The power and tension of authenticity | Fergal McFerran | TEDxStormont

"Bring true to yourself" is an easy thing to say, but often a much more difficult thing to do. As a young gay man in Northern Ireland, Fergal McFerran knows that LGBT people are experts at editing themselves in particular situations or scenarios. Each and every day, we all make decisions about the version of ourselves that is presented to those around us. In this talk, drawing on his personal experiences, he will reflect on what it means to be true to yourself, and the power and tension that come from living authentically.

Fergal McFerran is 27 years old and works for Stonewall, Europe’s largest LGBT rights organization. From Dunloy, in North Antrim, he moved to Belfast in 2010 where he studied Theology at Queen’s University before graduating in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Before working for Stonewall, Fergal served as President of NUS-USI, the body which represents students in higher and further education in Northern Ireland between 2015 – 2017. His time in office was a politically charged one; during his term he was responsible for the student movement’s response to two Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union and a UK General Election.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

In 2015,

at the age of 23,

I had what I consider still today

to be one of the single
most profoundly intense

and equally terrifying
experiences of my life.

I’d returned to Belfast

after having been in work
in London for a few days,

and I decided that the next morning
I’d make the journey back home.

So I got up,

I made the way to the train station

and I got on a train in Belfast
and got off in Ballymoney.

And no, being in Ballymoney
is neither the terrifying

nor the intense part of the story.

(Laughter)

But my brother was waiting for me,

and I got in the car and we made
the drive back to the family home,

where my mom and dad
were surprised to see me.

I hadn’t told them that I would be there.

And the moment that followed
probably only lasted for a few minutes,

but at the time,
it felt like hours were passing.

And in that moment, I told my parents
something that had been consuming me.

In that moment, I told
my parents that I was gay.

Now,

I was met by a response of nothing
but unconditional love and acceptance.

And to this day,

it was the greatest sense of relief
I’ve ever experienced.

It felt like a physical weight
being lifted from my shoulders.

And I remain conscious of two things:

the first, that not everyone
is as lucky as I am

from the response that they get
from their loved ones when they come out,

and the second, that up until that point,
and even in moments since,

I’ve led an existence of variations of me.

And it’s funny,

because despite knowing, really knowing,
in my head and in my heart,

that my family loved me

and that of course
they'd accept me for who I am,

it was the world around me

that had told me to expect
a very different response.

LGBT people are conditioned
to expect the worst,

while holding on to a little bit
of hope for the best.

When we think about
the experiences of LGBT people -

I now work for Europe’s
largest LGBT rights organization.

I often joke that that allows me to say
that I’m a professional homosexual now.

(Laughter)

That doesn’t mean there are amateurs;
it just means I’m better at it.

(Laughter)

But the reality is
that in every new interaction,

with every new job or every new boss,

with every new colleague,
in every new social situation,

or in every new introduction
to a friend of a friend,

LGBT people make decisions.

We make conscious, pragmatic decisions
about who knows what.

We make split-second assessments
about what we disclose.

And I’m not talking about
anything particularly intricate.

I’m talking about things that are
everyday interactions for other people.

If I get into a taxi and the driver asks,
“What are you getting up to this weekend?”

do I say, "I’m going for dinner
with my boyfriend"?

If I do, do I say
“boyfriend” or “partner”?

If I say “partner,” is that as obvious
as saying “boyfriend”?

So if I choose not to say anything at all,
what do I have to make up instead?

You might be surprised

by how often we go through these things
in our head and in our life

because the world around us
has told us to expect the worst.

But when I came out,

that sense of relief

was one of the single most empowering
feelings I’ve ever experienced.

And so, I want you to imagine

if the choices we face on a daily basis
range from being entirely open and honest,

and the vulnerability
that comes with that

to offering a redacted
or edited version of ourselves,

to withholding our truth entirely,

are any of those things
more or less authentic than each other?

Probably.

But I want you to imagine

what it must be like to be faced
with those choices every single day

for an individual.

