Hélène Selam Kleih Activist, Author & Model
By modelling for the likes of Dior, Estée Lauder and Vivienne Westwood, at the age of 24, Hélène self funded her first anthology HIM + HERS, a book of poems, letters, essays, photos and artworks about men and mental health. From there she’s started her own publishing house, Prosperitee Press, whilst contributing frequently to gal-dem, an online and print creative magazine for women of colour. ‘Queerness is the way that I carry myself in a world that relies on easy labels and categories of our ways of being, behaviours, sexualities, genders, and it’s about making space for the things we don’t yet really understand and calling them beautiful, essential even.’ Malik Nashad Sharpe, Choreographer
Queerness is not a notion I was born into. Or even conditioned to believe was a part of my identity. My first kiss was with a girl, less Katy Perry kitsch, more back of the bus sharing a McFlurry.
I had never felt attacked or marginalized or that I was compromising a part of myself. My want was for clarity not safety. Without risk, I didn’t speak on or write about queerness, because I didn’t believe the word – or the definition of it, to really frame my existence.
The question that preoccupies me more heavily is authenticity – how authentic is authenticity? How timely is your ally-ship - when it’s ‘in’ to have a trans best friend? When you want comps on that club night? When you’re bingeing on that Netflix series and gaing ‘sis’ at the water cooler?
Ally-ship is about recognising the strule without hijacking it. Ally-ship is having confidence in yourself and understanding that the strule is not yours, and it is not sad. The strule does not demean or patronize, it is your language that treads the line between belittling and adorning.
Ally-ship is everyday. Gay is not pay. It is not your story, or even their story. It is a distinction between we - but not a division between I and them.
Ally-ship is an understanding of this ‘we’. We can move together, but not always occupy the same spaces. Space was created for enjoyment but was forged from necessity, a need, and like Malik says, whilst it is beautiful, it is foremost essential. That doesn’t mean you can’t move through those spaces, you just can’t sit too long.
It also doesn’t mean you are disqualified, disenfranchised or left out - it means you have the comfort and the ease of navigating other realms freely.
Queerness is an umbrella term, it is political, it’s an identity that is inclusive, it releases the pressure of adhering to one thing. Yet we look at those waving the flags for gay rights and they are generally white, male, cisgender, many still working within the gender binary of men and women. Those who do not fit into this cookie cutter are often treated as trends, and feel that their bodies and their minds are welcome - but only as a transaction.
They are welcomed for their stature, their following, their drama, their activism. How does it work if you are queer and you simply want to exist?
Ally-ship means furthering this existence, promoting growth, paying your way, securing space and funding and visibility on every working day of the week. And space is not always in the limelight: it is the doctor’s office, the desk, the less than glamorous 9-5 job.
Ally-ship is being present without ownership, without taking credit.
I spoke to my friend, queer poet and trans activist, Kai-Isaiah Jamal, who recently performed in Frieze Week, questioning how safe trans people really are, and the importance of active ally-ship. He shared two poems with me, the first, Language is Still Coming Slow, 2017, and the second, For Love Muscle, 2019.
I have not enough words to name myself as something that is palatable or digestible. I do not know if queer fits right, or if I have spent my life trying to make things fit like my first sports bra, or my first skin tight. I am not sure if it is right to call myself anything that I cannot believe in anymore. I am waiting and ready for the shape of my tongue and the words that will eventually be born into and onto it.
There is a place where I go, once a month. Feeling and tasting - Full of rum and free of sin, I bounce my ass to a beat that knows of the weightlessness of this act, in this city, underground. Under the sound of a kunty mic that sounds like an angry but fires affirmations into the air that pierce skin and evoke a smile or a laugh or a warm feeling in your throat. Sometimes I don’t know if the sound or the sight is more holy or if I’m bringing out a spirit or only finding mine downing another. I know not of the other, just of the moment.
Within the two years that passed between these poems, Kai began his transition, which he wasn’t initially doing so he ‘could be safe, make sense to others or be read with privileges he wasn’t afforded.’
‘I used to literally wait for my one kunty night, because Leeds ain’t like London! Sometimes when I was in London I felt like I was having to perform my queerness and when I was out of it, it just felt natural. It’s just the fear of feeling that everyone’s ally-ship in London was also performative so I felt like I had to give them a show. But then also this element that I almost live in the moments of performative ally-ship and the gas, because in some ways it’s a surety of your safety. You can sense the ingenuity, so you know where you can stand.’
This almost reciprocal supply-and-demand relationship is the transaction, the commodification of queerness that we all inevitably cannot escape and puts into question the integrity of each party. Modern queerness is not derogatory, it is that moment half-full, it is joyous and celebrated. Yet it should not be used so sparsely without a real understanding of its political nature. For Kai, ‘It is radical love, a thing of resistance and a reclamation.’ Queerness is not a cheque, it is community, the safety of acceptance without performance. It is real life, beyond the internet and Instagram likes so easily overridden by shadow bans. Queerness is not an explanation, justification or invitation. Queerness is support, it is family, often stronger than blood. Queerness is not convenient, so neither should ally-ship be.