We met at Victoria Train Station and walked the short distance to the 1853 Restaurant – a training restaurant, part of the Manchester College.
We had submitted our pre-orders from a selection of high-quality food. The menu is always changing and innovating to reflect local, seasonable produce and the skills and talents of the chefs who are working and training in the state-of-the-art kitchen.
Not only did we dine in a friendly and relaxed environment, but we were given special attention by the team. The restaurant is run by students in Hospitality and Catering.
The 1853 Restaurant isopen for lunch on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 12.00 noon to 2.00pm and Thursday evenings for dinner (arrive for 6.00pm to dine at 6.15pm).
Each year on 1 October, people across the world mark the International Day of Older Persons (IDOP) to raise awareness of opportunities and challenges faced by ageing populations, and to mobilise the wider community to address difficulties faced by older people.
LGBT+ refugees’ fear of persecution ‘insufficient’ for UK asylum
If you’re at risk of persecution in your home country because of your sexuality, or you’re a woman who had fled due to the risk of gender-based violence – people across the UK agree: you deserve our protection.
But our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman has made a speech, proposing to narrow the definition of a refugee so that women and LGBTQI+ people who fear persecution, would find it much harder to qualify for asylum.
This speech is just the latest in a series of laws, policies and gimmicks from this government that reject international human rights created for everyone’s protection after the Holocaust.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has hit back at UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s highly controversial comments on the international asylum system. Currently, it is illegal to be LGBT+ in 64 UN member states.
Suella Braverman makes some dangerous anti-LGBT+ claims in a speech about international migration laws. (Credit: House of Commons)
Home Secretary Suella Braverman believes that fearing discrimination for being gay or a woman is not enough to qualify for asylum under international refugee laws.
Braverman gave a talk on Tuesday, 26 September at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, about her hopes to crack down on asylum seekers and migration at large.
In her speech Braverman argued in favour of an overhaul of the supposedly outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention, signed by 146 countries, insisting that we “now live in a completely different time”.
Braverman warned of a recent influx in the number of people who may qualify for asylum thanks to shifts away from the term “well-founded fear” in favour of terms like “credible” or “plausible fear”.
Braverman doesn’t believe fearing persecution for being gay is enough of a reason to seek asylum in the UK. (Getty)
This, it would seem, is directed at those who seek asylum due to fears of discrimination and other dangers because of their sexuality or gender.
“Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman,” her speech reads.
“Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary. But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if, in effect, simply being gay or a woman and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection”.
Responding to the claims in Braverman’s speech, a spokesperson from the Rainbow Migration charity said: “We are appalled to hear that the home secretary is questioning the legitimacy of LGBTQI+ people claiming asylum in the UK.
The government’s own statistics suggest that only 2 per cent of all asylum claims in 2022 included sexual orientation as a reason for needing protection.
It is already the case that LGBTQI+ people must face a well-founded fear of persecution to qualify for refugee protection in the UK”.
Braverman warns of a recent influx in the number of people who may qualify for asylum. (Getty)
Braverman’s hateful speech comes as data from the Home Office reveals an 89 per cent increase in the number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who applied for asylum in the UK based on sexual orientation from 2021 to 2022.
Claims which included sexual orientation as part of the basis for seeking asylum made up just two per cent of the total number of asylum seekers in 2022. And, of those applications for asylum based on sexual orientation, 739 people were granted asylum or other forms of leave for this reason – a nine per cent rise from 2021.
These applications for asylum based on sexual orientation come from people in countries with harsh, often life-threatening anti-LGBT+ laws like Uganda or Pakistan.
While Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill imposes the death penalty for LGBT+ people found guilty in so-called “aggravated” cases, while in Pakistan, homosexuality is illegal and punishable by life imprisonment.
Despite those very real threats to people desperately seeking asylum in the UK, it wouldn’t be unlike Braverman to dismiss the wellbeing of LGBT+ people while trying to enforce her draconian policies.
Just earlier this month, Braverman called out police officials in the UK for working at LGBT+ Pride events over the summer.
The home secretary told the Commons that police chiefs and elected officials were not being paid to “dance with drag queens”.
“They are there to keep people safe. We do not pay them to wave flags at parades, to dance with drag queens or to campaign,” she said.
“That’s why I finally ended all association with Stonewall at the Home Office and why I expect all PCCs (police and crime commissioners) and chief constables to focus on cutting crime and rebuilding confidence, not playing politics.”
Braverman has ordered a review into the “political activism of police” as a result of their perceived allegiance with the LGBT+ community.
That’s despite an independent review into the Met Police earlier this year that found it to be institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. In a formal apology issued in June, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police apologised to the LGBT+ community for their past failings and promised to restore LGBT+ community liaison officers across the city.
But this might be a step too far in Braverman’s books.
Rainbow Lottery Super Draw!
As a thank you for continuing to support Out In The City we’re giving you the chance to win a £1500 IKEA gift card in The Rainbow Lottery’s Super Draw!
Give your home an autumn makeover with this fantastic prize.
The special prize draw will take place onSaturday 30 September. If you already have tickets, you don’t need to do anything extra, but you can always buy extra tickets.
We’ve had a busy weekend attending the first Withington Pride and the Bury Pride Rainbow Train.
