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MARCH
QXMAGAZINE.COM
Evan Davis
Let the games begin…
As election fever
gets ready to
grip the nation,
Damien Killeen
reports on Pink
News’ live-
streamed political
debate…
ast week, ‘Pink
News’ sat down
for a live streamed
debate with
Labour’s Shadow
Home Secretary
Yvette Cooper,
Tory peer and
Leader of the
House of Lords
Baroness Stowell, the leader of the Green
Party Natalie Bennett, Lib Dem Chief Whip
Don Foster, and UKIP Culture spokesman
Peter Whittle. Having made the effort to
look enough like a metropolitan homosexual
and also wearing a bright enough shirt to
distract security from my crippling poorness I
managed to get into the venue.
A debate discussing such important
topics can mean only one thing of course, it’s
election time again and the main parties are
all calling for our LGBTQI+ voting asses. This
year there are more names to learn - a hung
parliament (*snigger*) reminds everyone in
the media that those smaller parties outside
could serve some purpose - but in general the
routine remains the same.
The debate was hosted by Evan Davis,
who did his utmost to prod and trip the
interviewees into some meaningful responses
although the whole thing ended up being
terribly polite. The problem with being
bipartisan is you can’t really attack one
without, for the sake of fairness, attacking
all. Very few are up to the task and neither,
L
apparently, was Evan who kept the audience
tittering congenially but spilled no blood.
It was, however, a chance to see some
of Britain’s political heavyweights (and Peter
Whittle) square off. I’m going to kick things
off with everyone’s favourite Tory, Baroness
Stowell. She happily consented to Evan Davis
calling her Tina so I will, too, not because she
gave me permission but because I feel like
she’s not the target audience of QX Magazine
and as such will never read this. Also Tina is
an amazing name. (And Barbra. Barbra is
great as well. Imagine you had two male cats
called Tina and Barbra. Fantastic.) Anyway
our Tina is best known in the gay community
for steering the bill through the House of
Lords for the Conservatives that legalised
same sex marriage. In other words her track
record is pretty top notch.
So, how did she fair with the issues? Well,
for the most part she towed the Tory line of
a one issue election very consistently - if in
doubt bring things back to recent economic
recovery. She managed to deflect what could
have been the most uncomfortable question
of her evening - whether queer voters should
forget past injustices that Tories perpetrated
against them - by openly apologising for
Section 28 and again focusing on progress
and current achievements.
Tina supports the existing structure of
relationship & sex education (RSE) in schools
as sufficient, outright rejecting the idea
that a specific RSE education class that also
addressed gender and sexuality should be
“For too long minorities have recognised
‘for the greater good’ is at their expense.”
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qxmagazine.com
Peter Whittle
Don Foster
Yvette Cooper
Baroness Tina Stowell
Natalie Green
“This is one of the worst human rights abusing regimes and our approach to
Saudi Arabia on all kinds of issues, including arms sales, is a disgrace.”
made a legal obligation for any schools,
let alone primary ones. She also supports
the idea that David Cameron should be the
UK’s LGBT envoy to the world. I think Tina
might have been drunk.
Now, time to look at the real star of the
night, the vein in Yvette Cooper’s neck. The only
person to express real passion and anger during
the evening, Yvette won this debate by virtue
of seeming to actually care about the politics
at hand, strange as that sounds. Yvette really
wants RSE education to be compulsory from
primary to secondary school. Like really. You get
the impression that Cooper has been running
at a wall in Parliament with this for a while now
and she isn’t taking it sitting down. Her war-cry
that “the kids are right, the parents are right
– everybody is right who is campaigning for
this – we need compulsory sex and relationships
education in all of our schools” gets perhaps the
biggest applause of the night.
The main question that tripped Cooper
up involved the possible introduction of
genderless passports. Admittedly no one
gave a particularly satisfactory answer but
given that she is currently Shadow Home
Secretary you would expect a more committed
answer. Waffling about the difficulties and
complications in changing laws does not
a fulfilling answer make. Yet, politics is still
a very heterosexual world so is it logical to
expect a politician to grasp complex notions of
alternative identity in a debate context?
UKIP spokesman Peter Whittle managed
to be exactly what you might expect from a
gay man who left the Tories because they
were too liberal. Peter tried initially to link
every question to immigration (why build new
housing when you can camp out on the cliffs
of Dover with a riffle) but when it became
apparent that this wasn’t a popular tactic
he sank back and avoided taking a clear
stance on anything else. He did provide the
line to reassure the audience “Let’s get rid
of the elephant in the room. You know UKIP
opposed gay marriage. That I would say is
changed. In the sense that, we accept the
law.” What a gem.
