"Dyke Trivia" Raises Funds For Ukraine

Screenshot via Zoom.

As Ilana Rossoff hit play, Lauren Birchlove bounced around the Zoom breakout room. They toggled through the Zoom filters—slipping a pair of pixelated sunglasses over their eyes. New Havener Alli Warshaw followed suit, donning pixelated sunglasses of her own. Then Rossoff joined in, picking out a mouse-sized party hat. It perched on her head for the remainder of the event.

Sufficiently outfitted, the three friends of team Leslie iz Fineberg were ready to take on “Dyke Trivia”—and support queer folks halfway around the world in Ukraine.

Sunday night, 23 teams gathered on Zoom to raise funds for Ukraine through “Dyke Trivia,” which uses trivia as a donation platform for nonprofits that support LGBTQ+ causes. The event is the brainchild of New Haven-based partners Alicja Podbielska, a postdoctoral researcher in Holocaust history at Yale, and Emma Weinstein-Levey, a social worker. It was the third trivia-fundraising event they’d held in just under two years. The proceeds from the other two went to Black and trans-centered nonprofits For The Gworls and Casa Ruby.

“Even before the war, there were many Ukrainian people in Poland, just working and studying. Now there’s almost three million refugees," Podbielska said. “The war is terrible for everyone, but queer people face so many specific challenges.”

Emma Weinstein-Levey and Alicja Podbielska. Contributed Photo.

In total, just over 45 people from across the United States came out for the event. They tested their knowledge of the five categories of questions, including red-carpet outfits, history, music, film, and sports. All the questions centered on lesbian and bisexual culture.

By the end of the night, they raised $860 for the Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ organization Fulcrum UA.

As attendees came together, lives and relationships unfolded on every screen. A young couple sat on a couch in front of a wall of windows, one with an arm around the other. With a free hand, the one on the left ate from a bowl of noodles using chopsticks. A Zoom screen, and many miles away, another couple stood in their kitchen, cooking at the stove. A third sat in front of a coffee table. A well-tended collection of plants poked into the background of their screen. Fittingly, their team name was Plant Daddies.

The other team names ranged from the punny, to the culturally niche, to the politically astute. There was "But I’m (Not) a Cheerleader," "Frog & Toad," and "Lori Lightfoot’s Left Pant Leg" (a reference to the Chicago senator’s baggy pants).

Podbielska came of age in Poland, migrating to the United States for graduate school when she was 27. Now 36, she’s lived in the United States for the past 10 years, studying the Holocaust history.

Her experience of watching the war unfold from the United States rather than Poland has been fraught with emotion. Although she’s been donating money since the start of the war, she said she sometimes wishes she could be back in Poland, helping out in more direct ways.

She’s had the feeling that people in the United States are experiencing the war in a different way than she is.

“I don’t want to say people here don’t care, but clearly it’s not on everybody’s mind all the time in the same way it is for me,” she said, noting that Weinstein-Levey has been very supportive of her. “It feels isolating sometimes.”

In a breakout room, the members of Leslie iz Fineberg frantically tried to guess the song and artist name of each track. Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own” Me” came on and their breakout room was quiet.

“No, It’s not like Indigo Girls, no?" Warshaw ventured.

“No, Absolutely not,” Rossoff said with a laugh.

“I’m just throwing out some names here,” Warshaw said, resigned to the group’s collective confusion.

Material Gworls (left to right: Yona Isaacs, Morgan Weiss, Quinci Rockette, Hillary Hecht). Screenshot from Zoom.

One round later and breakout room away, the four members of the Material Gworls—Hillary Hecht, Quinci Rockette, and the couple Morgan Weiss and Yona Isaacs—were racing through the next challenge: sports.

Hecht read the one of the questions out to the group: “Which of the following actors were NOT in the original League of their Own?”

"Oh, I love League of Their Own,” Rockette gushed.

There was a moment of frenzied debate.

“Oh, it’s Holland Taylor, Hecht said.

"It’s gotta be Petty, 'cuz I don’t know who Lori Petty is,” Weiss countered.

Hecht toggled through the four options before settling on Holland Taylor.

Learning From History

In addition to watching the war from afar, there’s an added layer of complexity to Podbielska’s experience: she’s a historian of the Holocaust. There are a certain number of parallels—including geographical area and war crimes—between the Holocaust and the current war. This sense of history repeating itself has caused Podbielska to pause and re-evaluate her purpose as a historian.

“I believed, really, that we learned anything from history,” she said. “But it’s a really disorienting feeling. Like does it even make sense to do what you’re doing if the same thing’s going to keep happening? But then, at the same time, documenting it is extremely important.”

In a time of deep distress, violence, and death, Dyke Trivia was an opportunity to be together. Throughout the pandemic, the four team members of the Material Gworls—who are based in various parts of the country—have found multiple ways to keep in touch, including virtual game nights, trivia challenges, and yoga sessions.

“This is a nice activity for all of us to do together and we don’t all catch up together besides this, and online game nights,” Hecht said.

As 10 p.m. rolled around, the fifth and final round ended. Competitors returned to the main Zoom room.

Podbielska began to announce the results. Leslie iz Fineberg had taken sixth place. Material Gworls had taken third. And the winner was team You Oughta Know.

The two members of You Oughta Know lifted their arms in celebration as they danced from waist up on their futon. The virtual space—all 50 attendees—was aglow with delight. The bigger joy, however, was the money they raised.

 "This really means a lot to see everybody show up and support and it’s a lot of fun for us,” Weinstein-Levey said.

“Thank you so much,” Podbielska added.