First of all, thanks need to go out to Jas, Esme and Kit for organising Withington Pride which included events at various venues throughout Withington – the Baths, Old Moat Park, Public Hall and the Library. These included not only a parade, street party, sports day and poetry event, but also many more.
We thoroughly enjoyed it. After a brilliant Saturday, we were excited to join the Bury Pride Rainbow Train on Sunday!
We experienced a trip on East Lancashire Railway’s Heritage Steam Engine whilst enjoying dazzling Pride performances at Bolton Street Station, Rawtenstall and then back at Bolton Street and the Trackside Pub in Bury.
We hopped on board the extraordinary Rainbow Express at the East Lancashire Railway in Bury. This incredible steam train hosted a dazzling event celebrating the LGBT+ community, filled with vibrant performances, exciting shows and inclusive events.
The performers included the Bury Fire Choir, Laura and the Lesbians, House of Bridget Queens and headline act Sharleen as Cher.
Laura and the Lesbians
It was a journey that embraced love, acceptance and equality. More photos can be seen here.
New study throws light on the sex lives of gay men over 70
A new study has shown that older gay men tend to enjoy sex with more partners than their straight peers.
The study was prompted by last year’s mpox outbreak (formerly known as monkeypox). Researchers in the UK wanted to find out how our sex lives change so that they could better model how a virus, such as mpox, might spread.
The most common route of transmission for last year’s outbreak in the UK and US was gay sexual encounters.
Lead researcher Dr Julii Brainard, from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Before this study, many models about sexually transmitted diseases assumed that everyone over a certain age — say 40 or 65 — stopped being sexually active, or at least stopped having multiple partners.
Or there might be an assumption that young people have the most sex. But the answer is more nuanced, and it partly depends on people’s sexuality.”
They surveyed 5,164 people including 1,036 men who have sex with men (MSM) who were recruited via social media.
People were asked how many sexual partners they had in the most recent three weeks as well as three months. They were also asked for their gender and sexual identity.
Seventy-seven MSM over 70 answered the survey. 17% reported having more than one recent sexual partner in the most recent three weeks. 25% of the MSM over 70 had multiple partners or “concurrent partners.”
Beth Chayim Chadashim is the first synagogue for LGBT+ Jews
Harriet Perl lived well into her 90s and died in 2013.
A life-long lesbian, Harriet had been a Los Angeles public high school teacher back in the day when that meant staying closeted or risking losing your job.
It affected every aspect of her life, from clothes to housing to social life – from bedroom arrangements (separate bedrooms or at least twin beds) to where and with whom to appear in public.
Although born Jewish, Harriet’s parents were secular and political. Harriet followed their lead until one Friday evening in the early 1970s when she timidly ventured into a Sabbath service in a new “gay shul” she had heard about.
A few steps into the door, she saw two of her students. She thought, Oh no. What are they doing here? I’ll be outed.
They, as it turned out, thought something similar until they all realised WHY they were really there — not to “out” others, but to be seen for who they are, and to be with others like them.
Harriet became a leader in that synagogue for decades, helping to create a community where lesbians and gay men could explore Judaism in a safe space (including creating liturgy in English with gender neutral language), work for changes in civil rights, and become family to one another.
High Holy Days
It’s the time of High Holy Days on the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
The month preceding is traditionally a time of self-reflection. Have we been living our lives as our true selves?
We seek to repair and make amends for mistakes we have made. We examine and act individually.
Then, on the High Holy Days, we come together in community to pray, to be inspired by beautiful music, and thoughtful teachings, and to plan together how the next year might unfold.
We consider two goals that Judaism requests from us: What changes will we make individually and as a community to become more our true selves and to make our world a better place?
Beth Chayim Chadashim
Lisa Edwards was the Rabbi Emerita (retired rabbi) of that congregation that Harriet Perl stepped into all those years ago. Beth Chayim Chadashim (House of New Life), a synagogue in Los Angeles, was founded over 50 years ago, in 1972, to be a Jewish community for lesbian and gay Jews.
From the earliest days, they counted among their members and visitors lesbian, gay, bi and trans Jews, their families and friends.
While at first they set out primarily to be a safe haven for those who had been turned out or away from mainstream synagogues, Beth Chayim Chadashim soon grew into an activist congregation seeking to change minds and hearts both in the larger Jewish community where homophobia still prevailed, and in the gay and lesbian community where many – ostracised by religious communities and families – had turned away from religion altogether.
Founded in 1972
Mentored and encouraged by the Reverend Troy Perry, gay founder of Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the small group of Beth Chayim Chadashim founders reached out to the Reform Movement of Judaism.
There, thanks to some staunch supporters within it, and NOT without controversy, in 1974, the congregational arm of Reform Judaism (UAHC) approved Beth Chayim Chadashim on the first round of voting, making the Reform Movement the first mainstream religious organisation to include a gay and lesbian congregation in its membership.
Fighting discrimination, HIV
Members of Beth Chayim Chadashim march in support of people living with HIV/AIDS during Los Angeles Pride Parade in West Hollywood in the mid 1980s.
Political activism went hand in hand with creating a Jewish congregation attentive to the Jewish calendar of holy days and life cycle events. Born Jews became more Jewish, people new to Judaism found a welcoming home. Together, they nurtured a community that battled homophobia in the outside world.
