QUEER ME OUT.
If we all sat down to discuss issues each of us face, listened to one another more often, and had a greater understanding and empathy of diverse identities and life experiences, the world would be a much better place. That’s why back in 2017, W Hotels launched an innovative speaker series called Queer Me Out to create a forum where the most prominent issues and discussion our community faces can be explored. It’s a safe space with special guests, offering insight, experience, and education on a range of topics from across our vibrant and multi-faceted LGBTQ community.
This year, GAY TIMES teamed up with W Hotels to host a number of discussions across Europe, engaging with local communities in destinations such as Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Istanbul. We continued our work with W London, partnering on not just one but three Queer Me Out events in 2019. W Hotels strongly and proudly support and celebrate equality and the importance of inclusivity. Platforming and centring discussion on LGBTQ issues and experiences is paramount to the brand, which is why our partnership is completely effortless.
One of the first panels we hosted was centred around the genderfluid fashion revolution and how brands are beginning to challenge binary notions of menswear and womenswear. Taking place at W London, our panellists – consisting of Jamie Windust, Kyle De’Volle and Naeem Davis - touched upon the idea of how queer culture influences the world of mainstream fashion.
Jamie Windust is a writer and social activist, Kyle De’Volle is a celebrity stylist, and Naeem Davis who is the co-found of BBZ, a club night and cultural collective prioritising the experiences of queer womxn, trans and non-binary people of colour. They were asked if there’s a general desire by the queer community to be brought into the mainstream fashion agenda.
“A lot of queer people’s agenda is to normalise queerness,” Naeem said. “I think sometimes when we make assumptions that because we share certain intersections with people, they have the same politics or that they want to be there to be different. A lot of people just want to do the same things as heteronormative people, and that’s fair. But I do think queerness is sort of becoming a brand,” Naeem added. “There’s a way to be queer inside those mainstream avenues, and I think it’s dwindling what education could be happening about queer community, society, culture and fashion – that intersection of the mainstream and underground.”
“I agree with you,” Kyle said. “I always think that if it’s done correctly then it can be great. If there’s understanding in it and the right approach has been taken in terms of understanding people’s feelings, then yeah I’m up for it. But not if it’s just a cash-in on the pink pound.”
Jamie added: “There needs to be that level of – at the very beginning of the process – the community being fully involved. I think what brands tend to do is throw in queer models at the very end and scramble to find a charity to donate to. That’s frustrating because queerness visually isn’t one look – it’s all so different. That’s important for brands to take note of when it comes to designing fashion and presenting their collections.”
For our Pride edition of Queer Me Out – which took place the day before the Pride in London celebrations in July – we centred the discussion around the LGBTQ community’s relationship with music and club culture. Music has always formed a central part of the modern LGBTQ experience – whether we’ve used it to protest or party.
For this discussion, we welcomed Horse Meat Disco DJ Luke Howard, presenter and DJ Jaguar, and presenter and DJ Harriet Rose to the panel. When asked why music is so important to LGBTQ people, Luke began: “It takes us somewhere out of ourselves. When we get together and dance collectively it makes us feel safe. Everyone connects to music, but I think the LGBTQ community’s relationship with it – especially with some of the artists that we love – I think we get quite obsessed with it.
“Maybe as children, we feel a little isolated, so we find listening to music a way of connecting with the wider world. So when we discover clubs and we’re in a room of like-minded people, we start to feel safe and we don’t feel so anxious about being who we are. That’s a wonderful way to experience freedom. Everybody should dance more! In all cultures, dancing is really important, and I think in our culture it’s really important. Loads of people love raving and they carry on doing it, but we don’t really think of ourselves as a dancing nation – like
maybe Brazil does. But we are a dancing nation – we love to dance.”
Jaguar added: “It’s a place for expression. The dance floor is a place where we can all be together. I also think there are a lot of nights now that are centred around people who might not feel comfortable in mainstream club spaces. These nights that are more centred around LGBTQ people are really important for people who might feel unsafe on a night out. There are some really great clubs that prioritise trans people who might strule to get home at night – Pxssy Palace do their taxi service for trans people.”
