp. And we stayed at a queer-owned tea house high in the mountains of the Himalayas. And we didn’t tell, like, we’re not gonna, you know, out somebody, right? But the owner of the guest house greeted us. And you could just watch the guest face and realize, like this is family, right? This is a member of our community. Everybody is just shocked. We’re like seven days into the Everest hike. We’ve had these experiences happen all over the world where they know intellectually we exist everywhere, but like seeing that in real time and action. and having them be able to be their most authentic selves in these safe and affirming places is why I do it and what I love about it. So it’s a little more complicated than like everything in this topic. Nothing is just black and white or cut and dry. It’s an individual choice and it’s also based on what you’re willing to do, you know?

Anastasia: Yeah, I can completely see how this would be very different in every scenario in the group of people that you’re traveling with. I’ve noticed a very common thread in general when a group of women gets together. And it’s just, most of the time it’s a bunch of strangers. And if it feels a bit freeing when you’re with strangers, people talk about deeper things way faster. And I could see how all of this would affect on how you may interact with the locals as well, because maybe your group is more confident, more let’s do this. You feel safe, you feel good, and you may do those things, you know, where you do it whether to take a stand or just because it feels good to, you know, come out or not come out. 

I also wanted to talk about a little bit. I know this kind of a slightly boring question, but I know we still have an X sex marker still on some of the passports in the US. And I know I think the US Department of State says that they’re no longer issuing those, but people still do have them and they’re still valid right now. So I was curious what you think in destinations that only recognize male or female at the port of entry systems and don’t accept the X marker. What would you say to a traveler who is traveling to a destination like that? What can they do to prepare it best?

Meg: So the majority of countries don’t recognize X gender markers at this point. So if you know an individual feels passionately enough to have that mark, I applaud them, congratulate them in affirming their own identity. But they also have to understand the reality that it will dramatically limit their ability to travel and cross borders, especially in this political climate. and can put them in frankly, you know, some unsafe situations because it immediately outs them as both gender non-conforming and a member of the queer community. 

We have staff who are trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and this has been an ongoing conversation. And all of our staff have decided to not get the X marker because we are continuously crossing borders, we’re continuously at ports of entry. And even in countries where the X marker is welcomed, you have to show your passport. 30 times in a travel day. You have to show it when you’re at your ticketing gate. You have to show it, you know, when you go through the TSA two or three different times. You have to show it when you’re boarding a plane. And homophobia is, yes, societal and systemic, but it’s also an individual experience. So you are potentially facing higher possibilities of discrimination than you may want to bring in yourself. So you know, and I’ve really leaned into my colleagues who have lived experiences of being gender non-conforming and their perspectives on it. And they’re pretty unanimously agreed that if you’re doing heavy levels of travel and if you’re prioritizing travel to different places around the world where that may be questionable, that it’s at this point probably not worth the risk because you’re actively putting yourself in danger. 

Now, that being said, if you don’t plan on leaving the country, you’re doing a lot of domestic travel in your home country, or you’re exclusively going to places that do welcome the X marker, by all means do what makes you feel affirmed in who you are. But this is one of those things right now where the X marker represents the possibility that we want, the optimism of the future, you know, what we hope that one day people will be welcoming regardless of how you identify. But the reality of that is we’re just not there yet. 

Anastasia: That makes sense. So speaking of the realities of what the future we hope will hold as the chairman of the board of the directors for the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association, you definitely have a global view of how destinations, hotels and tour operators approach LGBTQ+ inclusion. And I know a lot of just like for female owned businesses and for companies that want to support female owned or female guides. 

Sometimes people just label things and say, yes, we support female local guides or we support this. In reality that might just be a label or a marketing scheme really. So I’m just curious, how can you tell if a business is actually LGBTQ? Welcoming and not just friendly. I know friendly is such a term that you know what does that really mean, friendly? So what work do you think should have already happened behind the scenes if a travel company wants to specifically welcome LGBTQ+ travelers?