A few years later, when HIV/AIDS began its devastation, Beth Chayim Chadashim was no stranger to illness and loss. A significant number of members began living with, and then dying from, HIV/AIDS.
By then, Beth Chayim Chadashim, had hired its first ordained rabbi, Janet Marder, who tenderly and fiercely helped the congregation navigate the demands and stresses, and reached out to the larger Jewish communities for acknowledgement and help with the creation of NECHAMA, A Jewish Response to AIDS.
Within the congregation, people organised to take care of one another through illness and death. They buried peers and friends and lovers in those years, and worked to change attitudes and access to care.
With help from Reform Movement leadership, Rabbi Marder and members of Beth Chayim Chadashim organised carefully structured sessions to talk face to face in people’s living rooms with members of mainstream synagogues, inviting them to get to know one another and ask questions.
Slowly, mainstream synagogue doors opened in welcome to LGBT+ visitors and members. Those mainstream synagogues also acknowledged the parents and children among them who had LGBT+ family members.
Supporting marriage equality
As the battle against AIDS abated with the development of life preserving drugs, new challenges were taken up. Beth Chayim Chadashim, and many other synagogues and churches and religious LGBT+ organisations, took on the goal of marriage equality. Their mourning became celebration as long-time couples (and new ones) chose a path that Harriet Perl never dreamed of. Celebrations continued as more children came into the congregational family.
Welcoming gay men and lesbians
Jillian Cameron, right is the rabbi at Beth Chayim Chadashim. Maggie Boyles, the synagogue’s administrator, left, and president Jessica Donath, join Cameron during a Pride Month event in June. Photo: Jessica Donath
Though the path has had more than a few stumbling blocks in the 51 years of Beth Chayim Chadashim’s existence, over the decades Jewish understanding and embrace of LGBT+ people has grown significantly.
Today, there are many queer students on the path to ordination, and queer rabbis and cantors serve congregations and teach in seminaries and other Jewish organisations all over the world. Queer voices contribute significantly to the liturgy, ritual and theology of mainstream liberal Judaism.
At Beth Chayim Chadashim these days, they continue to be an affirming, nurturing, and brave Jewish space for LGBT+ people, their friends, and families. Harriet Perl would have been proud.
After lunching at The Waterhouse pub, we walked down to the Bridgewater Hall, a concert venue in Manchester city centre. There we met Glynn our guide, who showed us round and told us all about the history of the building.
Proposals to replace the concert venue in the Free Trade Hall were made after it was damaged in the Second World Warbut the hall was repaired and renovated in the 1950s. Despite being a popular venue, the Free Trade Hall, built in the 1850s, had poor acoustics and outdated audience facilities.
In the 1990s, land adjacent to the G-Mex exhibition centre (now Manchester Central Convention Complex) was identified as the site for a new hall.
It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s,and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra and serves as the main concert venue for the BBC Philharmonic.
The Bridgewater Hall held its first concert on 11 September 1996 and was one of a number of structures built in the 1990s that symbolised the transition to a new and modern Manchester following de-industrialisation and the 1996 bombing.
The Bridgewater Hall can seat 2,341 people over four tiers in the auditorium: the stalls, choir circle, circle, and gallery (one more than the Free Trade Hall).
We descended the stairs to the area beneath the main auditorium. The building sits on a bed of 280 steel springs between concrete piers – earthquake-proof isolation bearings that insulate it from noise and vibration from the adjacent road and Metrolink tram line. Bridgewater Hall is the first concert hall built with this technology.
Inside the hall, the focal point is a £1.2 million pipe organ which dominates the auditorium, covering the rear wall with wood and burnished metal. At the time of construction, the organ was the largest instrument to be installed in the UK for a century.
Glynn was very knowledgeable and we had a fantastic experience.
A new start after 60: I spent 40 years hiding that I was gay. Then my husband’s dementia wiped away my fear
As Tom got ill, my fear of doing anything publicly evaporated’ … Mike Parish. Photograph: Sam Frost / The Guardian
Mike Parish was 19 and on the escalator at Victoria station in London when a tiny sticker caught his eye. As he read the words “Do you think you’re gay?”, the escalator whisked him downwards. He had to go back up and then down again to copy the phone number, which was for an organisation called Icebreakers. This act proved a turning point for Parish, who had increasingly felt at odds with how he fitted into the world.
It took weeks to brave dialling the number. “I think I’m gay, but I don’t want to wear a dress and carry a handbag,” he told the man at the end of the line; it was 1974 and now, aged 68, Parish looks back and is saddened by his own lack of knowledge. The man laughed and invited him to a tea party the following Sunday. Sitting on the sofa there, he reached for his cup of tea at the same time as a young man on the other end of the couch. They smiled at each other. “I fell for Tom in that moment,” Parish says.
He and Tom were together for more than 40 years, until Tom died of dementia last year. Now, Parish has launched a community interest company to support LGBTQ+ people with dementia and their carers.
“The trouble is, for a lot of people who, like me, are approaching 70 or older, the negative experiences they had when they were younger are still there. It’s like going through some sort of crisis – you never forget it,” Parish says.