Speaker Don Foster was keen to push
the Lib Dems as guardians of power. Their
track record in reigning in the Tories’ more
conservative leanings has merit, but by
discussing the party’s ‘for greater good’ track
record of betraying Lib Dem values for future
rewards isn’t the best; for too long minorities
have recognised ‘for the greater good’ is at
their expense. Frankly, the intrigue of political
alliances is far more interesting on HBO and
as Don is no Tyrion Lannister (and as no one
I could see was having sex behind him while
he talked) it is hard to imagine many warmed
to his argument.
Natalie Bennett highlighted one of the
strongest points of the night - although she
stopped short of Yvette’s rallying passion.
While the other parties have to rely on
rhetoric, the Greens have the benefit of
the high ground in that they already widely
support minority issues – ‘We have, we
are, I am’ is a much stronger position on
queer issues than ‘We hope, we try, I may’.
Natalie’s best received moment came when
she decried the UK’s relationship with Saudi
Arabia. Refusing to mince her words she
declared “This is one of the worst human
rights abusing regimes and our approach to
Saudi Arabia on all kinds of issues, including
arms sales, is a disgrace.”
The only question Natalie couldn’t give a
satisfactory answer to was the question none
of the panel managed to answer - regarding
updating surrogacy regulations to be more
in line with U.S. laws. It was however not so
surprising. Asking for such detailed answers
off the cuff to such specific questions seems
foolhardy. Other questions varied between
being too complex to be satisfying or too
broad to be worthwhile. Politics is still a very
heterosexual world, so is it logical to expect
a politician to grasp complex notions of
alternative identity in a debate context? If this
is a queer debate why is one of the biggest
topics housing? It’s an election. That topic
is being broken down from every angle by
the mainstream media. Perhaps this small
amount of time put aside for a LQBTQI+
debate could tackle relevant issues that won’t
be discussed in the ‘Evening Standard’ every
day for the next month.
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qxmagazine.com
By
Nyasha
Paragon Langley
Continuing our series looking
at gay shame & sexuality
I
t’s 2015 and we live in a
world that tolerates us but is
a long way from accepting
us. I came out at 19 and I presumed that
I had won the battle. I had taken off the
dusty fur coat and left it on a hanger in the
wardrobe and stepped in to the sun. It turns
out it was one of those S.A.D lights and
not the sun, and there starts my agonising
journey through gaydom.
I’m a young black male so (and this
shouldn’t roll so easily off my tongue, but
it does) I’m used to being labelled, and
having to prove that I’m more than just
the tone of my skin or the hoodie I may
choose to wear. However, nothing prepared
me for the backlash from my own ethnic
community to me being openly gay.
I used to have relaxed hair (chemically
straightened) and this was enough to set the
hateful stares and verbal abuse from black
men and women in my day-to-day life. I’m
talking people that start on you on the top
deck of a bus and follow you down to carry
on while you wait to get off. And I learned
to adapt. You put on a hat while you travel
on the bus in Croydon. You don’t wear that
patterned shirt and skinny jeans combo you
like. You learn to hide in plain sight ‘til you
get to ‘the scene’.
Then you enter that world, that scene
I had assumed would accept me because
I was going through the same plight as
they were. And in the early days I did feel
accepted. Places like Heaven and Popstarz
catered to all kinds of people: black, white,
Asian, dancers, emo kids, rude boys, drag
queens. I remember my first night in Heaven,
ten plus years ago, and it was a wonderfully
diverse group of people. Heaven as it was
back then, is what gave me the confidence
to come out. It felt as if that was where I
belonged. I could just be me.
What I find most unsettling is that I
knew who I was as a person and where I
stood, before I came out, but something
happened between my first night there and
my final attempt at the Vauxhall diet. You
see I don’t fall into any of the stereotypes,
I’m not overly effeminate and I’m not overly
masculine; I’m not a ‘rude boy’ and I’m not
posh… I am pretty much non-descript, just
your average person.
But on the scene we attempt to put
each other into boxes whether that is the
heteronormative labels like ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ or labels like ‘twinks’ or ‘twunks’.
Do black twinks/twunks even exist? Is that
a thing? So, you try and fit into one of
these boxes but you can’t because you’re a
hexagon, so like a child learning you smash
yourself into that shape. The problem
is you’ve now damaged your wonderful
hexagon shape. Only to find the poison of
that box or better yet, that mask you tried to
put on is now seeping through the cracks.
Had my scene persona out-grown the
actual person underneath? Had the mask
that had been created to protect me turned
around and started to choke me slowly
without my knowledge? All I know is I
couldn’t breathe and that black hole I was
in was starting to close and I wanted out.
Slowly, I watched people become
the same carbon copy person, the same
Topman wearing, Starbucks drinking
hologram, and if you didn’t fit that bill then,
sorry, we don’t want you here. I had been
made to feel that I was an outcast that I
didn’t belong, that I was sub par.
I have been trying to navigate my way
through the London scene for just over ten
years, and I have come to the conclusion
that I’m never going to fit in, and that is
okay. I guess what I am trying to say is don’t
worry if you don’t fit in, just be you and
everyone else will eventually catch up.
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qxmagazine.com

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