COVID-19
In March of this year, Matthew Walton, the chair of Pride in Hull, had to make the decision to cancel this year’s event. Like many event organisers, he had been monitoring the increasing threat of COVID-19 and he had hoped that it could be postponed. Yet, as the severity and long-term implications of the pandemic became apparent, cancelation became inevitable.
“It’s always a difficult decision to cancel an event,” he says over the phone. “But we had an in-depth conversation with our board of trustees, talked through what all the options were and, ultimately, felt that we were in a good position of where we were in our planning process to be able to put a halt on preparations without leaving us out of pocket.”
Pride in Hull is one in a number of Pride events outside of London that has grown in popularity in the last few years. In 2017, after Hull was named the UK City of Culture, the previously small, community-led event, bloomed. “Our audience just quadrupled in the space of 12 months,” Walton recalls, “and that audience has stayed with us.”
If you visit Hull in the lead up to Pride, almost every building is adorned with rainbow flags, and on the day of the parade and festival itself it feels like everyone comes out in support of the city’s LGBTQ+ community. For many, Walton says, “attending Pride is the one day of the year that LGBTQ+ people feel comfortable to be themselves in their home city”.
This year things will be different. Following the government guidelines regarding COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that have been implemented around the country, all summer Pride events in the UK have been cancelled or postponed. Likewise, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafés, theatres, venues and non-essential shops have closed. Those who can have been have been told that they need to work from home, while those who cannot have either been furloughed under the government’s job retention scheme or found themselves suddenly without a job. The economy has slowed down, potentially leading to the worst recession in over 100 years. Within a few months, the UK has wound up with the highest COVID-19 death toll in Europe.
Any crisis will highlight the inequalities in society. The figures show that people from people from BAME groups have been dying disproportionately as a result of COVID-19. Similarly, the charity Stonewall highlighted how ongoing health, socio-economic and political inequalities may cause additional issues for LGBTQ+ people in the UK during this crisis, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet explaining that as some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in society, LGBTQ+ people were “among those most at risk from COVID-19”.
“We know that efforts to tackle the pandemic will only work if everyone’s rights to life and health are protected,” she said in a statement, “For LGBTI people, this means identifying and addressing the ways in which they are particularly vulnerable, ensuring they are not discriminated against, and finding solutions. It also means ensuring their voices are heard.”
For Dr Michael Brady, the Medical Director at the Terrence Hiins this meant ensuring that sexual health and HIV services could continue, while figuring out how the lives of LGBTQ+ people might be impacted.
“For the vast majority of people living with HIV who are on treatment, have undetectable viral loads and a healthy immune system, the rules were the same as they were for everybody else,” he says. “But we wanted to highlight any groups of people who may be at more risk or more vulnerable to the virus. Those people we identified with very weak immune systems were advised that they should be following the shielding advice. That is the government advice that has gone out to a number of people with other health conditions telling them to self-isolate for 12 weeks.”
Because of the focus on COVID-19 patients, many health services across the country have been reduced. In response to this, the Terrence Hiins Trust developed THT at Home, an online package that provides information and support about sexual health and for people living with HIV. Nevertheless, it’s been a strule.
“We’ve been hit quite badly by COVID-19 pandemic in the sense that we’re not able to fundraise in the way that we normally do. We’ve lost a lot of income. But also the people we serve have a lot greater need in terms of mental health, the impact of isolation and the need for advice about sexual health and HIV.”
Delivering services has been difficult for Andrew, a doctor working for a hospital in a large NHS trust. “COVID has dominated a lot of the patient stories,” he says. While he hasn’t encountered any specific issues because of his sexuality, Andrew says that doing his job has changed.
“I use my face so much to communicate with my patients, to tell them that I’ve acknowledged what they’ve said, and I rely on their faces to guide how to follow on from things,” he says. “Having to wear the PPE with every single encounter you have is hard. Having a mask on as a barrier is an enormous limitation. It hinders that connection. Part of the satisfaction I get from my job is how much I connect with my patients. It’s hard.”
Outside of the medical community, other LGBTQ+ people have seen their lives altered, too. Fionn and Charlotte run the queer bookstore Category is Books in Glasgow. They were worried initially about what was going to happen to their business, but luckily, they were able to move their business to their home and have been sending queer books to people all over the UK through the post.