I want you to imagine
what it must feel like

to be faced with those choices
every day of every week

of every month of every year

for an entire community of people.

Earlier this year,

the UK government published the findings
of the first-ever national LGBT survey.

Spoiler alert: it was pretty grim reading.

Around a quarter of all LGBT people

have accessed some kind
of mental health support service

over the course of the last year.

Forty percent have experienced an incident

of something like either
verbal harassment or physical violence

in that same period.

Over two-thirds have said

that they have avoided holding the hand
of their same-sex partner

for fear of the response
that they will receive.

That is still our lived reality today.

But what can you do

other than continuing to be
decent human beings?

Well, I want to tell you another story,

and it might seem a bit odd,
but there’s a point to it, I promise.

I want to take you back
to November 3, 2008,

the night before
the US presidential election.

The then soon-to-be president,

Barack Obama,

was addressing his final rally

before votes would be cast
the following morning.

And with the crowd gathered
in front of him in Virginia,

he recounted a story
of an experience he’d had

at a much earlier stage of his campaign.

He talked about getting in his car
with his staff really early one morning,

in the pouring rain,

to make a trip to an isolated part
of South Carolina.

He was in a bad mood.

They arrived.

It was an hour and a half
away from anywhere else.

And when they arrived at the venue
and opened the doors,

lo and behold,

there was about 20 people
there to greet him,

a small crowd.

But Obama is a professional.

He smiled, he shook hands,
he made his way around the room,

and as he was doing that,
he heard a voice from behind him.

“Fired-up!” the voice said.

“Ready to go!” it continued.

And Obama turned around,
confused, of course,

and saw that the origin of this voice
was a small, slightly older lady

wearing what he called a big church hat.

And Obama looked at her,
and she looked at him,

and she smiled and continued.

“Fired-up!” she said to the room.

“Ready to go!” she continued.

And to his surprise,
the room responded to her.

At this point, he looked at his staff
and the staff looked at him,

and they all shrugged their shoulders
as they had no idea what was going on.

But as this continued -

“Fired-up!” the crowd responded,

“Ready to go!” they responded again -

Obama admitted he was starting
to feel fired-up.

By the end, as this went on
for a few minutes,

his mood had gone and he felt ready to go.

And the point of that story,
for anyone who follows US politics,

you’ll know that that had an influence
in how Obama engaged with his crowds,

with his rallies,

and he learned lessons to keep
in his toolbox for further campaigns.

But there’s another point to that story,

because at that rally,
the night before the election,

he told the crowd in Virginia
that that woman taught him something.

That little woman with the big church hat

taught him that there’s
power in one voice,

that if one voice can change a room,
then one voice can also change a city.

And he said if one voice
could change a city,

it could also change a state;

and if one voice can change a state,

it can also change a nation.

And Obama believed that if one voice
could change a nation,

then one voice could
also change the world.

And so, I want you to think
about authenticity,

and I want you to think about the scale
of the challenges that we face today,

both locally but also
as a global community.

And I want you to imagine:

imagine a world where
people aren’t conditioned

to expect the worst.

Imagine a world where people don’t need
to be given permission to be themselves.

We’re not there yet.

Arguably, we’re quite far
from being there.

But what if the voices
that we’re not currently hearing

are the ones that could help us to deal
with the challenges that we face today?

What if the voices
that we’re not currently hearing

are of the people who are most impacted
by the challenges that we face today?

Because then we all have a responsibility.

We all have a responsibility
to elevate those voices.

And it’s fitting that we’re here today,

in this building, in Stormont,

in the home of power-sharing,

because that is exactly
what I want to ask of you today.

When you leave,
when you return to your life,

I want you to take stock
of the power that you hold.

I want you to reflect
upon the spaces that you occupy,

where you have power
and authority and influence.

And in those spaces,
I want you to make space.

I want you to elevate the voices
of the people that we hear from the least.

Because here’s my hope:

that if we believe that one voice
can change a room,

imagine the possibility of that one voice
that can also change the world.

Thank you.

(Applause)