Luke went on to explain why dance music, in particular, holds a prominent status in queer culture, attributing it to the early disco scene in the 70s. “The culture of disco was invented in LGBTQ spaces in New York City,” he said. “It was people having loft parties, private parties, members-only parties, where there was often no alcohol served because they couldn’t get a license. People would just open up their homes and that was probably in the very early 70s.
“I think all the misfits were coming together and a lot of those were LGBTQ people and their friends and allies. It was like they found each other and they found a sense of liberation. The DJs became quite important because they were finding special records where lyrics would touch people on the dance floor – they would mean something. There’s often a double meaning in music for LGBTQ people. We find the meaning, so something like Young Hearts Run Free – which is actually about not getting married to young – we hear it and think ‘I want to be free’. Even something like Dancing Queen by ABBA; that means something different to us than a straight girl or boy because we identify as ‘I’m that queen that’s dancing right now’.”
But as we continue to win LGBTQ rights, it means more of our cisgender heterosexual allies are engaging with queer nightlife. How do we ensure these spaces remain safe for LGBTQ people? The panellists had plenty to say. “When we’re out in the world or in a mixed club or a venue that isn’t LGBTQ, I think LGBTQ people, what we do – and we don’t even realise we’re doing it – we’re often hyper-vigilant of what’s around us and who’s around us,” Luke explained.
“So I think if you’re creating a safe space, you want it to be a place where you don’t feel you have to be hyper-vigilant. You don’t have to think, ‘Is it OK to kiss my partner?’ or ‘Will it be OK if I wear these clothes or shoes?’ or ‘Will someone laugh at me, attack me, or abuse me?’ When clubs and parties who want to be inclusive say ‘We are a safe space’, they actually have to make an effort to actually make sure that it is. They have to educate the people who are entering that space to make it safe.
“I think we’d all agree that a space doesn’t just become safe because you’ve said it is – especially if all of the promoters are straight, or the club is a straight venue and it’s a mixed crowd. You have to make sure people feel safe. That takes effort, it takes education, and it always takes visibility. Having people on the lineup who are LGBTQ, having performers there that can express themselves freely so people in the audience can think ‘It’s OK for me to wear clothes like that’.”
As we headed over to W Amsterdam for even more Pride celebrations in early August, the discussion turned to icons. What is an icon? They are people who have challenged the status quo to inform culture, lead communities and create change. That’s why there are so many queer icons we celebrate; LGBTQ people who, in the face of discrimination and adversity stand up to resist patriarchal, heteronormative society. For this special event, our panellists included DJ and producer Lyzza, DJ and promoter Darling Peter, event organiser and art director Theo Heskes, and Radio 1 DJ and producer Haai.
To start the panel, each guest was asked who their queer icon is. Haai praised The Black Madonna and her We Still Believe parties that create safe social spaces at huge clubs and festivals across the globe. “She’s really inclusive with her parties,” Haai explained. “She wasn’t following what other people were doing.” Darling Peter said his queer icon is the generation of LGBTQ people who fought for the rights we all enjoyed to today. Lyzza went one step further and said her queer icon is the Mother of the Movement herself, Marsha P Johnson.
But while we all celebrate and acknowledge the incredible impact and contribution that Marsha P Johnson gave to the community during her lifetime, Lyzza noted that people sometimes forget that she did so in extremely challenging circumstances. “I think a lot of people forget that sometimes being a trailblazer is scary and anxious and intense because the people who have been the trailblazer had to go deep into themselves and find out who they truly are,” Lyzza said.
“They have the courage to show that on the outside. The things we have to remember about these icons is that, as much as they seem very powerful, people like Marsha P Johnson and Leigh Bowery and these queer people who put themselves out there all the time, they are usually the unhappiest in their lifetime because they are the only people who are standing up for being who they truly are. As much as it’s a positive thing to talk about trailblazers, they’re always the ones doing the emotional work. Nowadays you can easily research,
but we still have to be the one to stand up and be like, ‘Hey, I’m different’. We have to be the elephants in the room all of the time.”