Meg: So from a consumer perspective, it’s one conversation, and from an industry perspective, it’s another. So I’ll start on the consumer side. If you are going to a hotel’s website or social media channels, you should be able to see photos or images of people who look like you. Are there queer couples getting married on their website? Or is there queer representation on their social media channels? Are they using inclusive language? Do they have acknowledgments of pride celebrations, not just Pride sales packages. You know, they can have a sales package, but they have to have the other stuff as well. Are they acknowledging queer people year-round and not just in June or whenever their local pride is? Those are some pretty good indicators. Also, if it’s a hotel, there are several internationally acclaimed LGBTQ professional development programs. IGLTA’s accredited program is one that is well. I’ll call a spade a spade. It’s rigorous and intense and it’s not for every hotel. You have to be incredibly invested because it’s a year-long program where they have actual homework assignments every single month. They have to have enumerated anti-discrimination policies. They have to have professional development training for their staff. Like each stage in this process is not just something where you can slap a sticker on it and call it a day. It takes thought and effort and time and it is checked and tested yearly. 

So that’s kind of the most rigorous end of the scale. So there are fewer people and fewer properties around the world who have pursued IGLTA accreditation. There’s also Booking.com’s Travel Proud program. I am slightly biased because I wrote this training. But we have trained 70,000 hotels around the world in terms of LGBTQ inclusion through my partners at HospitableMe. And that is a less rigorous professional development training than the accreditation, but it’s also a starting point. And it means that folks at that individual hotel cared enough to spend the time to not only pursue it, but attend the training and do the homework around the training. So while is that a guarantee that every single person from the dishwasher and the busboy all the way up to the corporate management? know everything and anything about LGBTQ travel? No, absolutely not. But it does mean that there was intention behind wanting to be welcoming and wanting to be affirming of our people. So on the consumer side, there’s kind of a list of places that you can go and resources that you can check off to see if this property is for you. 

Now on the industry side, you can tell who’s in it for money because they have more packages than they have people, right? You know, they’re only trying to sell you something and they’re not actually talking about welcome and affirming if it’s not about humanity, it’s about come and have a great time and party with us. and I think it’s pretty transparent. There are so many hotel companies in particular that have just done amazing jobs over the years. Marriott is one of them. They’ve had their travel proud program for at least 15 years, if not longer now. 

With destinations, it’s a little bit more challenging because, like, how do you say an entire city or country is welcoming? That’s just not real and not possible. But you can tell when you go to the destination’s website, are there LGBTQ+ people and stories baked into what they’re promoting? Do they have sections for LGBTQ owned businesses? Are they supporting local LGBTQ owned businesses? But granted, there’s not LGBTQ owned businesses in every destination. So then are they, you know, supporting local nonprofits, local charitable organizations? Are they involved with Pride? Are they openly talking about diversity in different ways throughout the content and messaging that they’re promoting? As well as taking a look at what the policies are. 

But a really good example of this is the state of Florida. So Florida is a challenge. But there are a lot of really amazing, welcoming destinations within Florida. You know, some of the biggest queer communities in the United States are in Florida. There’s a massive lesbian community in Tampa, in Key West, in Miami, Wilton Manors of Fort Lauderdale. Like there are tons of queer people who live there, but a lot of people outside of the state of Floridaren’t necessarily thinking, Wow, Florida, the bastion of equality and acceptance but go to Key West on Halloween weekend. You’re gonna see my people for sure. So it’s one of those things where your destinations are a little bit more complicated, but there are ways to determine if something is for you or something isn’t. And even queer people, like there’s so many queer people whose opinions of other queer people are eye roll gay people, right? Like so, not everyone who’s gay wants to go on a big gay holiday or wants to be in a fantasy fest in Key West, and it’s completely fine, but there are ways that we can determine whether something is going to be welcoming and affirming of our community.

Anastasia: Yes. So I know you just said that you can’t just blanket call someplace a friendly or LGBTQ+ welcoming location, but can you just answer me a few places that maybe for someone who hasn’t traveled at all internationally yet, and maybe they’re nervous too, if you can give me just a couple places that you think are a good first place to maybe head out to. This is the same question we ask for solo female travelers who are scared to go alone, you know? And there are definitely a few places that are just much easier and more approachable for maybe a first time.

Meg: Sure. So I can actually do you better and give you one on each continent. So in Europe, the Nordic countries, particularly Stockholm, Sweden, are incredibly welcoming and affirming. It’s one of the most equitable countries for not only queer people but also women in the world and they are definitely on the higher end in terms of trans equality and trans acceptance. They’re not perfect, but far and large, you know, I can with my whole chest and confidence say that Stockholm is an amazing destination in Europe for queer travelers and trans travelers. 

