Hello lovely family and welcome to my new home,
This is my first proper video in the new house so my background is a work in progress, we’re
still setting things up, emptying boxes, and so on… my plan is to have a beautiful shelf
behind me where I can put the lovely things you send to my P.O. Box and my collection
of pretty things.
It’s probably going to change quite a lot in the next month as I try different things
so please bear with!
In today’s video we’re going to be discussing the sticky topics: ‘should straight people
go to Pride’? And ‘why do we need Gay Pride anyway’?
Well let’s find out!
I was inspired to make this video after Penguin Books sent me their Pride Book Club collection-
and thus we come to the advert part of the video!
The Pride Book Club from Penguin Platform runs for eight weeks until the end of August
with one book a week- that’s eight books in total!
- don’t worry if you’re watching this later, you can still catch up
The dates of release are in the description of this video.
You can join the club by watching and commenting on the videos on Platform’s YouTube channel
or sharing your thoughts using #PrideBookClub on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
It’s gay.
And rainbow!
And now back to your scheduled programming.
[laugh] Filming that was the best part of my weekend!
One of the books they sent me was On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual
by Merle Miller and since it’s such a little thing I thought, oh I’ll just have a little
look, a tiny peruse as I stir my dinner… then it sucked me in and what do you know
but I’d reached the end and my dinner was burnt!
‘What It Means to Be a Homosexual’ was written in response to a homophobic article
published in Harper’s just two years after the Stonewall Riots that are considered to
be the catalyst for the Gay Rights Movement and the root of the Gay Pride Parades we see
today. This raw, very personal and inculpating essay, that went on to become the book ‘On
Being Different’, made him one of the first prominent Americans to come out publicly.
What were the Stonewall Riots, Jessica, and how did they start Gay Pride?
Well…
There were "Annual Reminder" marches as early as 1965, which were intended to remind the
public that the LGBT community didn't enjoy the same basic civil rights as other people.
But, on June 28th, 1969 the landmark event was the riot that started outside of a popular
gay bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn when police came in once again to harass
the customers but they decided, rather than rushing away, to take a stand this time.
As word spread throughout the city about the demonstration, the customers of the inn were
soon joined by other gay men and women who shouted “gay power” and threw things at
the police. Although Police reinforcements arrived and beat the crowd away, the next
night the crowd returned, even larger than the night before, with numbers reaching over
1,000. Again the police sent a riot-control squad but the protesters demonstrated for
hours.
In the following days, demonstrations continued and spread throughout the city. Exactly one
year later, in commemoration of the riots, came the first Christopher Street Liberation
Day in New York and Los Angeles.
- (The Stonewall Inn was on Christopher Street)
These were the first Gay Pride Parades: a mixture of demonstration and celebration.
In the following years, these celebrations spread across the world and the first pride
parades were born.
The world Miller describes in this book is not mine, it’s not my experience: he grew
up closeted, married a woman, faced open ridicule and fear...
Whilst, despite childish name calling, I grew up never feeling the slightest shred of shame
for who I love and what I am.
- that probably has a lot to do with being disabled… gayness is so not the drama in
my life considering the number of things that try to kill me.
Actually, that’s really not fair on myself. Being gay definitely HAS affected me and left
me heartbroken for many years because in some ways it isolated me.
LGBT events are remarkably inaccessible for many disabled people. Due to the culture of
shame they grew up in (and still contend with) the venues are up dark back ally-ways and
stairs, they’re late at night and based around drinking culture OR lesbians go hiking.
I’m not a hiker.
Not only that but to my mind, the pool of potential dates was:
- women - women who like women
- those who can cope with a disabled partner - those who fancy this
I found her.
But it took me until my mid twenties and I was very much the last of my friends to loose
my virginity.
And the fact I’m complaining about having been a 23 year old virgin rather than being
punched in the face in the street is AMAZING.
I live in Brighton, it’s a town on the south coast of England, about an hour directly south
of London. It’s commonly known as ‘the gay capital of the UK’ and it thrives on
that, believe me. Claudia and I walk down the street holding hands, being cute, we only
have a split second thought of ‘is this safe’ before we kiss rather than knowing
we need to keep apart for our own safety.
We moved into the new house and introduced each other as ‘wife’ to our neighbours.
We shared with them that we’re looking forward to bringing up children in the house, safe
in the knowledge that when they go to school they won’t be only ones in their classroom
with same-sex parents.
We live in a beautiful, rainbow coloured bubble.
But please, do not get the impression that we never have concerns for our safety or feel
‘othered’ or that the rest of the UK is like this.
I met Claudia in 2014, the year that gay marriage became legal here. That’s just five years
ago.
That’s really not a long time.
This year, in 2019, in the UK:
Parents protested LGBT education Lesbians are beaten up on buses
Conversion therapy is still legal The Gender Reform Act has not been adapted
The Children’s Charity NSPCC cut loose its only LGBT campaigner
Equal marriage is illegal in Northern Ireland (yes, that’s part of the UK, if that seems
confusing to you)
And we’re an incredibly progressive country, I’m not even mentioning the 72 countries
in the world where gay relationships are criminalised!
