23 Feb 2024
Diversity Lens - Issue 212

I grew up in a Muslim household that was alcohol-free, meaning socialising sober was the norm. Upon reaching adulthood, my forays into the enjoyment of alcohol also coincided with my coming out as queer. From that point onwards, the vast majority of the social time I spent with my queer community has been centred around alcohol. Personally, my relationship with drinking has always been very moderate and I didn’t perceive, at first, the very strong social links between queer socialising and alcohol.
I joined the Queer Family Tea community recently and discovered the importance of cultivating queer sober spaces. They offer one of the few queer spaces for people whose accessibility needs include sobriety, but even those of us who aren’t sober still benefit from having access to a sober space centred around community building. It is a very special and unique place to me.
In this week’s LGBTQIA+ themed edition of Diversity Lens, we were lucky enough to chat to members of QFT and find out more!
QUICK FIRE NEWS 🧨
🍸 New lesbian bar in London excludes trans women
🏗️ 6 in 10 London LGBTQIA+ venues shut since 2006
😤 JK Rowling donates £70k to change definition of "woman"
😥 Charity for LGBTQIA+ elders to permanently close
📑 US census to ask about sexual orientation & gender identity
LET'S GET INTO IT 🤓
💬 A conversation with Queer Family Tea ☕️💙
What is Queer Family Tea? A monthly sober social for the Queer community, held in Manchester. We take turns cooking a large communal meal and offer a few activities for group participation, like banner making, clothes swaps, poetry, etc to facilitate connections. This ethos of ‘family’ is the most important part of Queer Family Tea, we want people to feel like they are active members of our community, not just attendees at an event.
Anyone can get involved with the organisation of QFT, and we are entirely volunteer run. QFT is a pay-what-you-can event so our space is available without charge to those who come. Aside from the occasional grant, we are entirely funded by donations so it’s rewarding to know that people appreciate what is being offered as their generosity has allowed us to scale up and host more attendees by facilitating a larger community space over the past few years.
Why is QFT a sober space? There is a huge lack of spaces that are designed to promote community amongst the LGBTQ+ that are also sober. For a long time now the only real spaces available for Queer socialising have been bars & clubs, and while these environments can be a lot of fun they also centre the use of alcohol for recreation alongside socialising.
This focus on alcohol can cause a lot of barriers for people to access social spaces, whether they can’t drink, don’t want to drink, and/or don’t want to be around others who are drinking. We aim to dismantle the idea that to socialise as a queer person you need to be around alcohol. With QFT we hope to create a regular, accessible, and easy space that allows people to do that.
What are the biggest challenges of keeping QFT going? Hosting and cooking for up to 100 queer people monthly presents a unique set of obstacles, we’ve had 3 venue changes in a little over a year due to the rarity of spaces that can host and cater for everyone at a low enough cost. And when these venues exist they often have a bar or are a fair distance away from the centre of Manchester making them unsuitable for our purposes. We are very fortunate to have the support of Partisan a community space in Manchester which is where we are currently based.
Follow @queerfamilytea on Instagram to get involved!
“Coming out” (and out and out) at Work
How many times have you "come out"? “Coming out” is not a one-off experience. For many queer people living in a cis-heteronormative society it’s something that happens over and over again, almost every day. There’s always an initial, underlying assumption that you’re both straight and cisgender, that you fit into the default categories defined for you, and that you do not differ from social expectations in any way.
Risk versus benefit analysis 🧐 When meeting someone new, there is a constant and active choice to make: to take the time to correct assumptions and live authentically, or prioritise your safety by letting the assumption go unchecked. To “come out” again, or to let it slip.
Each time I hold my partner’s hand on the street I’m making a decision to come out to those around us. Every time I meet a new colleague or client and give my pronouns, that’s also a form of coming out. Even down to the choice to include my pronouns in my email signature, it’s a constant process of evaluating the risk vs benefit of being open about who I am.
The problem with Andrew Scott's red carpet interview 😬
What happened? At the BAFTAs red carpet event, a BBC reporter asked actor Andrew Scott if he had seen friend and fellow Irish actor, Barry Keoghan in the notable nude dance scene in Saltburn.
What's the problem? At first the question seemed innocent, if slightly immature. What then made the interview unprofessional, and then subsequently propel the clip to viral status, was the specificity of the question. Namely, asking whether Andrew Scott had seen the size of Barry Keoghan’s genitals and can furthermore interpret whether a prosthetic was used in the movie.
Eddie's Take
Unfortunately, these kinds of questions are no surprise to gay men. It confirms what we suspect non-gay people constantly see us as, vapid predators who are unable to see nudity as anything other than sexual; that non-gay people are so perplexed by our sexuality; that our sexuality is all we are. I doubt the reporter would have asked a straight actor the same question?
If he had actually seen Andrew Scott’s film All of Us Strangers, he may have been able to understand how tone-deaf his questions were. The film highlights the endless difference that gay men feel long after coming out, even today. To use a quote from the film: “Things are better now. Of course they are, but it doesn’t take much to make you feel the way you felt before.”
Eddie, Customer Success Consultant
THIS WEEK WE'RE LOVING ✨
😈 A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history
🍿 BFI Flare is here, London's LGBTQIA+ Film Festival