In Asia, it’s Thailand, hands down, one of the most, if not the most, LGBTQ-friendly and welcoming country in the world, and particularly the most trans friendly country in the world. Trans and gender nonconforming identities are baked into their ancient cultural tradition in Thailand. So you will see trans and gender nonconforming people in every walk of Life, it might be your server or your bartender or your accountant or your lawyer, which is an interesting experience, especially for westerners who are members of our community, to come and just see how welcome Thailand is for so many people. There’s a reason it’s the land of smiles. In Africa on the African continents, definitely South Africa, Cape Town, very welcoming and affirming to LGBTQ+ people. There’s a thriving queer community in Cape Town itself. They are working on some of their progress towards trans equality. They’re definitely not perfect, but they’re on par with what the United States is. I would say probably better at this point than the United States in terms of trans and gender conforming issues. In Latin America, my gosh, there’s so many options. But Buenos Aires, Argentina, has the best queer nightlife in the entire world. It is incredible. Although the people of Sao Paulo, Brazil would probably fight me on that question. They’re pretty, you know, they’re the Mets and the Yankees. It’s the rivalry for the ages. But both are incredibly welcoming destinations for LGBTQ+ people. And in the United States, there are so many options: Provincetown, Palm Springs, Key West, Fire Island, New York City. There are so many options for queer people who really want to go somewhere where they’re having an experience where they’re welcomed, affirmed, and validated in their identities. So there’s lots of options.

Anastasia: Thank you so much for that. And I was actually also curious, was there a place that you’ve personally gone to that maybe surprised you? That maybe you thought going into was not going to be super queer friendly, and then you were pleasantly surprised.

Meg: Jordan. Jordan, for sure. I cannot say enough good things about Jordan. Of all of the countries in the world that I’ve been to, Jordan was absolutely incredible. Like, you know, there’s something I’m not gonna lie, there’s some of the wonders of the world where I’m like, okay, this could have been an email. Petra is not one like when you see Petra, you see the treasury or you see the monastery, people don’t realize just how expansive it is. and I went with my trans partner at the time, who we didn’t know how they were going to be perceived, and nothing but respect. And in fact it was interesting because they were being gendered male by the Jordanian people, like while we were in our Amman and the big cities. And then when we got into the Bedouin communities, they were being gendered female. and so they were just kind of rolling with it or whatever, you know what I mean? Like what are you gonna do? And the Bedouin people were just so welcoming, should like talking like in fact we this is one of those things like listeners, this is what I did. I’m not saying that anyone listening to this should do this, but we ended up hiring a Palestinian refugee to be a driver who just happened to be somebody who walked up to us and was like, Do you wanna do this? Like I’m a refugee, I’m looking to make money. And I am free Palestine all day, every day. And so I’m going to support the movement in whatever big ways or small ways that I possibly can. So I said, bet, sir, like take us all around. But there was a moment where I was like, wait, did I make a poor choice here? He said, we’re about like, you know, an hour and a half into the drive. And he said, you know, there’s a back door to Petra. I was like, sir, what? He said, yeah, there’s a back door to Petra. And I’m like, intrigued. So tell me more. And he’s talking about how if, you know, the Bedouin people who l work in Petra, it is a 13 mile stretch from front to back. So if you work in the monastery, you have to walk 26 miles, which is a literal marathon. So he’s like, well, they had to have some way for people to get in the back where they didn’t have to walk 13 miles to work. And I was like, you know, sir, you are making a lot of sense. So as he’s explaining it to me, I’m like, I’m either going to die finding the backdoor of Petra or I’m gonna have an A+ story. Luckily, I’ve lived to tell the tale and I have an A+ story. 

There is, in fact, a backdoor to Petra. Which cuts off about like it’s maybe an hour and a half hike from the back door into the monastery. And then if you go from the monastery, you walk down the nine hundred stairs rather than up. Why would you ever walk up nine hundred stairs when you could walk down them? and so we did it backwards. And I was like, this is amazing. Like this is absolutely incredible. People were so welcoming, people were just gracious and you know there’s so many Bedouin people who took us into their homes and offered us tea and offered us hospitality and welcome. And you know Jordan is a Muslim country in the Middle East and you know it’s sandwiched in a conflict zone. And I have gone before the conflict. Well is there really a before the conflict, but before the recent part of the conflict. And then I’ve also been since I went a year and a half ago. and had the same amazing, welcoming experience the first time I went with my colleague who is incredibly gender non-conforming on the trans community and then i went with a massive gay group of all kinds of different identities and backgrounds some people visibly queer some people not as much and just had both times an incredible time I think it is a like just mind-shifting travel experience and something that I highly recommend for not just queer people but also women right we don’t think of the middle east as particularly welcoming and Jordan, Jordan is just they’re just built different over there and I love it.

