People often say that the pandemic serves as lenses bringing to the front the weakest, most fragile sides of our societies. This is true for our own self-reflection as a queer community. Where do we fail as a community, what are the weakest links in our common push for human rights equality? And when we are at our finest?

When I think about our weakest moments, I think of Madona Kiparoidze. A Georgian transgender woman set herself on fire in Tbilisi this Spring protesting extra severe lockdown policies that completely disregard the reality of surviving as a disfranchised queer person. Madona’s desperate cry for help was just the beginning of the unprecedented attack on transgender Europeans this year. It resulted in legislative assaults in Hungary and Russia, and a wave of physical violence across the continent. We don’t speak out and amplify the stories of transgender members of our community loud enough.

When I think about the weakest moments, I think about this year reminding me about our strategic blind spot — thinking that the progress is linear and taking hard-won liberties for granted. Look at Poland for example - I’ve never thought I’d be more concerned for the safety of my queer Polish friends than my own queer fam in Ukraine or Georgia. But here we are.

When I think about the weakest moments, I think of the ongoing wave of global pushback against police brutality and racial injustice and how we don’t amplify queer voices within it loud enough. From stories of queer Roma in Europe to queer Nigerians who are protesting against police brutality and put their lives on the line as we speak, but few of us even heard about it.

But this year showed us when we are at our finest, too. When queer people openly march on the Belarusian streets against the dictatorship. When we coordinate a global solidarity campaign to back frontline pride events with additional security in such places as Ukraine. When we go creative and harness online media tools to recruit thousands and thousands of new, young queer voices who would never show up for our offline civil rights marches before. Like it happed with Russian Queer Pride and KyivPride. When member of my own KyivPride family runs for political office as first openly transgender woman in Ukraine. All I’m saying that the world is changing profoundly. There’s something brewing out there, whether it is for better or worse, it is time for us to self-reflect, double-check ourselves and make sure we are at the avant-garde and on the right side when a new global layout emerges.