How queer rural experiences can allow us to see what rural life is like for many communities — An American friend recently questioned whether there was anywhere that could reasonably be described as rural in the UK. The remark, tongue-in-cheek, had been made in response to a conversation about Suffolk (where I had grown up) and my plans to make a film there and in other parts of…

Competitiveness, perfectionism and the contradictions of the gay community — While Matthew Todd was generally correct in Straightjacket in highlighting that a lot of gay men’s issues with control and perfectionism arise from the trauma and shame of growing up gay in a straight world, his book did not feel like a full answer. Yes, we may seek to overachieve…

Queer rural histories — is it time to reconsider how straight the countryside seems? — For a long time I felt the best way to live a gay life was to move to the city because that is where I saw other gay people, gay venues, and gay culture. In the books I read, and the films I watched, there was a recurring narrative of…

Box Rooms and Air Raid Shelters — queer rural desire Slung back into the box room on a single bed, because that was the only spare place in my dad’s house, I found myself having strange dreams. I had moved away from Suffolk nearly twenty years earlier, from a working-class…

You may be familiar with God’s Own Country, but here are some other great examples of queer rural artistic work to experience. ONE: PROSPECT COTTAGE AND DEREK JARMAN He was one of the most influential British filmmakers of the 20th century with numerous features and shorts including Sebastiane (1976) and…

What is it like when you are trying to come out in a rural area? — As queer theorist and poet Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains in Epistemology of the Closet: ‘there are remarkably few of even the most openly gay people who are not deliberately in the closet with someone personally or economically or institutionally important to them.’[i] She goes on to explain how ‘heterosexist presumption’…

Rural Identity and the Decline of Queer Rural Space — It was the summer after I had finished school, early evening on a Friday, and I was on the train to Norwich from Stowmarket because I had heard there was a gay pub on the edge of the city called The Castle. From my research on Ask Jeeves (this was…

Why Lockdown Life is not the same for all of us — and why now is the time for us to talk about class and values As a child, I grew up in a poor working-class family in rural Suffolk. My father worked in a meat factory until he became…