“We always know that books are a comfort to people, but hadn’t necessarily appreciated that there would be such a high demand over the last couple of months in particular,” says Fionn.
One aspect of the store they were able to retain was their pay it forward shelf, where people could purchase books for LGBTQ+ people who may be unable to afford them. It was just a case of figuring out how to do that remotely.
“We started it and there were about £80 worth of gift vouchers that people could use, and that’s just grown and grown as it’s gone forward,” Fionn says. “Now, over £1000 worth of books have gone out, and there’s still more money in that fund for people who can’t afford books but still want to read. It’s been really nice to see people being able to still read even if they’ve lost their job or are not in a good financial position. It’s been really heartening to see people donating.”
Dan Beaumont, who runs iconic east London queer venue Dalston Superstore, hasn’t been able to keep his business open. “It became clear that with what we knew about the transmission of the virus and the reality of a venue like ours, it was not sustainable to stay open,” he says. “She is sleeping.”
Queer venues aren’t just places for LGBTQ+ folk to congregate. Given that so many queer clubs, bars and venues have closed in the last decade, spaces like Dalston Superstore also provide jobs, opportunities and solidarity for people, too. As Beaumont puts it, they are essentially the centre of an ecosystem that has many, many dependents who rely on them”.
“At Superstore, someone can be in full face on stage one night, designing something the next day and working somewhere else that night. Freelancers have many strings to their bows and venues like Superstore are a hub of those people,” he explains. “Obviously, the government job retention scheme offers some support for contracted employees, but we were very aware that a lot of those people had no real safety net.”
It’s why Beaumont and his colleagues came up with the Dalston Superstore Hardship Fund, a way to support “DJs, hosts, designers, dancers, drag artists, security and others who have lost their main source of income due to the impacts of COVID-19.”
“We emailed any freelancers who had worked or performed at Superstore over the last couple of months, explained that we were going to run a crowdfunder and said to them that if they were in need, they could opt in. There’s now £16,000,” he says. “But a lot of people who will have contributed to that crowdfunder will not be rich themselves. We’ve had some big donations, for which we’re very grateful, but a lot of people who have donated to it see a kinship with the performers and artists and community that we’re trying to support.”
Such generosity speaks volumes to the communities that congregate around LGBTQ+ spaces. Yet, with those spaces shut for the foreseeable future and Pride events cancelled, some LGBTQ+ people are turning to other means to stay connected.
For Xantippe Steele, this means writing letters. Separated from her friends and with school closed, the 14-year-old was aware of the strules that young LGBTQ+ individuals might be facing during this time. “I’m quite fortunate. I’m in a household where I’m surrounded by family who are incredibly supportive of my sexuality,” she says. “But I realised that other people wouldn’t be so lucky. I wanted to do my bit to help out.”
According to the charity akt, 24% of homeless young people identify as LGBTQ+, with 70% of that number believing that coming out to their parents was the main contributing factor leading to their homelessness. Because of lockdown, some LGBTQ+ young people may be stuck in hostile or abusive environments, or with people who don’t accept their sexuality, chosen pronouns or gender identity, which will undoubtedly affect their mental health.
This is one of the reasons why Steele founded Letterbox Love, a non-profit organisation that aims to provide support and friendship to any young LGBTQ+ person who may be in need through letter writing,
“I think letters are really interesting because they’re extremely therapeutic,” Steele explains. “You can get all your thoughts, emotions and feelings onto the page, and once you’re done you can look at this piece of writing that you’ve created. There’s the ritual of sealing it, sending it off and then the anticipation of waiting for a reply. I think it’s incredibly motivating, and, in lock down, it gives you something to look forward to.”
The way it works is an LGBTQ+ person reaches out to Letterbox Love with some information about themselves and their pronouns, and Steele writes them a letter back, thus beginning what will (hopefully) lead to an ongoing
correspondence.
“I think it will create a connection between us all,” Steele says, “and remind people that we don’t have to be directly with each other to feel an intense connection, form those friendships and create those support groups. And hopefully, after lockdown, we might be able to make it more physical and perhaps meet people.”
Meanwhile Harry Gay, a master’s student and activist who also works at the Outside Project, the UK’s first LGBTIQ+ Community Shelter & Centre, figured why wait for the re-opening of physical spaces. Along with his flatmates, he started Queer House Party, a digital a “queer, interactive, camp, DIY, inclusive, punk” club night streamed live from their home.
