Mike’s poem follows, inspired by Katie O’Pray’s Science and Innovation themed Poetry Workshop – which explored conversion therapy and the nature of conversion, which is still legal in the UK in spite of government pledges to ban it. It was Mike’s birthday the day after.
Birthday Cake
68 candles tomorrow
They wanted to bake me into a white iced birthday cake
Make me happy they said, girlfriend, fiancé, wife to take
Make a hetero family they said
But I am not sugar, sickly sweet, saturated in fat, processed, spat out in creamy soft shapes of gooey supermarket limited colour, processed wife, processed children
I am whole, beautiful and organic
I am gay
I love men and I am happy
Happy when I am accepting the company of people who care, who love me for my bitter sweet unashamed crazy thinking and love
68 candles tomorrow on my organic nut encrusted rainbow cake
LGBT+ history talks
We went to The Higgins Bedford (museum and gallery) hosted, LGBT+ History Month Festival, jointly run by Rainbow Bedfordshire. It focussed this year on science and innovation. A truly wonderful day with LGBT+ community for the rare opportunity of LGBT+ celebration. After Katy O’Pray’s workshop, we listened to some of our LGBT+ history.
Magnus Hirschfield image from Wikipedia
Renna Mitchell gave a a wonderfully researched talk on Magnus Hirschfield, LGBT+ scientist and pioneer, whose work along with the LGBT+ people in Berlin at the time was destroyed by the Nazis.
Pat Moyce from Rainbow Bedfordshire, gave an other great talk on Dr Wenn Lawson, a trans man, who pioneered research on Autism, developing monotropic theory to help, navigate and reshape the world’s response to neurodivergent difference, which otherwise imposes disabling effects of people on the autistic spectrum. They have to navigate a unnecessarily hostile world, often being misdiagnosed as being mentally ill, or having personality disorders. This is an experience of a lot of LGBT+ people have.
Max Fisher – Disability Advocate and Scientist came and shared their experience of the realities of being LGBT+ and disabled in the scientific world and inspired us of how Max overcomes these. It was particularly interesting that scientists, who profess their scientific professionalism, are at least with colleagues, subjective, prejudiced and biased in how they deal with people and we suspect a little too often run research.
Most straight white people will have no idea what it feels like to be excluded from history, as our heroes are not celebrated for what they’ve contributed to the world. Mainly history has highlighted how bad LGBT+ people are, everything else written out and expunged. So it is delightful to have support to celebrate LGBT history month from The Higgins (museum and gallery) Bedford. People of difference are the people who create and make wonderful things happen, and this year the celebration was on contributions to science and innovation.
We know the mainstream view is that LGBT+ are now legally part of an equal rights world in the UK, and these have been hard fought gains. But Renna’s history talk reminded us of how easily, from the tolerant and liberal 1920s Berlin, the Nazis destroyed 12,000 books researching LGBT+ and then went on to systematically kill all known LGBT+ people in German controlled Europe. Mercifully during these atrocities many LGBT+ people would have been hidden and living a false life so not being discovered.
But it has to be said….
Right-wing/authoritarian/populist politics that is gaining hold today, promulgated by billionaires through their owned right wing media, and behind the scenes oligarchy, threatens human rights for all, they just start with the minorities first. History repeats, hopefully LGBT+’s genocidal history doesn’t repeat. But if it does, the LGBT+ community will, as it has always done, fight back; look no further than the Stonewall riots, the mobilisation of the community during the AIDS epidemic, the resistance to draconian legislation such as Section 28 of the Local Government Act in the UK. Organisations such as Rainbow Bedfordshire provide such hope and a safe space for individuals to celebrate their true colours, whatever hue that might be. And appreciation must be given for their hard work and dedication to supporting our cause in these difficult times.