We’re continually amazed by how different this part of the country is from where we grew up. We had always assumed that the USA was pretty similar all around in it’s attitudes towards gay and trans people, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s like being in two totally different countries or two totally different eras.
Both of the incidents the R.A. is mentioning in the comic really happened at our college, though not in the same year. There was a violent hate crime that we knew about every year we were there, and given how few people knew about those, probably many more we didn’t know about. In our new home city, people at PRIDE groups and safe space training tell horror stories of the guy who came to work to find his family pictures turned over … it’s an incredible world of difference, and so incredibly freeing!