The most beautifully done thing about this book is the foreword by Dan Savage, who started
the It Gets Better project with his husband, Terry Miller. Written in 2012, the foreword
contrasts the lives gay people were living in Merle Miller’s 1971 with the lives we
lead today. Things seem so much better now, don’t they?- especially if, like me, you
live in a pretty rainbow bubble of the LGBT internet.
I want to read you a section from that foreword:
- “We’ve gone from the world Merle Miller described on Being Different to a world were
13 year old boys are coming out to their families. It has gotten better. But you can't know how
far you've come if you don't know where you started. Gay men and lesbians don't bring
up the next generation of gays and lesbians, history isn't passed from parent to child
that's why it's critically important for gay men and lesbians for bisexual and transgender
people to read this book. Straight people who know they have LGBT family members, friends,
and co-workers should also read this book, also should straight people who their LGBT
family members have yet to come out to them. Which I mean to say, all straight people should
read On Being Different. Straight people should read it because the movement for LGBT equality
is also the story of straight liberation. It's a story about straight people being liberated
from their prejudices and their fears of straight people finally seeing through the goddamned
degrading bull... of straight people regaining the lesbian, gay , bisexual and transgender
family members and friends that their prejudices cost them.”
Pride isn’t just a protest, it isn’t just about celebrating our lives, it’s about
our history too. We should be caring for and respecting our forbearers.
So, is it still necessary to carve out a space where we both honour the civil rights campaigners
who struggled before us, celebrate the beautifully open lives some of us can now lead and give
hope to our youth that their path will be smoother?
You tell me.
And if some idiot on twitter says:
“Why do we get a whole month celebrating Gayness but only D-Day to celebrate World
War Two.”
Feel free to say “Well, I learnt about World War Two for two terms in primary school, two
term in secondary school and then TWO WHOLE YEARS for my darn GCSEs so where is my GAY
HISTORY EDUCATION?!”
Prepare for some suicide statistics:
LGBT kids are four times likelier to commit suicide.
And LGBT kids who are being bullied by their own parents are eight times likelier to commit
suicide.
What do those kids need? Hope. What do we all need? Hope.
People need to know that there is a chance life will get better.
There is no Straight Pride Month because straight people are already shown every option for
what their future may become. Thanks almost every movie ever (!) Straight people don’t
need allies- allies for what?! They don’t need to fight for their right to get married
or to have children. No one hates a person BECAUSE THEY ARE STRAIGHT.
Celebrating a minority does not mean you’re trashing the majority. Get over yourself.
Which is where we come to our second question of the day: Should straight people go to Pride?
Some people say no. That Gay Pride is not for straight people- especially those who
aren’t a parent, child, sibling or significant other of those who fall under the LGBT umbrella.
That straight people make it all about themselves having a good time, that they’re co-opting
a message to appear cool but aren’t actually doing anything helpful to further the community.
Britney played at Brighton Pride last year- I made a video about it- and it broke my heart
that there were more people in Britney t-shirts than there were in rainbow ones. The percentage
of ‘straight’ couples holding hands to ‘gay’ couples holding hands… was about
what I would see on the streets of Brighton anyway.
And I’m not even going to get into corporate allyship because… wow, that’s a whole
thing!
BUT.
For all minorities, allyship is VITAL. It’s deathly important.
As a disabled person I’m a member of another marginalised group and I can tell you that
allyship can save lives.
If I am in danger from a person who will not listen to me or my concerns but they will
to someone who is not like me… you’re darn right I want that person to swoop in
and white knight me! Doctors don’t always listen to me but you’re darned right they’ll
pay attention to my able-bodied, hearing, medical-degree holding wife!
There is only so much inspirational ‘drag yourself from the mud’ rallying you can
do before you realise that the only way out is for you to reach down and give them a hand.
However!
Including straight people at Pride means they need to be the minority. Sorry, but they do.
LGBT people don’t go to gay spaces to do ‘gay stuff’: we don’t drink ‘gay juice’
and talk about our gayness. We go to forget that we are gay. We go to feel normal.
Because we ARE normal… until we’re the minority.
If you are gay and you are alive, your very existence- your every breath- is a slap in
the face of homophobic biggots and, you know what? Good. You own that. You take it and
say, well you might hate it but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere so you’d better
get used to it.
And while we’re on the subject: homosexual behaviour has been noted in over 1,500 different
species, you know what hasn’t? Guns. So you tell me what’s unnatural but I know
for a fact that it isn’t gay pacifists. We’re boringly ordinary.
Pride month is our way to refuel. It is a colorful time to celebrate love and identity.
It is a time to feel safe and free. Pride is when we fly our flags high and tell the
world love will always win.
There’s a beautiful quote in the essay itself that I should read to you from the author
and therapist George Weinberg: “I would never consider a person healthy unless he
had overcome his prejudice against homosexuality.”
And that tells you everything, my darling. No matter what people are telling you, no
matter what they say: you are not the problem. You have never been the problem. You are wonderful
and valid and necessary to this world.
Ill will towards you is that person’s problem.
I look forward to the day when I don’t have a split second stop to assess danger before
I kiss my wife goodbye in public. And, you know what, if we keep on the way we’re going,
we’ll get there.