In this month’s Pride-themed podcast we also bring back Articles of the Month, where the authors from across the network read their articles for your listening pleasure. Featured articles this month are a discussion about gender from North West by Isabelle Goodhand, the function of Pride in the 2020s, especially with encroaching of LGBT+ rights from Central Bylines by Bryan Manley-Green, and a queer filmmaker’s examination of dealing with disability from Bylines Cymru by Abigail Luxford-Noyes. Please give all of these a read.
Gay Book Club
For the rest of the episode, we try something a little different. Chris and I give you a list of queer media (book, comic, game, TV show, or film) that we think everyone should check out.
First of Chris’s recommendations was Can Everyone Please Calm Down? by Mae Martin (she/they). The book details the comedian’s life as someone who lived between Canada and the UK, explaining what it’s like to live, not only as a trans person but as a queer person in the 21st century. Chris talks touchingly about how there were moments he recognised from his experience as a gay man, and his thoughts on Martin’s vision of a future where no one needs to come out, because sexuality and who you love won’t matter.
I then discuss my two recommendations, which have similar themes: the National Theatre’s performance Angels in America and Russell T Davies’ It’s a Sin. The two shows talk about the same event but through completely different lenses. Angels in America is a play about the AIDS crisis and how it affected the gay population in the US; It’s a Sin is a British show about how the AIDS crisis affected the gay population in the UK.
While separated by location, the stories of utter devastation ring true for anyone who lived through the event. But the thing that struck me was the change in healthcare and sympathy in the UK, going from victims being treated as plague victims to slowly getting better as the disease was better understood. Whereas in the US, there appeared to be very little of either. Both are harrowing tales, both with different takes, but well worth the watch. Please be aware, both of these feature long scenes of people slowly dying.
We still need Pride
My next one is the Manga series My Brother’s Husband. This is a four-volume series about a man raising his young daughter, when suddenly a Canadian gay man knocks on his door saying he’s the husband of the man’s estranged gay brother. Japanese author Gengoroh Tagame examines what it’s like to live as a gay man in Japan, which is very similar to that of England during the Section 28 era – accepted, but only if you keep it to yourself. While there have been many strides to fix this, the book is a sharp reminder of why we still need Pride, because we haven’t won everywhere.
Chris’s final recommendation is the most uplifting. The 2014 film Pride is about the 1980s movement ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ (LGSM), where gay people raised money for the striking miners. This movie is amazing. Had Chris not chosen it, I’d have made it one of my mine. This film documents the real events of the miner’s strike and how a small group of gay men and lesbians raised money for them in solidarity. It’s an important film about intersectionality, workers’ rights and small guys looking out for each other.
Particular scenes that we thought epitomised this, include one where the leader of LGSM tells the group that the only people the papers hate more than gays are miners, who were being hounded every day – so if anyone knew what that was like, it was the gay community. Another scene has the LGSM leader and one of the miners talking about a banner of two shaking hands, showing what the group stand for.
Keep up the fight
As I say at the end of this podcast, there are more of us then there are of them. Keep fighting on!
Happy Pride month, please check out the latest episode below.
