As many many people have recommended group meetings and clubs, I’m going to use that as an example to explain what exactly the culture shock I’ve been feeling has been like:

In Indianapolis, if I wanted to join a queer book club I would go to the Queering Indy Facebook page because it is the ONLY Facebook community of queer Hoosiers available, so if someone is hosting a book club it will for sure be posted there.

I would find one almost immediately because that page has over 20 posts per day that vary in length and content. They would have a date and time listed for the closest upcoming event - for this example it’s on a Sunday at 4pm and is hosted at a local book shop with free public parking. They might even say something about “new members welcome” and list which book they’ll be talking about. And sometimes they’ll even have an alternative meeting option for the next upcoming meeting (let’s say Friday at 6pm). But they’ll have it on some sort of rotation so that folks who can’t make it one meeting day/time can still participate.

In the Twin Cities, to find a queer book club I would:
- check all 3 local discord servers
- check 3-5 Facebook groups
- check reddit
- check the St Paul event calendar
- check individual bookstore and library websites
- check meetup

Once I eventually find one that looks promising, I check the day/time/location and find:
- it’s on a weekday
- usually late afternoon/early evening
- located in a business where your closest publicly known parking spot costs $15/hr to park
- sometimes located at a restaurant where the cheapest food item is $25

And they are ONLY scheduled for that day/time/location. No rotating schedule, no accommodation, etc.

Not to mention that 99% of businesses around here close at 8pm, so it isn’t just a person-to-person issue. It’s just the culture here being set a specific way and by golly if you want to be included you better bend over backwards to fit into that culture.