How it took a global pandemic for me to learn about queer histories
By: Max Willson
Tags: Queer, LGBTQ, Self Improvement, Self, Coronavirus

From banana bread recipes to learning about the missing colours on Gilbert Baker’s pride flag

My year started like any other with champagne, cheering, and celebratory kisses, and like everyone’s year, it rapidly became one of fear, anxiety, and restrictions on things I took for granted. Goodbye to holidays and casual shopping. Goodbye to expensive cocktails in dark nightclubs. Goodbye to the office and the stationery cupboard. And, hello to the latest baking trend, Zoom, and never-ending quizzes.

I think it is fair to admit that 2020 has been a struggle — physically, mentally, professionally, and personally. However, a new dawn is on the horizon and it can’t come soon enough. Eventually, we will return to our Sunday morning brunches with friends and huddling in a queue for the latest trendy bar in Peckham. A lot about my life has changed over the past year and there are certain practices that I would like to keep moving forward. We often dwell too much on the negatives (my cancelled holiday to Montenegro, for example) and the reality for many of us is that the past 365 days have taught us a whole heap about ourselves. To cope with the boredom of our living rooms and staying at home, I started changing my life so even the smallest of things became rewarding and helped me develop as a person. One of the most challenging things about 2020 has been how a chap in his mid-twenties hasn’t been moving forward and progressing with my life. I had to correct that. I’ll say it straight away, not everything I did in 2020 was positive as my pyjamas can testify (they’ve seen many tours of duty this year). The thing that I did over the last year to develop and grow as a person was to understand in more granularity about the people and protests that had come before me to shape the world that we currently live in. In other words, I decided to learn about LGBTQ+ histories.

Even before the Covid-19 virus was detected in Wuhan, I was acutely aware that I didn’t know enough about queer pioneers, protest movements, queer design, or spaces. Of course, I’d been to gay bars and took part in a fair share of Pride parades but no one had ever taught me about the brave and selfless people that helped shape the freedoms I enjoy as an openly gay man in the UK. It would be too easy to blame this lack of education on the curriculum taught in schools (of course queer histories should be taught in schools along with other crucial topics like feminism, the civil rights movement, and black history). The reality was that I’d been so busy learning in other ways — university and then my first job — that the history of my identity had been an afterthought.

Fast forward back to April 2020 and I had just finished reading (spoilers sweetie!) Mary Ann Singleton confronting Norman Williams and him falling off a cliff in Amistad Maupin’s “Tales of the City”. Once this was finished there were no other books on the flat’s small bookshelf. I decided impulsively (all my best decisions are made on impulse) to buy several books about queer history to help educate myself about…well myself and the history of being gay.

Before I knew it, I was learning about the original colours on Gilbert Baker’s rainbow flag (yes there were originally two more!), the protests at the Black Cat Tavern in 1967, Merle Miller’s coming out story, and the complex experiences of LGBTQ+ people around the world. For me, it put in perspective how lucky I am to be gay in the twenty-first century in a country that is largely accepting and tolerant of gay and lesbian individuals (I still think there are many barriers to the acceptance of wider queer individuals in the United Kingdom, but that’s for another time).

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

For those LGBTQ+ individuals who haven’t sought to educate themselves on the pioneers that paved the way for our rights (Marsha P. Johnson, Merle Miller, Michael Cashman, and more) or the historical events that have led to the way we live our lives today, I would urge you to pick up a book or watch a documentary. ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world’, said Nelson Mandela, and I am inclined to agree with him. Understanding what the great queer heroes of the past did to stand up for their rights and the rights of generations to come is crucial in helping shape the future lives of queer people across the world. We have to continue to carry the torch of resistance, protest, and freedoms to help our community (and indeed other minority communities).

2020 has therefore been many things but it gave me the opportunity and motivation to learn about queer heroes and history and to help light a fire in my heart to use my voice to help other people and future generations of queer individuals.