Unlike so many pride spaces, UK Black Pride felt authentically queer. Seeing Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens taken over by LGBTQ+ people of colour felt not only like an act of transgression against heteronormativity and the violence inherent in it, but also a total rejection of the scopophilic and threatening gaze of whiteness. And perhaps most importantly, it was joyful. It was genuinely empowering to see a community of people that otherwise have to expend so much energy on worrying about how to navigate space, just channelling that energy into having a good time.
Against the binary: imagining a future of holding my chest high
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Against the binary: finding home in my intergenerational queer family
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‘The day Ghana’s anti-LGBTQI+ bill is passed, I will be in jail’
Against the binary: finding joy in myself and the freezing cold sea
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