CALUM MCSWIGGAN
From Tangier to Thailand, Calum McSwiggan reveals how travel has opened his eyes to the rich queer culture spanning the world
How meeting LGBTQ people around the world broadened his horizons
Iwas just a teenager when I first went to a country where it was illegal to be gay. I was fresh out of the closet and in my first ever relationship. In my blissful ignorance, I held my partner’s hand as we stepped off the boat and onto Moroccan soil.
We walked around Tangier all day like that – holding hands as a young couple in love, publicly and outwardly expressing our adoration for each other, stealing a kiss as we watched the sun set over the magnificent architecture of the city. We were young and naïve then and had no idea that the simple act of sharing a kiss
could have landed us in prison for up to three years. Such sentences are almost never imposed upon tourists, but the realisation that it was illegal still terrified me – we were breaking the law and we didn’t even know it.
We were lucky. As it turns out, Tangier is known for its liberal approach to homosexuality. Although gay people are still very much persecuted in other parts of Morocco, Tangier has a history of turning a blind eye. People from all over the country have been known to flock there in search of a better and safer life, and it’s been described – perhaps quite shrewdly – as the ‘ Costa del Sodomy’ for that very reason.
Even in a time when homosexuality was still illegal in many European countries, Tangier was known as a safe haven that opened its doors to LGBT+ travellers from all over the world. I found it fascinating that such a place could exist in a country where being gay was considered to be criminal, but the more time I spent exploring foreign countries, the more I began to learn that LGBT+ culture exists pretty much everywhere. Even in countries where it’s outlawed, queer life still finds a way.
That, for me, was the beginning of a fascination with LGBT+ culture that has spanned the past 15 years, one that I’ve taken around the world with me, exploring the queer culture of more cities than I can count. I was always aware of some of the more famous gay hot spots around the world: Gran Canaria, Mykonos, Sitges – but it wasn’t until I started travelling and exploring that I realised how much queer life there is on a global level.
I find myself searching for the rainbow flags in every new city I visit; it’s a great place to start and I always know that I’m welcome whenever I see those colours, but in many places they don’t yet have the privilege or the freedom to hang them, and in order to find queer people and culture you have to look a little harder. In India, for instance, LGBT+ equality has been on a rocky journey to escape its colonial laws, and as a nation once proud of its LGBT+ culture, much of it is now hidden behind closed doors. I only learned about the underground LGBT+ venues in New Delhi by befriending one of the locals as many of them aren’t listed online. Without him, it would have been hard to find them or even know that they were there.
The same is true even in some of the more liberally progressive places around the globe. Berlin is home to the oldest gay village in the world, a place where LGBT+ people were accepted as far back as the 1920s, and although many of the cultural landmarks still remain, you wouldn’t know it unless somebody pointed them out to you.
I guess our culture has always lent itself to being hidden away from the rest of society, and although that affords us privacy – and in many countries, safety – the lack of visibility often means that our story goes unnoticed and undocumented. One of my favourite queer venues in the world is Kaiserbründl in
Vienna – an opulent gay sauna that has stood for well over a hundred years. Widely known as the world’s oldest gay sauna, it still lies hidden
“We had no idea that the simple act of sharing a kiss could have landed us in prison”
behind a single unmarked door.
It’s a place for gay men to get their rocks off, but somewhere that proves that even during the decades where homosexuality was considered to be criminal, queer life was always here.
In a modern world where information is so readily available at your fingertips, it’s surprising how little information there can be about LGBT+ life in some countries. Many of the townships in South
Africa, for example, are filled with neighbourhoods that are the embodiment of the thriving heart of our community, and yet it’s difficult to appreciate that without actually going there and seeing it with your own eyes.
Even looking back at all the incredible LGBT+ people who have come before us, so much of our culture is missing from the history books – we know that thousands of pioneers and activists have fought for our rights around the globe, but the names of those people often evade us, their legacies existing only now in the stories passed down through generations.
It’s for that reason that I think it’s crucial that we spend more time learning from our LGBT+ siblings overseas. So much of what has shaped me as a person has come from meeting these extraordinary people – not only have they welcomed me into their individual worlds with open arms, but they’ve also taught me so much, and massively helped to change and develop my understanding of what it means to be LGBT+.
Take our understanding of gender, for instance – it’s only in recent years that we’ve really started to accept trans and non- binary people, but there are cultures around the world where these identities have not just been accepted, but celebrated, for hundreds and thousands of years. Our Western ideas around gender are often rigid and regimented, and it was only through befriending a transgender person in Thailand that I really began to realise that.
In Thai culture, gender nonconformity thrives in the form of kathoeys – a term for people who exist outside of the male/ female gender binary – and not only are they widely accepted, but they’re considered to be enormously culturally significant and a part of the country’s beating heart. This isn’t unusual – many cultures around the world have alternative understandings of gender, and we can see this by looking at the history of two- spirit people in Native American culture, or sistergirls and brotherboys among the indigenous Australian populations.
I believe there is so much we can learn from these cultures, not just through the things that make us different, but also through the things that unify us. Queer culture can differ so vastly from one country to the next — but we all share the commonality that comes from growing up different, from existing outside of the cisgender, heterosexual norm. It’s that same shared experience that I’ve noticed in queer people from all over the world — I’ve met young men from Japan facing the same struggles as those in Italy, and although the challenges they face are disguised beneath a different set of cultural rules and circumstances, the root of those problems fundamentally remains the same. I believe that’s why LGBT+ people have built such resilient communities in every corner of the globe — that shared sense of empathy will always bring us together, and through overcoming hardship, we’ve built a global community that is one of the strongest in the world.
LGBT+ life is everywhere. Our history and culture doesn’t live and breathe in any one country, it’s spread across the globe and is waiting with open arms for us to be a part of it. In my brief 30 years on the planet, I’ve just begun to get a taste of it, and I only realise now how much of a significant impact it’s had on me as a gay man. We can’t travel as extensively as we once could right now, but as soon as it’s safe to do so, I’ll be the first on a flight out of here to experience it all over again.
Eat, Gay, Love by Calum McSwiggan, published by Hodder & Stoughton, is out now
“I’ve met young men from Japan facing the same struggles as those in Italy”