For years, he hid his sexuality at work; he spent four decades in the fire brigade, mostly as an emergency planning officer. One year, terrified that he had slipped up, he opened all the Christmas cards he had written to check that he hadn’t added Tom’s name to them.
Although they had a civil partnership in 2006, in public the pair were guarded and avoided holding hands. “Too frightened,” Parish says. “People got attacked in the street because they were gay. This happened so much in our early lives … The trouble is when someone says: ‘Look, a couple of queers’, you don’t know if the next thing is going to be a brick or a punch.”
But Tom’s dementia, and Parish’s duty of care, led them into new territory. A few years ago, they would go for coffee in Bath, Somerset. “And I would hold his hand,” Parish says. “He would fall over if I didn’t.” Sometimes passersby said unpleasant things, but Parish called them out, once challenging a builder: “Yes, we are together. He’s my husband.”
Parish says: “I spent a lifetime frightened, but as Tom got ill, my fear of doing anything publicly evaporated. I have no fear any more. It’s a good place to be.”
As an increasing number of social workers and care workers visited their home, Parish learned to advocate, challenge and question. The case of Ted Brown, whose partner experienced homophobic abuse in a care home, weighed on him. Online research suggested the problem was widespread. So, at 59, Parish retired to care for Tom at home. But sometimes people would see him feeding Tom and remark: “It’s wonderful how you look after your father.”
“I became a carer’s voice,” Parish says. “I wanted to say: ‘Look, when you go out as a social services officer and there are two men, or two women, don’t assume.” He began to give talks to local organisations. When he contacted Deep, the UK network of dementia voices, and asked if there were any LGBTQ+ dementia groups, he was told: “Not really. Why don’t you start one?”
Last year, with a few like-minded people he has met along the way, Parish co-founded the LGBTQ+ Dementia Advisory Group, to “improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people who are affected by dementia”.
Parish knows that he may need help himself one day. But he is mostly spurred on by the memory of Tom. “I gained some kind of confidence from somewhere, some kind of drive,” he muses. “And the inspiration for that came from Tom.” He understands the meaning, he says, of the words: “I’ll do anything for the person I love.
“When you’ve got that level of freedom from the things that would normally hold you back, nothing can get in your way.”
Withington Pride
Withington Pride – 23 September 2023 – Radical – Joyful – Unity
A day and night of events across Withington celebrating the local LGBTQ+ community’s vibrancy, creativity, & value, and building community networks of care, allyship and solidarity through music, art and dance! There’ll be something for everyone from free kids crafts to a march and street party, keep your eyes peeled for more info!
2023 will be the 25th year that we have celebrated bisexual life on 23 September.
Queer Lit is Manchester’s independent LGBT+ bookshop. They are moving to bigger premises.
If you are in Manchester, come to 39 Tib Street, Manchester M4 1LX and take a few books off the shelves and save their poor backs having to move them all.
Get ready for a space like no other – a huge bookshop, coffee house, and bar rolled into one! The new address is the Social Refuge, Hudson Building, 29-37 Great Ancoats Street, Manchester M4 5AE
Mark your calendars! There is a soft open on 3 October, and they are planning an epic weekend launch celebration.
In “The Aunties,” Farmers Donna Dear and Paulette Greene Continue Harriet Tubman’s Legacy
The Aunties – Photo: Diante Jenkins
At a party celebrating the first day of 1974, Donna Dear, an Ohio-born military woman, met the educator Paulette Greene at her home in New York City. The connection was cosmic. Though both were in separate relationships at the time, they would soon find their way to each other, beginning a partnership that would take them overseas and across decades.
After years in Asia, where Donna was stationed, the couple returned stateside, settling on Mt Pleasant Acres Farms in Maryland, near where Paulette’s great-grandparents once lived. At the time, neither Donna nor Paulette, known to most simply as “the aunties”, knew their land held a potent history.
Harriet Tubman
A surge of research about twenty years ago revealed that the aunties’ farm sat on land where legendary abolitionist Harriet Tubman took members of her family out of enslavement. What’s more, a beautiful poplar tulip on the property was, in fact, The Witness Tree, a historic site where those escaping slavery would pray before their journey north.
Nearly fifty years since that brisk January afternoon, the couple are the subject of a forthcoming short film co-directed by their nieces, urban farmer, activist, and artist Jeannine Kayembe-Oro and artist and scholar Charlyn Griffith-Oro. Titled “The Aunties: From the North Star to the Poplar,” the short documentary traces the couple’s origin story, their relationship to Tubman’s legacy, and the ongoing work they do on the farm promoting climate justice in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.
“As Black queer and trans people, the archive of our stories is often so small. When we’re talking about environmental justice, it’s even smaller,” said Kayembe-Oro of the project, which was produced by the Centre for Cultural Power with an all-Black, queer, and femme crew. “It was a great moment to bring the aunties’ story to the Centre’s platform so that more LGBTQ+ folks can find in the aunties an answer to the question, what can my future look like.”
Brian Epstein
The Man Who Loved John Lennon
Music entrepreneur Brian Epstein was born on 19 September 1934 in Liverpool. Though he also managed such acts as Gerry & The Pacemakers and Cilia Black, his greatest fame came from being the influential manager of The Beatles.
Epstein would revolutionise how the ragtag boozy band presented themselves – turning them into pop-icons who would eventually explode “across the pond” with an historic concert debut at Shea Stadium.