Lyzza also spoke about how visibility in the mainstream and safe spaces for queer people are lifelines. “Visibility is so important,” she said. “We are constantly being othered and we live a life of being other, so there has to be spaces where others can be the norm.” Spoken in a space created by W Hotels like Queer Me Out, it demonstrates how the brand acknowledges and respects that importance by offering such an environment for us to feel seen and supported.
That was needed nowhere more than in Istanbul for this campaign when we took Queer Me Out to the Turkish capital for the first time. Istanbul has a vibrant LGBTQ scene and it isn’t illegal to be gay in the conservative country. However, following a few years of Istanbul Pride being cancelled and greater challenges faced by LGBTQ people in the country, it was clear that an event tailored for the local community was imperative. While LGBTQ people have some legal protection – but not nearly enough – it’s social attitudes and discrimination that queer people face in the country that they need to overcome.
For this very special event at W Istanbul, the subject in discussion was based around how drag and dance is defining the queer movement in the Turkish capital. Making up the panel was drag queen Onur Gokhan aka Cake Mosque, beauty influencer Arda Bektas, LGBTQ activist Buse Kılıçkaya, and actress Seyhan Arman. They spoke of the challenges they face as members of the LGBTQ community in Istanbul in front of a packed audience.
Speaking about her experience as a drag performer and the reaction she gets, Cake said: “Just an example, they ask me if I am a good or bad role model for the people and the society? How can I be a bad role model for the people? I’m just doing my make-up and wearing my costume on the stage. How and why someone like me could be a bad role model for the people and society? If you see me on the stage and you think I’m a bad role model for the people, then I would be doing something else on the stage.”
Cake continued to draw upon the very different experiences she has between being lauded on the stage in a club as an entertainer, and then the reaction to her gender expression on the streets from everyday people. “I’m not talking about the other communities, but if we talk about our own society, we live in a hypocritical society,” she said. “When people see you on the stage, they applaud you and they like you but the same people are insulting and humiliating when they see someone like me in the street. This is a very clear example of hypocrisy.”
In Istanbul, the drag artform is still very much a resistance to the heteronormative patriarchy that still has too much of a hold of the social attitudes there. “Drag music and drag culture is a rebellion,” says Buse Kılıçkaya. “We perform different performances in a different life. Actually, we have lots of funny sides, we have fears, we have love, we have fantasies and all of these things have a performance in our life. And sometimes it effects in our lives, our voice, our clothes, hair, make-up and sometimes even a costume we wear. And this is how Drag culture rebels to life.”
As for Arda Bektas, they became Turkey’s first ever male beauty vloer when they started up their channel a few years ago. They have since amassed a considerable social media following, and step-by-step have helped usher in a change in attitudes towards male makeup. “Some cosmetic brands sent some cosmetic products to a male vloer in Turkey for the first time,” he says of being gifted a cosmetic company’s new range. “Actually that’s a success.”
As for actress Seyhan Arman – who played host for the panel discussion – she raised the subject of her identity being routinely questioned. Being a visible figure from the community in Turkey comes with some resistance against your being, but Seyhan remarked on her perfect response to those very people. “Sometimes young people text me and ask me; what am I? I am gay or transgender?” she said. “I always answer like this: just imagine you’re on an island, there’s no one else around you, and how you would like to see yourself and how would you like to define yourself?”
As you can see from the discussion outlined in this piece, Queer Me Out has developed into an insightful, celebratory, supportive and much needed series for the LGBTQ community all over Europe. There are more to come yet, exploring the key challenges and successes the queer community still face today. Understanding and talking through these issues together reinforces a sense of unity, empathy and compassion – and W Hotels is committed to providing a safe space for us to have these discussions. It brings us one step closer to that better world we’re all working towards.