We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ+ Rights by Amelia Abraham

Author:Amelia Abraham [Abraham, Amelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Lgbtq, Social Science, LGBTQ+ Studies, General, political science, Civil Rights, Literary Collections, essays, philosophy, social, history, social history, Lesbian Studies
ISBN: 9781473580954
Google: 8Ab7DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-06-03T23:53:06.716746+00:00

‘If we were equipped with better education as kids and teenagers, then as adults we’d feel more comfortable speaking about our mental health, our sex lives and our sexual health.’

Olly Alexander is the lead singer of Years & Years. He is an English musician, songwriter, LGBTQ+ advocate and actor, starring as Ritchie in Russell T. Davies’s TV series It’s a Sin.

Sex?! Relationships?! PrEP?!

OLLY ALEXANDER

Gay sex was mentioned once at my secondary school; it was during a history lesson about the Second World War. My teacher described the gruelling conditions the soldiers faced, how hard and dangerous life was on the battlefield, before revealing that so far from home and without any women ‘some of the men had sex with each other’. Of course, we were all scandalised. Amid the giggles and screeches of ‘GAY!’ and ‘That’s GROSS!’ I remember sitting in stunned silence, imagining these men reaching for each other in the filthy, perilous trenches. It was both sexy and terrifying. Other than this indelible moment, my school taught us that queer people did not exist, but we knew they did. They lived as rumours and stories about this teacher or that pupil, they hid in crumpled notes and names scratched out on the battered desks.

Homophobia was both explicit and casual. I learned that almost any person, thing or situation that was embarrassing or wrong could (and would) be called ‘gay’. Any boy’s behaviour deemed suspicious enough got them named and shamed in marker pen on the toilet cubicle wall. I dreaded seeing my name among them. I started secondary school in 2001 – two years before Section 28 was repealed across the UK, so it’s not surprising the environment was the way it was. As a teenager, I embarked on my own reluctant queer education of sorts, taking a one-foot-in-one-foot-out approach. I convinced myself the odd furtive exchange in a Habbo Hotel chat room, or reading Giovanni’s Room and watching My Own Private Idaho didn’t necessarily mean I was actually gay, it just made me interesting.

I watched a lot of television too, sneaking in Queer as Folk at a friend’s house and obsessing over John Paul and Craig’s storyline in Hollyoaks. I remember a song from an episode of Family Guy called ‘You Have AIDS’ that got drunkenly repeated at a party. I sang along. When I did start having sex with other men it was with huge anxiety and I feared any sexual encounter would result in me contracting HIV. Looking back, I see that shame was at the heart of this anxiety, but at the time I didn’t understand it. I felt implicated in something terrible and that the inevitable punishment would be deserved. I was afraid.

Just before my nineteenth birthday, a year after I had left my mum’s house and moved to London, a GP prescribed me antidepressants and advised me to start therapy. After years of concealing how I was feeling, too ashamed to admit I was self-harming as well as bingeing and purging food, I started wanting to take better care of my health.

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