“I have regular bookings to DJ throughout London, and throughout March they just dropped off one by one,” Gay says. “There are three of us [in the house] that DJ and we would have been DJing together anyway. So I put up a poll on Instagram to see if anyone would be interested in me and my housemates DJing online. It was just going to be a Facebook live stream, and now one thing has led to another and it’s got kind of out of control, but in a good way.”
Each Friday, people from all around the UK and the world join in what has become one of the most inclusive yet riotous places on the internet. Queer House Party have adapted, too. When punters started asking for a
BSL interpreter, they found one within a week, and they are also adding audio descriptions.
“Another big thing happened during our second party: we got Zoom bombed by some alt-right trolls from the US,” Gay recalls. “We were really good at shutting them down. We then added security and helped write some guidelines for the Good Night Out Campaign on how other people can do what we do to make our parties more secure. It’s been a real learning curve going from putting on club nights and DJing in pubs and clubs to going online. We’re just learning every week.”
Of course, while digital club nights allow us to be together, they don’t necessarily play the same role as physical spaces do. “There’s this mistruth that is peddled that physical spaces are no longer necessary. That’s simply not true; it’s used to mask gentrification and the closure of spaces,” says Dan de La Motte, a queer performer, activist and guide for Queer Tours of London who specialises in queer heritage.
De la Motte believes that after the pandemic, the survival of these spaces will be essential, not just for the sake of preserving history but because they will be needed to fill other roles. “They will no longer only be seen as a night time space, a space to pull and get off with people,” he posits. “They will take on a wider brief that will incorporate social responsibility in terms of meeting spaces, mutual aid groups and cultural spaces. If a result of COVID is the closure of cultural spaces elsewhere, you’ll see places like Dalston Superstore and others becoming exhibition spaces and museums and galleries.”
However, Gay sees the advent of digital clubbing as a way to include those people who may be excluded from traditional LGBTQ+ nightlife. “Doing Queer House Party made me completely rethink what accessibility actually means,” he says. “I think a lot of people in the community stay away from pubs and clubs. That could be because they’re in a wheelchair and can’t physically access venues, because there aren’t enough BSL interpreters or audio descriptions, because people are survivors and don’t like to be in closed spaces, or because people are neurodiverse. There are so many different things that shut out a huge portion of our community from queer nightlife. Online parties are just more accessible.”
Physical spaces are not superfluous, though. Instead, digital nightlife can act as another weapon in its arsenal. “I think if people put more effort behind things like BSL interpreters, audio descriptions and live streaming to get club nights out from just one place or city it would do a lot of good for people who can’t afford to come to London or live somewhere else,” Gay says.
In fact, Beaumont believes that the changes we’re experiencing now will define the rest of our lifetimes. “I think after this crisis, we will remember how privileged we are to be able to be in the same room as one another, and what
“I THINK AFTER THIS CRISIS, WE WILL REMEMBER HOW PRIVILEGED WE ARE TO BE ABLE TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM AS ONE ANOTHER, AND WHAT A SIMPLE AND IMPORTANT THING THAT IS.”
a simple and important thing that is,” he suests. “I think we will remember how powerful it is to be together and not take that for granted. Maybe we’ll make more use of that power in the ongoing strule against homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny.”
This shift in efforts, Charlotte from Category Books argues, has already begun. “I think people are filling in those gaps that there has always been in services for queer people,” they say. “That’s the kind of thing that doesn’t disappear after a state of emergency, and these webs and networks of support will become more vital than ever. That’s what happens when things get harder; minority groups come together and fight for each other’s rights.”
The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are unknown, but they are likely to be devastating and life-altering. It won’t be possible to be upbeat or optimistic all the time. But as we’ve seen, our spirit of solidarity hasn’t been dampened. “Queer history is the history of resilience,” de la Motte says. “It’s the history of dealing with shit and getting over oppression. It’s the history of survival.”
All you need to do is look at Pride in Hull. Their 2020 event is cancelled, but they’re still looking forward. They’ve already booked acts for 2021 and are putting in a bid for Euro Pride 2023. “We’re hoping to do a full year of LGBTQ+ programming for it,” Walton says.
Bier and more fabulous than ever? Isn’t that just the queer way.