May you live in interesting times…
I spent yesterday at Pride celebrations in London.
It was a good day. My boyfriend and I cycled into town and watched the parade go past Piccadilly Circus.
London’s parade is generally fairly subdued, with a focus on participation, visibility, and representation (there’s none of the flashy costumes or complex choreography that makes Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade so spectacular).
This year London was true to form — it was a long parade, with lots of community groups walking. There was respectful solidarity with the victims of the attack in Orlando. There was corporate support, the military, firefighters, and some groups where it wasn’t really clear who they were but they seemed to be having a good time walking along. There was even a float to promote the upcoming Absolutely Fabulous movie – Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley had cut a ribbon to kick the parade off but for some reason didn’t ride the float in the march.
The results of this week’s referendum are still top of mind for London’s gay community. You could probably make a connection to the social media algorithms that delivers us news and information that we’re interested in and generally agree with, but what’s clear is that London operates within a little bubble that is a world away from the rest of the UK. It came as a bit of a shock to the London gays that there are people beyond the M25 who don’t hold the same views and opinions as us, and those people also get to vote on things that we are passionate about. It’s this kind of scenario that makes me glad that the UK didn’t have a public vote on marriage equality.
I think the shock of the result of the Brexit referendum was compounded by the heightened levels of Minority Stress Syndrome that London’s gays were already experiencing following the attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando. When something that you accepted as established, safe, secure, is suddenly shown not to be then that leaves you feeling unsettled, uncertain, and vulnerable. “I’m moving to Canada!” a friend dramatically announced on Facebook, he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t alone — a lot of people were sharing their fears, their initial reaction was to reconsider whether the UK was still a country where they would be welcome.
Things are slowly starting to move beyond shock into some more detailed discussion, reflection, and exploration of what next, and what happens now. It’s a cycle that is achingly familiar.
I woke up this morning feeling optimistic and also quite thankful. Thankful that London’s Pride celebrations all went smoothly — there was no attacks, there was no violence, there were no protests, no one was killed. I live in a city where our gay pride march was led by London’s muslim mayor (the recently elected Sadiq Khan). The pride march include representatives from all branches of the military – the Red Arrows even did a special spectacular fly-over. The pride march also included representatives from the police — media reports included two separate proposals where police officers asked their boyfriends to marry them. I’m thankful that I was able to celebrate gay pride with my boyfriend – we walked through the city holding hands, we kissed, we danced. We woke up together in the flat that is our home.
Undoubtedly we live in interesting times (supposedly an ancient Chinese curse). It is a world of uncertainty, a world of change, but we are still here. We are still here.
