‘The Safety Map’…the story so far…
Earlier this year, I was asked by Pink Fringe, the Brighton-based queer theatre company, to draw a map of the city, on a large quilt. The map would then be shown at the Marlborough Theatre, home of Pink Fringe, where invigilator Rosana Cade would encourage visitors identifying as LGBTQ to literally pinpoint areas they felt safe, and areas where they had experienced both negative and positive incidents.
In the run up to this years’ Pride weekend, I was asked to invigilate the map for three days at the Dome. Over the course of these three days, I met a diverse range of people, and had many conversations about what it really means to be ‘safe’ in a city, and this, in turn, impacted my feelings surrounding Pride itself. I will skim (a little) over the one unfortunate conversation I had with an older heterosexual man who didn’t really think homophobia was a problem anymore, because he certainly didn’t have a problem with it…and then directly asked me why ‘gay men have to be so flamboyant and draw attention to themselves?’ *Eye roll* According to him, I’m ‘not flamboyant’. I’m ‘a pretty young thing’. (I’m also, err, not a gay man, nor can I speak for all of them.) I do think that this man thought he was having an interesting ‘debate’ with a young person, and not that he was denying the very real and often deeply upsetting incidents many queer people have experienced at some point. Experiences which are often overlooked and belittled by those we tell about them. It’s also not the first conversation I’ve had like this.
This reminded me why the map is such a potentially important project. I am fortunate to have never been ‘gay-bashed’, but I have experienced stares and whispers and uninvited sexual comments when holding hands with my girlfriend in the street. As a woman who has been in relationships with men, I am also starkly aware of what the privilege of heterosexuality feels like in comparison.
I am also a woman, which means I am also very aware of how it feels to walk about in the world as a woman and receive comments and harassment in the street on an almost weekly basis. What do these experiences feel like? Mostly, they feel heavy. Like I have been carrying them with me for so long I can’t imagine not carrying them. Almost in the same way that we don’t notice how hard our muscular and skeletal systems are working just to keep us upright and walking around. But every now and again I get *really* tired and just need a nice sit down...but I can’t.
Recently, I have been writing down the uninvited things I have had said to me and had shouted at me, and have then begun sewing them onto a dress. I’m not entirely sure what this will ‘do’, but sewing these phrases has become a cathartic process. You see, I can remember every one. Making them into a real thing is helping me stop carrying them with me, somehow, and making them a real thing I can hold up, and say ‘Look- here they are. Please don’t deny these are things people have said to me. I’ll get over it, or I won’t, but here they are.’
Which brings me back to the Safety Map, and the comments of the man I mentioned earlier; all of the interactions I had after this were positive, albeit, often containing upsetting incidents. I had some conversations that lasted up to an hour. I spoke to a number of people simply about the subject of maps. But every comment added became a physical thing, that cannot be denied by those who think these things just aren’t happening to queer people, out there in our cities. And they’re being carried, however light or heavy, until such time that they can be carried on by a big hand-drawn map on a quilted blanket.