Anastasia: Yes. And you’re not the first person to mention Jordan and it’s definitely been on my list. And I think now it’s a little higher on my list.

Meg: Yeah. It’s incredible.

Anastasia: This also confirms why you always get a local guide.

Meg: For sure.

Anastasia: I wanted to also talk a little bit about you know, I’ve been fortunate enough that in my time in the United States I’m actually an immigrant, but I came here when I was fifteen years old. So I spend most of my time on the West Coast and I lived and went to school in Seattle. I’ve been to Portland. I have been to New York. I live in California now. it’s Queer visibility, it’s quite visible here. It’s everywhere. I would say most of the places that I’ve lived could be described as a year-round queer destination. We have queer bars with cafes, bookstores, community spaces too. And I saw I forget where that I saw you were discussing about how the lesbian world can feel very small. And, you know, not just in the dating pool, but in the infrastructure as well. And so I was thinking about this and if there’s less dedicated spaces for specific portions of the queer community or and this also is relevant to travel, I think. What is the best way to find those little bars or bookstores or events when you’re traveling, especially if you’re solo traveling as a member of the queer community?

Meg: Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people who are not members of our community don’t necessarily understand the cultural cornerstone that is the queer gay or lesbian bar. So the bar for us at one point in actually until relatively recently, it was illegal to assemble and it still is in many, many parts of the world. But in the United States, it was illegal to assemble as a group of queer people. So you literally could just be arrested for existing in proximity to somebody else who was perceived to be gay, not even that they actually were. And so it created a level of inner community necessity, secrecy, and sometimes darkness at different periods of our time where. The only way that we could get together as a community was inherently creating an illegal act. 

Over the years, obviously that has changed. We have the freedom of assembly, but there are the queer spaces like gay and lesbian bars are the only opportunity that most LGBTQ+ people will ever have to be in a room filled with people that are like us. And there is so much power in that. And it’s interesting over the years I’ve had conversations with straight people who are like, well, like, what do you mean? It’s like a club or a bar. And I’m like, no, for you, it’s a club or a bar because you can exist in a restaurant, in a library, in wherever you want to go, a bookstore where everyone is like you, where these opportunities for us are incredibly limited. and the communities are small in different parts. It’s just proportional to the size of the community there. In the New York City metro area, we have twenty million people. So of course we’re gonna have more LGBTQ+ people than say like Laramie, Wyoming, right? no shade on Laramie. But there are pockets of queer people in all kinds of places like people are always shocked that Eureka Arkansas is a bastion of LGBTQ equality because people don’t necessarily think that about Arkansas. 

But the only way that we are able to find this information is through media and through word of mouth and community connection. And in like until relatively recently we had our own media outlets, magazines, newspapers, all of those kinds of things. And unfortunately, a consequence of the internet is that a lot of lesbian media in particular has gone out of business. We lost the last lesbian national magazine in North America a couple years back. It’s called Curve Magazine. Their legacy publication has done absolutely incredible and amazing work for our community for a really long time. And for many, many years, for myself as the owner of a lesbian travel company. Back in the day, all you had to do was put like, an ad for Dinah Shore or an ad for Olivia Travels, or, you know, if I had had the opportunity, and you would have gotten the entire North American lesbian community for the most part, because everyone was reading this monthly periodical. Times have changed now. All of those legacy publications have gone out of business. There’s really only two that sort of mirror legacy, and that’s every queer my publication, and autostraddle. 

