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GAY LONDON
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APRIL
2015
QXMAGAZINE.COM
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Last month several hundred LGBT+ people gathered in the oh-so posh Dorchester Hotel to raise funds for
Stonewall. The event raised a whopping £450,000 for the organisation, which prides itself as being the
UK’s most foremost gay rights group. We all know its name. We’ve seen its events pop up in the gay press
every now and then. But what does it actually do? And why is it so deserving of our charitable pounds?
Cliff Joannou meets new Chief Executive Officer,
Ruth Hunt…
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Ready for the Hunt
tonewall occupies the lofty heights of a huge
office block towering over Waterloo station.
The panoramic views from across the office
provide a snapshot of London in 2015.
Endless construction cranes stick in and out of
the city skyline like long needles slowly knitting
together the tapestry that is the ‘world’s
greatest city’. Just across the river are the
towers of Westminster’s political heart. It’s an
inspiring view, and utterly relevant given that
Stonewall is tasked with monitoring the rights
of the nation’s lesbian, bisexual, gay and now
trans (more on that later) population.
But what
do they actually do for us?
Stonewall was set up 25 years ago in
response to Section 28, the then Conservative
government’s much maligned legislation that
saw any mention of LGBT lives banished from
the school system. It was a heinous piece
of legislation that affected generations of
non-heterosexual young people. Its effects
are felt to this day in gay bullying, rising HIV
rates and even the sinister drug dependency
issues we see plaguing our community that
frequently finds root cause in the forced
invisibility of young LGBT people. Stonewall
cheered on the repeal of the law in 2003,
but its consequences still ripple through our
community today.
Gay rights in the UK have taken huge
strides since then. But while we may have gay
marriage there’s still an immense amount of
inequality out there in regards to the wider
acceptance of LGBT people in society. Laws
may change, but society’s mindset moves at a
slower pace. As progress moves forward in the
law, often the anti-gay lobbyists dig their heels
in further and make life harder for those less
able to defend themselves, like young LGBT
people and the disabled.
“We host meetings with the community,”
Stonewall’s new CEO Ruth Hunt tells me. “We
create spaces where disabled, BME [Black Ethnic
and Minority], and trans people can meet us so
we can hear about their experiences. It’s a big
part of what we do, otherwise it becomes about
one type of gay person.”
Hunt officially took on the post last August,
six months after Ben Summerskill stepped
down.
She joined Stonewall as Senior Policy
Officer in 2005, previously working at the
Equality Challenge Unit. Hunt grew up in
Wales and Birmingham and at 34 she is
noticeably young to take the Chief Executive
role of a major organisation.
Change was needed. The organisation
had become staid and introspective. It had
dropped the ball on equal marriage, with
Summerskill slow to voice support for the
cause. Added to that, the ongoing shadow
cast across the charity over its exclusion of
Trans campaigning loomed darker as that
community’s needs became increasingly high
profile in the media. A long consultation with
“hundreds of trans people” under Hunt’s
stewardship resulted in Stonewall officially
adding the ‘T’ to ‘LGB’.
Why did it take so long? “My job is
amazing. It’s the best job in the world. But
we don’t always get it right, I know that.
But when we do, it makes a real difference.
I’ve been really impressed with the sheer
willingness of people to engage with that
conversation [on trans issues], how many
different experiences exist, but also how
much we all have in common.”
Hunt draws on her appearance as an
example of how she’s also affected by
prejudice. “If I’m out in the street in my jacket
and tie with another woman in a jacket and
tie, the level of abuse we get is off the scale.
If I’m with a girl who’s quite feminine, then
that’s a bit more acceptable. That’s nowhere
near transphobia by any stretch of the
imagination, but to pretend we don’t have
shared experiences is not helpful.”
So, why did it take so long to get trans
issues on the Stonewall agenda? “When we
started out, [transgender law group] Press For
Change was our sibling organisation. As we
got bigger and influencing in different ways
we were dealing with organizations that could
barely spell lesbian. We would go in and ask
if they had any gay staff, and they would say
‘no’. And then they would come back to us
after they spoke to their staff and say, ‘Oh
yeah, we have got gay staff and they’re really
happy.’ To then say ‘what about trans?’ would
have blown their mind. So, it was easier to say,
‘OK, now speak to Press for Change’.
“When we spoke to the Department of
Health about lesbians needing smear tests,
Press For Change said some trans needed
smear tests. They were very different issues
to take on board in those days, but as people
got better at understanding those differences
Stonewall should have said ‘Shall we think
about those issues?’ But it needed a fresh
start to have those conversations,” she says
referencing the change of captain at the top.
She cites Stonewall’s main concerns now
as “the massive level of hate crime, bullying
in schools, keeping young LGBTs safe when
they come out, gay visibility in sport and
international LGBT rights.”
Stonewall receives no money from the
government. It employs 85 staff that work with
700 employers, schools, nurseries, colleges,
researchers and political policy makers to push
the discussions of LGBT rights forward. Its
events team is tasked with raising the money to
do that, including hosting those fancy dinners
in five star hotels.
Do the posh dinners work against
Stonewall’s image as being grounded in
the community? “The posh dinners are big
fundraisers. If I said to all those people can
you give me £1000, they will say ‘no’. If I said,
do you want to come to a dinner and pay
for it, they’ll say ‘yes’. We have 650 people
coming for dinner, and that is our biggest
fundraiser of the year.”
In these times of austerity in which big
business is being seen as walking all over
the average person, do these events present
Stonewall as too elitist? “When Stonewall
was set up it was accused of being elitist
and not in touch with the community
because it was designed to influence
MPs, peers, parliamentarians. We’re
about influencing. Stonewall is a strategic
influencing organisation. There’s some
really weird legislation that goes on that we
stop. The work we do is of benefit, but you
may never see that.
