At the time of writing this we are about 24hrs removed from the Orlando shootings. I have tried to sum up how I feel in the wake of this massacre, this attack on the LGBT*Q community, even just to myself: to make sense of this all internally. The truth of this, however, is that there is little sense here.

If there was sense then 50 people would still be alive in Orlando, and thousands (if not millions) of LGBT*Q+ identifying people worldwide would not currently be experiencing a wide range of emotions, namely fear. Here we are, a day later: those 50 people are still dead, those millions still fear for their lives.

The most frustrating thing, for me, has been the media coverage. RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, referred to it as a shooting in a club. Not a gay club, not an “alternative” club as they sometimes call it, just a club: a normal nightclub. Sky News, normally quite decent at covering these events fairly, completely lost the plot, leading to Guardian journalist Owen Jones storming off. The former I’ve come to expect, mainly because if they mentioned it was a gay club then RTÉ would probably have had to have someone on to say how this massacre was ‘actually quite class’ for the sake of ‘balance’, but the latter surprised me a bit more.

As a journalist (and yes, this college paper does count), this story is a simple one to sum up, the narrative is clear here: a man has gotten a gun & acted on his bigotry, targeting a gay nightclub in Orlando and sadly killed 50 people who just wanted to feel safe being themselves in public.

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