Autostraddle, they do incredible work. They’re more focused on pop culture and like fandom kind of stuff, but you can find great information with them as well. And then there was the rise of the content creator and the social media influencer. And social media influencers and content creators are incredibly important in our community because they are the ones that are the pied piper of gayness, if you will, right? Like they’re the ones who are going to be telling you where the local lesbian bar is. That’s why I have a series visiting every lesbian bar left in the world, because so many Queer spaces and lesbian bars are closing down. And sometimes I would say the majority of the time, I just recently did one that was at an afternoon tea location in Manhattan and the comments are filled with people being like, I had no idea that this existed. And it’s because there is no media that unites our community, and the only way that you’re gonna find out information is if somebody who has the time and the effort and the ability to fact check and a lot of audacity is posting it on the internet for our community to see. So, I think the conversation about influencers and content creators is also loaded in misogyny. You know, it’s one of the only industries that is almost entirely women and our image of what a content creator is is the get ready with me girl. And no shade to get ready with me girl. Like she has her place. But on our side of the community, when you’re facing multiple levels of oppression and marginalization. They are important and necessary for us to disseminate information because nothing about our history or culture is taught in schools, and the only way we can learn is from each other. And the only way we can find each other is via word of mouth from each other and the internet as our medium for that.

Anastasia: Just toot your horn. Your content is really good. I don’t know if you have a whole team working with you, but it’s not just fun. It’s current, but it’s also educational. You do these quizzes where I was like, I had no idea about some of the things that you talk about at all. Like never even heard of this. So I really love it. I appreciate it and I hope everybody listening goes and follows Meg and comments and just spreads her content even further than it is already. 

So I think I would like to ask you one more question. And for this one, if you could just talk directly maybe to the camera. If you could say one thing or a few things to someone who maybe is a queer woman, non-binary traveler, who wants to go, but maybe is just tired of having to calculate their safety or visibility or belonging or is just scared to take that first step. What would you say to them?

Meg: I would say that big bucket lists are individual, right? And what is big and bucket list for you might be different than for somebody else. For some people, it’s just going to the nearest big city and having that experience. For some people, it’s traveling halfway across the world and backpacking in Europe or going to Japan. But I think when people think about travel, they think far flung and expensive and huge and time consuming and details and what if I don’t speak the language? And that’s anxiety, right? That’s anxiety bubbling to the surface. And I think if you build a life where you’re prioritizing adventure in small, palatable, biteable kinds of ways, eventually that big backpacking trip or that trip to Japan are gonna feel less scary because you went to your biggest city near you. So you kind of have an idea of what public transit could look like or you went to that Japanese restaurant and you looked at the menu and you decided, I like these four or five dishes. So it’s not as intimidating. 

Or you took these baby steps in order to make that big bucket lease list dream your reality. and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with those baby steps. And if your biggest first step is Disneyland or a cruise or an all-inclusive resort. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the starting point, right? This time maybe it’s an all-inclusive. Next time maybe it’s staying in a local hotel just a little bit outside of that town. Right. Next time it’s maybe going to a country that’s a little bit more unfamiliar. And there are so many tools and resources. If you are ready and you’re like, you know what, I’ve done these baby steps, I’ve done that, I’m ready for the big adventure, that’s why group tours like every queer exist. And it sounds incredibly self-serving, but I’m not gonna lie to you, I was begrudging doing group tours because I just wanted to do content. Like, you know, writing and educating and teaching is my passion. And I was like, I’m not a tour operator. And then so many people said we want to do what you do. We want to see the world. We want you to show us how. And now it has become one of the biggest blessings in my life to be able to show people in my community you can have this adventure. You can do it. You can do hard things. You can see the world. You can have these cultural exchange moments regardless of how you identify or how you present in the world. And there are people in every country who are willing to help you doing it in a safe and welcoming and just life-changing kind of way. So start small and seek out resources. People in the industry are here to help you and make sure that you have the time of your life.

Anastasia: That was Awesome. Thank you so much. So pretty much with everyone, we end our interviews with a quick rapid fire. 

Meg: Sure.

Anastasia: You can choose to explain what your answer is or you can just answer it. And move on. So, pride trip or off season queer getaway.

Meg: Off season queer getaway. 

Anastasia: One long direct flight or a layover to break it up?

Meg: Long direct flight.

Anastasia: Okay, carry on or check the bag.

Meg: Checked bag, I’m a diva. Sorry.

Anastasia: One check bag or two check bags?

Meg: I try to keep it at one, but it depends on how long I’m going. I think the whole like checked bag versus not check bag thing is really not the evil that people in travel think it is. Like there are trips where you need gear, you know, there are trips where you’re going for a whole month. Like, I don’t know. I don’t think you get any brownie points. Yeah. Like you don’t get brownie points for suffering. Like, no. Check bag

Anastasia: There are trips where I want to buy a lot of things and bring them home. I’m just saying. Okay, one more. One destination you would return to tomorrow.

