J from Caerphilly: being queer, being Welsh
Hi, I'm J, 23, from Caerphilly. I work for the Bath-based queer horror company Reel Life Monsters! Thank you to It Gets Better UK for interviewing me.
This interview is part of our LGBTQ+ Stories of Wales collection - curated by, with, and for Wales' LGBTQ+ community. See more of the collection here, and submit your own contribution here.
Welsh identity and queer identity: do you feel a sense of Welsh pride, and/or a sense of LGBT+ pride? How do these come together?
I feel that Wales is underrepresented in the UK as a whole, and I feel like as an asexual person, there are a lot of similarities there. Both of these things feel very connected to me, in my mind.
I can’t really put it into words but to me there’s always been a connection with being queer and asexual and being Welsh in the UK. Asexuality doesn’t tend to get as much representation in the LGBTQ+ community as well. The online ace community has found a number of metaphors to describe the experience of being ace, and they become ‘symbols’, in-jokes really, like garlic bread, cake and even dragons.These community in-jokes show how we are always looking for representation and people to understand our experience.
So in terms of feeling Welsh and ace pride, I feel as though we are a small community but we feel the need to be a lot louder to be heard. Any kind of representation in the media, the ace community really jumps on and gets excited, and that’s the same with Welsh people in the media. Get into central Cardiff when the rugby’s on and you know what I mean. Smaller communities have to be really loud and proud to get that representation.
How do you cope living in a queerphobic world?
This is something I’ve put a lot of thought into recently. When I was a teenager I remember feeling very down about being queer, which happens very rarely now. I never felt like I had any internalised homophobia, but I have had moments where I felt depressed because I feared the inequality I would encounter by just being me. I cannot change who I am, but because of who I am, I knew there were countries I’d never be able to go to, and I didn’t like to be the object of political debates either. That was hard to deal with. Me being gay just sitting on the sofa and minding my own business shouldn’t be the cause for debate - no one should have problems with me just existing.
The thing I like to cling to is queerness in nature. Queerness existing in nature is such a comfort, because no one minds that there are gay birds. There are people in the world who are homophobic and hateful and you know what the birds are going to do? Build their nest. These are people's problems. The birds are preoccupied with where they’re going to get their worms, and that’s what I like to focus on. The whole world is full of queerness, we’re surrounded by it. People having problems with other people’s lives is so insignificant with that perspective, we’ve just got to focus on our own lives and building our own ‘nests’.
Human beings can never agree on anything. I think people in Caerphilly are so much more blunt with their homophobia - in Bath, where I live now, people are much more backhanded with it. I prefer people being blunt, it’s easier to challenge. Is one conversation going to change someone's mind? Not really.
I’m on my way to a queer horror film, filled with queer people, and then I’m going to go home to my very gay partner, and we’re going to curl up and watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, which is such a different world to the random homophobe on the street. And there’s no point in comparing the two because it's ships passing in the night, it’s not personal. There’s no point in making yourself exhausted from other people’s bad opinions when you can fill your life with people who do care about you.
How do you make a difference, small or big?
Initially, my response to this question was feeling like I don’t feel like I make a big difference, I’m not into activism as much as I could be. I don’t do a lot of protests or marches, I’m a tad too sensitive for that. So I donate to the odd charity, but I’ve not got a lot of money to myself so I can’t do that when I’m in my overdraft already.
And then, I realised, of course I make a difference! I help run a queer horror festival that’s completely one of a kind. It runs year round, which is completely unique, and having an openly queer event is like, huge - I don’t know why that never occurred to me that that is queer activism.
I think it feels so natural, and that realisation is a bit of positivity, because if I never realised that I was doing activism, I think that shows just how easy it can be. I think we always think of activism as difficult to do. Something you actively have to put in effort and kick up fuss. But that’s no
t the case, I can just do what I want to do and that can have a positive impact on the community, and that’s extremely lovely to know.
The small things often get overlooked in the conversation of queer activism, it feels like big things need to happen to matter. But for me the small things are ten times more helpful. You can organise a big march and that’s way out of my comfort zone. But I would go to a small little film event, and that’s what I can do for the community. One small drop of rain doesn’t cause a flood, it’s all about community, what you can do by being yourself.
Thank you to J for sharing your story!
If you are interested in contributing your own story to our collection, you can share videos or written contributions to info@itgetsbetter.org.uk. You can find our story collection on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or podcast, and here on our blog.