Voices from the trans community: ‘There will always be prejudice’
This is a reprint of an article from ten years ago (Patrick Barkham / Guardian 22 January 2013). There are some language issues, but otherwise it is a good read.
The conclusion: “The narrative on trans issues has been controlled by people who have no understanding of them” still rings true today:
It’s more than 50 years since the UK’s first trans person was outed in the press. So how do members of the community think life has changed for them since?
April Ashley in 1962, a year after she was outed as the first British person to have undergone gender reassignment surgery. Photograph: Alamy
In 1961, a beautiful model who graced the pages of Vogue appeared in the Sunday People under the headline: “Her” Secret is Out. April Ashley, then 25, was the first person in Britain to be outed as a transsexual, not long after she had travelled to Casablanca and survived difficult genital surgery. In subsequent decades, Ashley led the most extraordinary existence, getting up to mischief with aristocrats and actors as well as becoming an informal agony aunt for thousands of people struggling to understand their gender. Since her outing, however, she has never again worked as a model in Britain.
Ashley’s exceptional experiences are typical of many trans people in Britain. “It was a very schizophrenic life,” she says, referring not to switching gender but the combination of glamour and poverty, acclaim and abuse, she has encountered. Following Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore’s spat with trans activists on Twitter, the vitriol directed at trans people by Julie Burchill in the Observer has caused many to wonder how much has changed.
Ashley, who is 78, penniless and last month collected her MBE from Prince Charles, is airily dismissive of Burchill, who called trans people “bed-wetters in bad wigs”, among other insults. “I don’t know where Miss Burchill goes to see people with crappy wigs on their heads. All the transsexuals I know are very smart looking and have good jobs,” she says. “I do not wear a wig, by the way.”
The transformation for trans people over the course of Ashley’s life is astonishing. It is less surprising how little most people understand of trans lives. If gay activists traditionally asserted their right to be “different”, most trans people have tried to “pass” for their new gender. There is no data on how many people are living as a different gender from their birth but activists estimate that 10,000 people in Britain have undertaken gender reassignment surgery, which was pioneered by German doctors on Lili Elbe, a Danish painter, in 1930. Elbe died from complications in 1931 and, although modern surgery is much safer, plenty quietly live their acquired gender without operations, particularly women “transitioning” to men, for whom genital surgery is more complicated.
April Ashley at Buckingham Palace with her MBE, December 2012. Photograph: Getty Images
It is eye-opening how trans people have only recently acquired the most basic of rights. Britain was one of the last countries in Europe to recognise a person’s right to change their gender in law, and it was not until the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 that trans people could become a different gender in law. The court of appeal only established the right for people to access gender reassignment treatments on the NHS in 1999, and it only became illegal to sack someone who changed or planned to change their gender in 1997.
Perhaps it is inevitable that the small group of trans people, who have had legal recognition for a mere eight years, say they still suffer discrimination, prejudice and violence. A study of 2,600 trans people in the EU in 2008 found 79% suffered transphobic abuse – verbal, physical or sexual violence – in public. More recently, Transgender Europe logged 265 reports of murdered trans people in the 12 months to November 2012; 126 were in Brazil, with one in Britain (although not all these deaths are proven to be the result of transphobia).
Paris Lees, 25, an eloquent, media-savvy campaigner and editor of digital trans magazine META, was violently assaulted and abused in the early days of her “transition” when she did not “pass” so well for a woman. She knows countless people who are harassed in their homes and called “freaks” or “perverts” on the streets every day. “Try putting on some lipstick and holding a handbag and going out there,” she says. “There are two types of trans people: trans people who are lucky enough to ‘pass’ – their lives are pretty much like yours – and people who are identifiable as trans. Their lives are living hell. They cannot go out of the house without being abused. There’s a long way to go and it has to change. People need to feel safe walking down the street.”
Most trans people barely notice everyday harassment. Stephen Whittle, professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University, still gets stones thrown at the house where he has lived for 20 years with his wife, Sarah, and their four children. He has also been abused in the lecture theatre by students, who have called it an “abomination” that he has children. “On the whole you can get by in life without too much hassle, which is pretty different to 20 years ago when every moment of life was hassle,” he says.
Whittle, who “transitioned” nearly 40 years ago, was one of three trans men and three trans women who did an unusual thing in 1992: they went to meet Liberal Democrat MP Alex Carlile in Westminster. The unusual element was not the meeting but the fact that they travelled together – at the time, trans people never dared to because it increased the likelihood that they would be spotted and abused. These six wanted to start a campaign group; Carlile advised them to avoid the word “transsexual”. So, in Grandma Lee’s teashop opposite Big Ben, an anodyne name, Press for Change, was chosen.
Stephen and Sarah Whittle with their family in 1999. Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian
For decades, Ashley’s life itself was a source of some of these battles, as one of the few widely known transsexuals in Britain alongside Jan Morris, who completed her transition in 1974. The annulment of Ashley’s marriage to the Hon Arthur Corbett (in court he was judged “deviant”; she “a man”) in 1970 was a humiliation for Ashley and a great setback for trans people because it was established that a person must remain their birth gender in law. Before that, trans people were furtively altering their birth certificates, or passports, and accessing medical treatment.