Meg: my gosh, there’s so many. But Zanzibar probably is an island off the coast of Tanzania. I had an incredible experience there. I was only there for six days. I would love to just go and stay. 

Anastasia: I was only there for two days and it was amazing. Yes. Yes. Such a beautiful place. 

One more thing. What is the best compliment that you’ve ever received?

Meg: I had an amazing time on your tour and I felt so safe and so welcome.

Anastasia: That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Okay, Meg, is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you would like to tell our listeners before we wrap it up?

Meg: Yeah, I just want to shout out to some of my colleagues. So while every queer exists, we do small group tours. I want to talk a little bit about some of the other folks in the industry that I think are just doing an incredible job. So for us, our audience is somewhere in the ballpark of say 25 to 55 year old queer trans and non-binary folks. And we limit our groups to give or take, like the biggest we’ve ever done was 22, the smallest we’ve ever done was six. So somewhere in the ballpark of that. And we tend to do more adventure travel. So we just did Machu Picchu in Peru, we did the trek to Mount Everest Base Camp. We also do Thailand, where it’s more like elephants and beaches. So not everything is super intense. 

But my colleagues at Ladies Touch events run by Vivian Perez, she’s an absolute icon. She does queer women’s tours for women of color, predominantly black and Hispanic lesbians and queer women. They do group tours all over the world as well. And they do, it’s a little, I don’t want to say all of them are a party vibe, but it’s a little more of a party vibe if that’s what you’re into. Olivia Travel is also incredible. They start at about 60+. And so, you know, their tours are accommodating older, queer women. They’re a legacy. They’ve been around, I think I want to say 50 years, it might be 45. Judy, their owner, absolutely an icon and a legend, paving the way for all of us in the community. And then there’s also kind of mixed groups where you know it’s the LGBTQ+ community, and you might have any letter of the alphabet mafia. Kelly and Greg travel, they run our family vacations. So they have one that is specifically focused on LGBTQ family. And then they also do small group tours that are just a mixture of alphabet folks. and they tend to be a little bit more on the luxury side. So you’re certainly not roughing it with them. They love a nice hotel and a nice getaway. And then Source Journeys for gay men, they are absolutely incredible with their attention to detail. They provide luxury travel experiences for gay men, of vary with age. I would say, you know, forties to fifties is probably average for them. but they just put together an absolutely stupidly beautiful product. So there’s a little bit of something for everyone in the community. We all know each other. We all get along. We all work together. We all celebrate each other. What tour group for you or what group travel experience for you might be different depending on what you’re looking for, you know? If you want something a little more bougie or you want something a little bit more of your age group, there is something for everyone.

Anastasia: There is something for everyone indeed. 

Okay, Meg, thank you so much for joining me today and for giving us an honest and a more nuanced way to think and talk about what it means for a destination to be a LGBTQ+ welcoming and affirming. What I’m kind of taking away from our conversation is that inclusion it’s not just a label and it shows up in laws and policies and training the staff and visibility in the community, local partnerships and just everyday interactions. 

If you’d like to learn more from Meg, you can find her work at everyqueer.com and follow everyqueer and Meg Ten Eyck on social media. We’ll include all the links in the show notes. And please, as always, comment, send us an email, leave us a review, let us know what you thought about the podcast and this interview. 

And if this conversation inspired you to explore somewhere new in the company of other women, you can also join us on one of our women-only tours around the world. And you can find all that information at tours.solofemaletravelers.club. And thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Meg: Thank you so much.

Anastasia: Thanks, Meg.

–

It’s time for this week’s embarrassing travel story. We’ll call this one the emergency button. This one is from Karen and here’s her story. 

Everyone knows that Japanese toilets provide many options for finishing the job. It’s important to know which button you’re pushing and what it will do. While in the restroom attached to our hotel’s restaurant, I thought I was pressing flush, when in actuality I was pressing emergency. Too late, I realized my mistake, and within seconds there was a knock on the door. Extremely embarrassed, I opened the door and cracked and told the concerned young man who had come to my rescue that all was well. It was a false alarm. Later when I reported all of this to my travel companions, they could not stop laughing as they conjured up images of first responders brandishing emergency rolls of toilet paper over their heads. 

Thank you so much for sharing a story with us, Karen. If you have an embarrassing travel story of your own, we’d love to hear it. You can submit yours on our website at www.solofemaletravelers.club.