ISSUES
: Sexuality and Gender
Chapter 1: Understanding sexuality
9
She says her attitude towards sex
and sexuality is similar among other
people in her peer group. “A lot of
my friends talk about their sexuality
in terms of behaviour these days,
rather than in terms of labels. So
they’ll say, ‘I like boys,’ or ‘I get with
girls too,’ rather than saying, ‘I’m
gay, I’m a lesbian, I’m bisexual.’”
She says that even among those
who exclusively date people of the
same gender, there is a reluctance
to claim an identity as proscriptive
as ‘gay’. “Most young people who
are gay don’t see it as a defining
property of their character, because
they don’t have to, because society
doesn’t constantly remind them of
their difference.” However, she is
careful to point out that this is very
much the case in the small, liberal
part of London where she lives now.
“[Not defining] is something I feel
entitled to as a person who lives
in London, but I didn’t feel entitled
to it in a small town in the home
counties. I’ve never experienced
discrimination about my sexuality,
but I’m aware that it’s because I
‘pass’ [as straight].”
In fact, among the young British
people I spoke to, geography
is vital. Lucy, 25, wonders if the
number of people who say they are
not straight really tallies with the
number of people who are actually
acting upon those desires. “Saying
you’re sexually fluid means you’re
part of a movement. It means you’re
seen as forward-thinking,” she says,
suggesting there is a certain cachet
attached to being seen as open
that does not come with affirmed
heterosexuality. She also believes
it is more of a metropolitan story
than necessarily representative of
Britain as a whole. “If I went back to
my home town in the Midlands, we
wouldn’t sit around talking about
‘sexual fluidity’. You’re a ‘dyke’, or
you’re not. There’s only one type of
lesbian there.”
Many people questioning their
sexuality make the traditional
migration from a small town to a
big city to find like-minded people
– to find their tribe, to belong. It is
a familiar and understandable story
that you hear across generations.
But now, within these cities, the pubs
and bars that were once a meeting
point for non-straight people are
beginning to disappear, swallowed
up by the brutal economics of an
obscene property market, because
they are relatively niche spaces
that cannot bring in the footfall of,
say, a shiny, straight All Bar One.
The VICE channel Broadly recently
released a film called
The Last
Lesbian Bars
, which asked why
women-only spaces across the
US were closing. As is the case in
London, financial viability was part
of it, as was the growth of dating
apps, but it struck me from the film
and from my own experience that
many ‘lesbian’ nights have become
mixed, ‘queer’ events, where all
genders are welcome. At their best,
they can feel like a joyful coming
together of misfits, of all different
types and persuasions.
In fact, the word queer, once
the defiant reclamation of a
homophobic slur, has become a
ubiquitous term. While the young
people I spoke to were largely
resistant to the word ‘bisexual’,
even if they are sleeping with both
men and women, they used ‘queer’
easily and freely. “Among our
callers and our volunteers, more
and more people are identifying as
‘queer’, particularly among younger
generations,” says Natasha Walker,
a trustee of the LGBT+ Helpline,
which recently changed its name
from the London Lesbian & Gay
Switchboard in order to be more
inclusive. “In the past, people were
fighting for the right to be able to
define themselves as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, trans* etc. Although this
is very much still the case, there
is also a definite shift towards an
acceptance of people as they are –
label or no label.”
There is also some appeal in the
radical roots of ‘queer’, particularly
as same-sex desire becomes
more usual: while mainstream
assimilation makes discrimination
less likely, it does run the risk of
removing the ‘outsider’ identity of
gay life, which many are keen to
preserve.
“Essentially, the gays are getting
married and it’s all become
normalised,” says John, 32, from
Plymouth. “‘Queer’ is still a political
term. The older I get, the more I
use it, because I feel I understand
it more than when I was 22, but it’s
also a cultural shift, absolutely.”
While the word ‘bisexual’ is, as
John puts it, “a bit woolly”, ‘queer’
encompasses a broad spectrum of
desires, and is inclusive of those
people who might reject the gender
binary, too.
Moving beyond the need to identify
as one thing or the other feels
utopian in many respects, and
it acknowledges that for many
people, sexuality is not an either/
or decision. But it also relies on
an idealised vision of an open-
minded and kind society, which
is true for the privileged world of,
say, celebrities, but is not always
the case elsewhere. Casual
homophobia has not been erased
by semantic optimism. John says a
cab recently cancelled his trip after
pulling up to the kerb and seeing
him kissing his boyfriend. “We ran
after him, but he just carried on.”
Last month, one of John’s friends
was spat at from a car window as
he stood outside a gay pub. These
are small, but constant reminders
that
abuse,
discrimination
and prejudice are present and
pernicious, in small towns and in
big cities. So if more young people
reject heteronormativity, then that
can only be a good thing, whether
they act upon it, or not. But there
is power in claiming an identity, and
it is worth remembering, too, that
complacency may be as dangerous
as labels.
18 August 2015
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