Christine Burns is one of a generation who vividly remembers reading about Ashley in the papers when she was a young child. (Ashley appeared in a six-week special in the News of the World: “They were one of the very few who paid me and they behaved impeccably. I was very sad when the News of the World closed,” says Ashley.) The existence of someone like her in the public eye was a great comfort for Burns. In the 90s, when she was chair of the Women’s Supper Club of the local Conservative party association in Cheshire, she quietly joined Press for Change. Even then, the new activists dared not be openly trans. “The thing that held us back in the 1990s campaigning was that fear of being out,” admits Burns. Eventually, she came out in 1995; she jokes that she realised she was more embarrassed to be a member of the Conservative party than openly transsexual.
The writer and historian Jan Morris completed her transition in 1974. Photograph: Colin McPherson / Corbis
Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was “remarkable,” says Burns, because “the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press”. In popular culture, the activists became more forthcoming in their attempts to increase popular understanding of trans issues. Although the arrival of trans character Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street in 1998 was one breakthrough, Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Cropper, is a non-transsexual woman. Some believe one sign that minority groups are not taken seriously is when characters in popular culture are not played by members of that group (from the Black and White Minstrels of the 60s and 70s to non-disabled actors taking disabled parts). “I can advise any casting directors that there are plenty of transsexual actresses,” says a medical professional involved in transition treatments. More inspiring for many younger trans people was the victory of Nadia Almada in Big Brother in 2004. Equally significant for a less visible part of the trans community was trans man Luke Anderson’s Big Brother victory last year. But there still persist the likes of Little Britain and hundreds of other belittling jibes about “trannies” and “chicks with dicks”.
Most trans people I speak to say the biggest issues they face are not media stereotypes but legal rights and access to healthcare. When trans people were allowed to legally register their changed sex in 2005 there was an awful tangle over marriage. Fearful of creating a situation where two women could be legally married, the government decided that trans women who married when they were still men must have their marriage annulled to receive legal recognition as women. So while Ashley finally became a woman in law (with a bit of help from John Prescott, with whom she worked with in a hotel in the 1950s – “a very charming young man”, she says), married couples who have stayed together through one person’s transition still have to divorce if the trans person’s gender is to be legally recognised. “Imagine the wife of someone who transitions from male to female; I cannot think of an issue that challenges your marriage more,” says Burns. “So this law is absolutely indefensible. It’s a real slap in the face to the partner. The law considers relationships for trans people and those who love trans people to be disposable.”
Sarah Brown, an openly trans Lib Dem councillor in Cambridge, was a man when she married Sylvia in 2001. They stayed together through Brown’s transition, which began in 2005. Brown wanted to be recognised as a woman in law and she and Sylvia convinced themselves that annulling their marriage and becoming civil partners would “just be a bureaucratic exercise that didn’t mean anything”. When they got their decree of nullity, however, “We realised we had been wrong. We left the court holding hands, in tears,” says Brown. Far from being healing, the words of their civil partnership a few weeks later were “a kick in the teeth”. Even their marriage certificate was confiscated. The proposed marriage equality legislation will not allow people such as Brown to have her original marriage recognised again.
This is a source of personal heartache, but Brown is convinced that trans people’s biggest single problem is access to decent healthcare. Within 24 hours of her creating the hashtag #transdocfail, she had been inundated with 2,000 tweets of trans people’s negative experiences at the hands of medical professionals. “It revealed a massive level of abuse. If it was happening to any other minority it would be on the national news,” says Brown. Another ongoing battle for trans people is to revise the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) so that transsexuality is not listed as a mental illness. (Ironically, this was added to the ICD around the time homosexuality was removed; campaigners such as Burns say it is useful to be in the ICD to help trans people access healthcare but it should be “less stigmatising”.)
When they finally gain access to transition procedures, most trans people are positive about their hormone treatment or surgery. More of their complaints, however, concern everyday health problems and ordinary care from GPs. Many trans people feel “absolute terror” when faced with revealing their medical history for an orthodox operation or treatment, says Brown, and believe doctors then treat them differently. “It’s not just the NHS that is institutionally transphobic, it’s the whole medical establishment,” says Brown. “This attitude that you’re not treating the person, you’re treating a condition. The moment people realise you’re trans, it seems they can’t see anything else.”
Paris Lees, editor of META, is a campaigner for trans people. Photograph: Rachel Saunders Photography
James Barrett is the lead clinician at the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic, the largest and oldest in the world, which receives 1,400 NHS patients a year, a figure that is doubling every five years. About one in five referrals end up having genital surgery. The media is obsessed with stories of regret; in fact, post-operative trans people wanting to return to their original sex are “vanishingly rare”, says Barrett. Of the 6,000 or so NHS patients he has seen over 25 years, just two have permanently reverted to their original gender role. Barrett understands some trans people’s frustration with the glacial pace of gaining access to surgery but says if it was made easier – or the selection processes less stringent – there might be proportionally many more regrets.