Hunt elaborates further, “Stonewall
has deliberately set itself up to be not
necessarily of immediate interest to the
scene, but doing everything we can to make
sure nobody is discriminated against in
that scene. The priority has been to get the
police to stop arresting gay men. So gay
men might think that Stonewall has been
elitist and not got anything to do with them,
but that’s been the objective.”
Ruth does acknowledge that as times
have changed, so must Stonewall. “I
think increasingly we want to make those
connections more, we want to go back
into seeing the beautiful diversity of our
communities reflected in our work, and
making that important and valid.”
Working so centrally in the Westminster
bubble brings its own challenges, such as
the snail’s pace with which political change
moves. “The thing that Stonewall’s learned
is [change] takes a lot of time. A lot of it is
just bureaucracy.”
“We’re not in the closet any more but we still
haven’t found a way to share our stories.”
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“The challenge is how do gay people lead the way in
creating a more diverse understanding of what it is to have
relationships? To dress how you want? To act how you want?
Be who you want? That’s our responsibility now.”
The main issue facing legislation change
is the political tennis that happens between
parties, each wanting to take the credit for the
popular changes in law. “We have to get to the
point where people think that they’re getting
the credit. There’s all that game playing
that goes on that feels a bit like a farce. Ben
[Summerskill] was a genius at it, whereas I’m
a bit like ‘But you’re all talking rubbish, why
don’t you just do it’. It’s a pantomime, it’s a
game. But the reality is that every institution
is like that. Everything we do at Stonewall is
about the negotiating, that nudging. Who gets
the credit is really important. I don’t do that
enough, I need to do more of it.”
Ruth gives the complex nature of civil partner
conversions as an example of the long journey
that a campaign or idea takes to legislation.
“Part of the role of Stonewall is to enable and
amplify those voices and strip out ego.”
As disheartening (unsurprising?) as it
sounds, often our politicians are the kind of
people that act on good causes only when
nudged in the right direction, or will act on
it fastest when the glory for doing so shines
on them. As such Hunt recognises the fact
that real, noticeable equality will only really
happen when we all take responsibility for it.
“My absolute dream in this job for the next
five years is to get to the stage where whatever
you want, you can do, and we’ll help you do it.
But you don’t need to belong to us to do it.”
I agree that to create a better world it
can’t just be left to the politicians for it to
manifest. “We want everybody to have a
role to play making their community better,”
Hunt states. “We all live somewhere, we all
have schools next door. The gay movement
for the last ten years has been quite selfish,
it’s been about rights for ‘you’, and ‘your’
right to get married.”
She has a point: how many times have
we breezed passed a Facebook status
condemning Isis for its actions in throwing a
gay man blindfold off a building, to which we
all-too weirdly click ‘like’. It’s all well and good
voicing our disgust online, but what do any of
us actually do to make the world better?
Hunt believes it’s as easy as starting with
the young gay guy next door. “How do we
persuade your mates on the scene to give a
damn about the kid who has dropped out of
school at fifteen, is not too smart and is trying
to find his way in the world of work in his local
Tesco and is scared to tell his dad he’s gay.
How do we help him, because we have a
responsibility to him?”
It’s a bold vision of a better LGBT
community that I agree we should all play a
part in. “I want those gay guys who go for a
drink and say ‘What’s Stonewall got to do with
me’ to go back to their schools and say what
it means to be growing up and be gay. I want
the drag queens to be able to go and talk to
people who are not understanding what it is to
feel like they want to dress up, and how that’s
different to gender identity. I want people to
tell their stories. Because we’re not in the closet
any more but we still haven’t found a way to
share our stories.”
Hunt and I discuss the resurgence of
interest in global LGBT rights in recent years,
and how social media has played a part
in raising awareness of other experiences.
People feel they can make a difference now,
however small. But is it enough to just re-
Tweet outrage at injustice and sign a petition
from the comfort of your sofa and the safety
of your home?
“Social media has made a difference,”
Hunt speaks of this renewed interest in LGBT
rights. “Part of Stonewall’s challenge is how do
we capture that enthusiasm and give people
something to do? It took Britain 25 years to get
rid of Section 28. Russia has just introduced it.”
Hunt is realistic about how much
international change we can accomplish from
the UK as a finger-wagging Western nation.
“The big challenge is that people like Putin
aren’t going to be shamed. So, what we do
is support the activism in those countries. We
worked with a group of Russian human rights
defenders and trained them on how to set up
a campaigning organisation and trained them
how to do business planning, budgets. We
train them here and in Russia.”
Can I write about this, I ask? She says that
I can now, but at the time it was work that was
conducted quietly. “We do this discretely. We
can’t shout ‘Hey, look what we’re doing, we’ve
got twelve people from Russia in our office’.
We do this with lots of different countries.”
Stonewall recruits four people who
specialise in international rights. “[Other
countries] were coming to us and asking
‘how did you get rid of Section 28, how did
you get into schools, how did you campaign
to get hate crime legislation?’ And we
couldn’t answer that under charity law, so we
changed our objectives to enable us to answer
those questions. We felt we had a moral
responsibility to share that learning.”
Hunt makes a distinction between this
kind of work and actively supporting other
embattled LGBT communities. “That’s
different from taking on those campaigns.
We mustn’t have an office in Russia, that
would be completely wrong. But if we’ve got
expertise to share, we should be sharing
it. So, when we talk to people in Russia, we
tell them what we did 25 years ago with
education. We tell them how we talked to
other children’s charities, trade unions and
women’s groups. We taught them to build
coalitions. That’s the right thing to do.”
What have been the biggest challenges
since taking over the role? Hunt pauses and
reflects. “It took me a while to get used to the
level of personal abuse that comes with this job.
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London Pride 2014

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