Where and Why Queer Women Fly | The Q Agenda

In honor of Women’s History Month, the next episode of The Q Agenda explores how queer women travel the world, sometimes by choice, other times by necessity.

On the show, traveling duo and influencer couple Kirstie Pike and Christine Diaz illustrate how their online platforms normalize and encourage queer travel. Content creator and queer advocate Jazzmyne Jay recounts being overworked when she initially moved to Los Angeles. And, after recently fleeing death threats in Mexico City, lawyer and trans rights activist Uriaz Morales Tarango gives us an unfiltered look into trans life in the Mexican capital.

One fateful day in New York City, Pike and Diaz matched on Tinder. As early as their first date, they were talking about travel. 

Pike, a creative free spirit from Tennessee, was ready to board a plane right away. Diaz, the more practical side of the duo, made a plan. They saved up $20K—$10K to travel with and $10K to come back with—and off they went.

This shared passion for exploring the world not only kick-started their relationship, it eventually restructured their careers. 

“When we first started traveling in Southeast Asia, we had no social media background. We were barely taking photos. We just did it for fun,” Pike says.

People started reaching out to them with questions. Can I hold my partner’s hand in that country? As a queer couple, how can we travel and feel safe?

Intent on responding with well-crafted answers, Pike and Diaz ran Google searches about safe travel for queer couples. When they found nothing substantial, they decided to launch their own platform to answer these questions themselves. 

Now, they have one of the largest LGBTQ+ travel platforms in the United States.

“As people in the LGBTQ community, you definitely have to have intuition and feel safe. Even in America, where technically marriage is legal and we do have some laws in place, it’s not always accepted or safe in areas,” Diaz says. 

Fellow content creator Jazzmyne Jay, the next guest on the show, understands the many shades of America firsthand. She grew up in a small town in Illinois, where cornfields and white blondes were the norm. 

“I knew I was different from a very early time in my life,” Jay says on the show. “Eventually, I came out to LA, which was beautiful. I came out here because I literally saw people walking down the street [who] looked like me, [who] I wanted to be like, [who] I wanted to date. I was like, this was the spot.”

For Jay, being a Black, queer woman has meant being overworked her entire life.

That didn’t change in Los Angeles, where she landed a job for BuzzFeed. Here, she put in long hours, cultivating her voice as a public advocate for the many communities she represents.

In 2018, she hit a breaking point. Plagued by creative burnout, she signed up for therapy. She was ready to start healing. She was ready to put herself first. That healing journey never ended.

For Jay, we can’t go out and do all this wonderful advocacy work if we’re not taking care of ourselves first. And when we do, we become even more impactful.

“[I’ve been] walking through the doors that were opened for me and standing in my power,” she goes on to say.

Across the border, in the heart of Mexico City, Uriaz Morales Tarango fearlessly stands in her power as a way to fight for trans rights in her country.

A lawyer, a politician, and a trans advocate, Morales Tarango is working to make Mexico City’s government body more inclusive, more representative of the vibrant queer community that has shaped the city’s culture.

Recently, after the tragic assisination of two of her trans sisters, Morales Tarango received a death threat herself. So she fled to the United States for asylum. She tells us her story on the show. 

Don’t miss this special episode of The Q Agenda. Watch the Women’s History Month special on LATV+ app.