Barrett admits his work is not well regarded among many health professionals and is critical of some GPs who treat trans people. “It’s not a majority, but it’s an extremely substantial minority” he says of GPs who are reluctant to refer patients on to identity clinics, or are unwilling to prescribe the hormones they will need for the rest of their life when guided by consultants at a specialist NHS clinic. “We have persistent problems with GPs who won’t prescribe for patients even though to do so is safe,” he says. (A Dutch study found mortality rates among treated trans people no higher than anyone else; Barrett’s clinic’s oldest former patient is 92.) In fact, says Barrett, it seems that some GPs are prejudiced or ill-informed: one stated it was against her Christian beliefs to prescribe hormones; another recently insisted no such treatment was available on the NHS.
“This is a group who are somehow not taken seriously. They are a bit like Gypsies, whom it still seems OK to make racist jokes about,” says Barrett. “It seems to be thought comedic to make cruel jokes about them. Nobody would make Dick Emery-type jokes about gay people now. This isn’t a pantomime. These are real people with real lives.”
Barrett understands the potential controversies inherent in trans people asking for medical help paid by the taxpayer but insists that people who have gender reassignment surgery subsequently contribute far more to society than they ask of the NHS. For example, they earn more after surgery. “If you work out how much more they pay in taxes, they fund their own treatment and then some. If you don’t treat people, they tend to be really miserable and off work and on sickness benefits and in hospital and then they cost the taxpayer, when they could be net contributors in financial and social terms.”
Part of Burchill’s critique of trans campaigners was to suggest they are a small, educated minority who punch well above their weight. Whittle admits trans people tend to be well educated but says this is a legacy of them having no jobs to go to. Whittle, Lees and Burns all came from humble beginnings and are now smart, networked individuals.
In 25 years, Barrett has seen trans people become “a networked bunch” – more so than other people, he thinks – thanks to the internet. Lees, who also works for Trans Media Action, says social media is the “essential catalyst” for the transformation of trans people in society. “Society is in transition and we’ve woken up from the operation and there’s no going back. We can’t pretend that trans people don’t exist any more,” she says. “People have been taking the piss out of trans people for 60 years. The narrative on trans issues has been controlled by people who have no understanding of them. Social media is about us grabbing the narrative back and telling our own stories – this is our reality, this is what we go through and this is what matters to us. We’re here, we’re in your face, we definitely exist. That’s the most important thing – realising we exist.”
Later this year, an exhibition about April Ashley’s life – from electric shock treatment in a mental hospital to being admired by Albert Einstein, pursued by Dalí and apparently sleeping with Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole on the same holiday – will open at the Museum of Liverpool. Ashley doubts whether trans people will ever be completely accepted in society, but she believes life is improving. “There will always be a great deal of prejudice but I do think things are getting a lot better, and trans people are also getting a lot better,” she smiles. “Transsexuals are famous for their sense of humour, their gentleness, their kindness and being nice people because they’ve been through an awful lot. It’s a terrible ordeal to go through to have a sex change. People don’t do it willy-nilly. It makes you humble.”
“120 BPM” tells the story of ACT UP Paris (AIDS activists in the 1990s). It’s a masterpiece
It begins with muffled speech. A man speaking to an audience. We don’t know what he’s saying, but the crowd applauds when he’s done. A group of men and women assemble in the darkness, quietly waiting for their chance. Another man appears to deliver his speech, but it is quickly interrupted by a flurry of noise, including shouts and the blowing of horns. The group isn’t waiting to speak – they’re waiting to protest.
Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, Robin Campillo’s 120 BPM is one of the most powerful, electric queer films in recent memory. Though its thrilling opening is cut before we see the protest itself, the next scene tells us everything we need to know: This is the Paris branch of ACT UP, an activist group originally founded in New York in 1989.
The group is determined to stand up and fight for the rights of people living with AIDS. “One last thing you need to understand,” an instructor tells a group of people looking to join. “As soon as you join ACT UP, whatever your HIV status, you must accept to be viewed by the media and public as HIV-positive.”
There is, of course, still a stigma around HIV/AIDS. Thankfully, with medical advancements, the virus is no longer a death sentence, and in fact, medical advancements have come so far that the virus barely impacts those with access to medicines at all. Still, there’s a sense of shame that lingers around the disease that stems from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ‘90s, when 120 BPM takes place. Back then, having AIDS wasn’t just the likely end of your life; the stigma of the disease lingered so heavily that traces of it still haunt LGBT+ communities several decades later.
Widespread misinformation campaigns permeated ideas that people with the virus were untouchable delinquents that could spread infection through physical touch and had a devastating effect on those suffering from the virus and on the LGBT+ community as a whole.
A rose-tinted look at activism this is not. Arguments and disagreements abound, as the meetings are full of heated discussions on the best ways to achieve their goals. Some advocate for more drastic measures, while others push for peaceful interactions.
Every second of it is riveting; this is a film always moving forward, and these meetings feel like vital history coming to life, even when they’re just reading the minutes.
Writer / director Robin Campillo brilliantly cuts between protests and organisational meetings. The rhythm of these scenes matches those of heist movies like Ocean’s Eleven, which speaks both to the intensity of these demonstrations as well as how high the stakes are in these moments. And the stakes quite literally could not be higher. If the messages of ACT UP are not heard and not acted upon, people will continue to die at exorbitant rates.
The protests themselves are vital – incredibly tense, yet strangely euphoric. There’s such urgency to them. Whether heading into a pharmaceutical company to demand action and throw fake blood-filled water balloons, marching in the streets with pom poms, or going to schools to talk calmly about how to prevent the spread of the virus, Campillo films them with equal urgency and vitality. The common thread of all these demonstrations is a lack of willingness from pharmaceutical companies and the like to engage with those ACT UP demands. It’s not their responsibility; they’re doing something, they just have to be patient. But inaction is inaction – as one member holds up a placard in protest, “SILENCE = MORT.”
120 BPM isn’t just about protests and activism – it’s also about the people on those front lines, who resisted, acted up, and lost their lives during the AIDS crisis. The film is careful to show that ACT UP wasn’t just people who suffered from the virus, but their friends, families, and concerned citizens, straight or queer. Organisations like ACT UP offered a community and a family for people ostracised from the communities they were born into.
Learning about the crisis might lead you to believe that people suffering from the virus led lives of nothing but misery, but 120 BPM shows the lives of people with positive statuses as diverse and multi-faceted. They fight for their right to be heard and their right to healthcare, and for action to be taken, but they also live their lives outside of meetings and demonstrations. Campillo’s film cares so deeply and wholly for its characters, and it gives them the space to live their lives freely.
Watching them dance the night away in a nightclub feels freeing – it feels almost uncanny to see these people who are suffering so full of happiness. In one club sequence, they dance joyously after a bloody demonstration held earlier in the day. On the dance floor, their pent-up frustrations fade away into a parade of song and movement. Here, they are liberated from stigma. Hands raised to the sky, leaping up and down, the amount of joy in the room is explosive.
Campillo’s camera drifts upward, looking down on this joyous bunch of people. Here, they are so much more than victims of a virus: they are people. But in this moment of happiness, the image of dancers fades away into a strobe light – the music remains, but the people are gone. As the song continues to thrum, images of floating blood cells take over the screen. It’s a harsh but essential reminder that for all the joy in the world, and all the hope these activists possess, they are tied to their bodies and their molecular makeup. All the jubilation in the world cannot stop HIV/AIDS from claiming these full, beautiful lives.
Moments like this make 120 BPM an extraordinary film. It refuses to shy away from the incredibly harsh reality facing those suffering from HIV/AIDS in the era, but it also refuses to reduce their lives to an illness. It’s a film as celebratory as it is melancholic; as depressing as it is uplifting. Death is an all-too-often occurrence in these people’s lives, and the bodies pile high over the film’s two-and-a-half hours. It’s a glorious entwinement of the personal and the political.
Underneath all the trauma is the blossoming romance between Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who is HIV-positive, and Nathan (Arnaud Valois), who is negative. Despite the potential impracticalities of their relationship, they cannot resist being drawn to one another. Their chemistry is powerful and their sex – which the film does not shy away from – is electric. It’s one of cinema’s most stunning romances, filled with vibrancy, and laced with tragedy. It’s one of the many personal stories explored in the film, and it’s also the most impactful. The fate of these lovers is inevitable – such is the reality of the epidemic – but their love feels so hopeful nonetheless.
120 BPM isn’t just a thrilling, impactful reminder of how far we’ve come and the incalculable amount we’ve lost; it’s an urgent notice of how far we still have to go.
Pride in Our Future 2024 Consultation:
Manchester Pride want to ensure they are doing everything they can to achieve their vision and support LGBTQ+ people during the Festival and beyond, with year-round campaigns, events and opportunities.
They have opened the Pride in Our Future 2024 Consultation because they can’t do this without you. They want to hear what you feel are the issues affecting LGBTQ+ communities, what causes you’d like to see Manchester Pride support in the future, and what you’d like from future Manchester Pride Festivals. Your honest feedback is valuable to them and helps shape the future of Manchester Pride.
Survey Link:
The consultation is open until Friday 29 September 2023. Everyone who fills out the survey will be entered into a prize draw to win x2 tickets to see Anne Marie on 28 November 2023, a stay at Dakota and x2 VIP Manchester Pride Festival tickets.
September Community Session:
Join us for this month’s Community Session that discusses the future of Pride in Greater Manchester! The event is on Tuesday, 26 September, 6.00pm to 8.00pm.
BBC iPlayer – Programmes you may have missed
Danny Beard on Same Sex Love & Marriage
In these podcasts Danny explores rainbow weddings, finding out why they chose to get married, the challenges underpinning this decision and what makes these wedded relationships work.
These television programmes celebrate the LGBT+ community: from a gender non-conforming Bollywood dancer who puts on an event that will change his life forever, to Lily Jones’ incredible journey as she transitions from male to female, leaves home and finds love.
There are currently 22 programmes – each with a number of episodes – including:
Big Proud Party Agency
Awesome parties for amazing people. LGBTQ+ party planners compete to plan epic blow outs.
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
Which queen will impress and be crowned the UK’s drag superstar?
Olly Alexander: Growing Up Gay
Olly Alexander explores why the gay community is more vulnerable to mental health issues.
Lily: A Transgender Story
Lily Jones’ journey as she transitions from male to female, leaves home and finds love.
Cherry Valentine: Gypsy Queen and Proud
We are who we are. How the late Cherry united their LGBT+, gypsy and drag identities.
Bend It Like Bollywood
Fabulous and free. Vinay puts faith and family on the line for the dance show of his life.
Out in the City 