What happens when we win? The story of gay liberation | Simon Fanshawe OBE | TEDxBrighton

Simon looks back over the history of being gay in Brighton and how the battles have changed as victories have been won and what happens when gays become "citizens" rather than "a minority."

Simon co-founded Stonewall, the UK lesbian and gay lobby and has recently co-founded The Kaleidoscope Trust which supports LGBTI activists abroad. He was an award-winning comic for ten years, Chair of Sussex University for six, has been a journalist and columnist for several national newspapers, broadcasts regularly and seven years ago co-founded Diversity by Design, the ground-breaking consultancy, that works with organizations in original ways to make real progress in diversifying staff rather than just talking about it.

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

I'd like to talk to you
about what happens to who we are

when we start to win.

I'm going to use the example
of gay liberation,

but I want to make a bigger point.

What happens to how we identify

when, as in our case,

you go from being illegal
to being in the closet, to being married?

And why does that matter
in today's politics?

Now, Brighton has always been
a fabulous home for gay people.

Brighton is a city that's half made up
of people who ran away

and half made up
of the people who took us in.

And the history of being gay
has always been, for hundreds of years,

the history of running away.

And we ran away,

we ran away to the seaside
and the seasonal employment

and the hundreds of soldiers that were
billeted here during the Napoleonic wars.

(Laughter)

And we ran away to the fashionable
permissiveness of the Prince Regent,

and together with other people,
we created a city of difference.

We made Brighton into a stick of rock,

but a stick of rock that didn't say
the same thing all the way through.

But we were illegal.

It was only in 1835,

which is five years after
the Prince Regent died,

that the last person in England
was hanged for sodomy.

And our -

But life carried on,

you know?

Gay life flourished in Brighton.

On the surface, so suburban,

but underneath, at dark,

life veered dangerously and unpredictably

between sex and love
and violence and prison and arrests.

And our gay identity was forged

as we internalized that criminality
and that rejection by society.

Our solidarity was born
not out of something positive,

but out of oppression by a cruel world.

It's not easy to feel too proud
about who you are

when you're forced
to live your lives in the shadows.

And then, 1967 happened.

I know it was only
partial decriminalization,

but suddenly, we weren't illegal.

We could be visible,

and visibility is pretty much
all gay people have got, politically.

It is the big difference
between being gay and being black,

as if you're black,
you don't have to tell your mother.

(Laughter)

And so we started to campaign,

we started to argue for what we wanted.

And the thing about solidarity
movements in their early days

is that they're well-served
by solidarity.

Our differences are submerged

under the shared experience
of the insult to our liberty.

We know exactly
who we are and what we want.

So when the twelve of us started
Stonewall in the late '80s,

we were really clear
about what we were campaigning for.

We wanted equality, pure and simple.

We just wanted to be treated equally,
under the law, with everybody else.

And as we fought these battles,
something strange started to happen.

We started to win,

not only first in the court
of public opinion -

I can't remember how many times

we lost the vote on the age
of consent in Parliament,

but I coined at the time
this rather Maoist-sounding phrase,

which was, "Every defeat is a victory."

Because every time we lost, nonetheless,

ordinary members of the public
were won round

to the simple justice of our cause.

And then we started to win legally.

So the age of consent was equalized at 16.

So then, we did gain the ability
to foster and adopt children.

And then, the military ban,

the ban on lesbians and gays
serving in the armed forces, was lifted.

And that gave rise
to some fantastic arguments.

I remember once being
in a television studio

with a very senior military man,

who said to me, "We can't possibility have
homosexual soldiers in the army

because the other soldiers will be forced
to share the showers with them,

and that will make them feel
nervous and anxious."

And I remember saying to him at the time,

"Look, if what makes you feel
nervous and anxious

is another guy thinking
you've got a really cute butt,

I'm not sure the army is the job for you."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

So we started to win,

and as we won these legal battles,

then there were more gay pop stars
and politicians and journalists

and the occasional business person
and sportsperson.

But as we won, something happened
to our coherence as a group.

That coherence started to be accompanied
by a diversity amongst us,

and that diversity was born
of our new freedom.

And that diversity enabled us
not just to be gay

but to pursue our individual
ambitions and aspirations.

So, who had we become?

Our world had fundamentally changed.

Homophobia wasn't over,

but while prejudice was still
an everyday event,

it was no longer an all-day event.

So how had we changed?

Identity in the context of changing
freedoms is a very complicated thing.

What that freedom does is it means

that even though when something
hits you in the face,

metaphorically or literally,

you're still just a pouf.

For the rest of your life,
you're Simon, who's also gay.

And here's the thing:
being gay is not very interesting.

(Laughter)

It just is!

Growing up gay is interesting

because that's the question
about what contribution it makes

to the many-faceted person
that you have become.

So identity in growing freedom
is complicated.

I have a friend who is a judge,

and she is black,

and she sits on the family bench.

Because she sits on the family bench,

in court she's God
because she can take your kids away.

But walking home,

she's just a black woman
on the streets of South London.

She and I have talked about this a lot:

what does being black mean

at all those different parts
of the day and of her life.

Being black is always
absolutely essential to who she is,

but so is being a judge, a barrister,

and so is being Margot.

Now, my husband is Nigerian.

And you know, I still love saying
the word "husband." It's gorgeous.

My husband is Nigerian,

and I'm, you know, British.

And so, he's African and I'm European,
so he's black and I'm white.

And he's religious,
and I'm not religious at all.

In fact, he's a Muslim,
and I am definitely not a Muslim.

And we're 26 years apart,
and whenever I tell people that,

they always say the same thing.

They say, "How do you deal
with the age gap?"

(Laughter)

But those are just our headlines.

As anybody who's in a relationship
or been in a relationship knows,

the real journey is not just
understanding the headlines,

but it's understanding each other

as two different, separate,
individual human beings.

It's exploring our differences
that bring us together,

and it's sharing our values
that keep us together.

And my fear at the moment

is that when we overfocus
on identity politics,

it drives us into a political dead end.

Because people are using their identity
to form their politics,

but then, dangerously, they're using
their identity to defend those views

and invalidate any challenge
to those views from anybody else.

We're living in what I call
the "as a" phase of politics:

"as a gay man," "as a black woman,"
"as a person with disabilities" -

"As a middle-class wanker."

(Laughter)

(Clapping coming from the audience)

Don't clap too much, please.

(Laughter)

It's my sister.

(Laughter)

Or it's my husband, I think.

(Laughter)

"As a" is used to make people's politics,

but it's then used to repel any challenge.

When Donald Trump banned trans people
from serving in the armed forces,

it wasn't about trans people.

He was playing to his base.

He was just using trans people

as the latest political punchbag.

But too many people took the bait,

and in defending trans rights,
they diverted the argument.

The point of the campaign wasn't to argue
about the ins and outs and ups and downs

and whether-or-not-bes
of trans people serving in the army.

The issue at stake was
that the president of the United States,

the commander-in-chief,

was banning a group of citizens from one
of the fundamentals of citizenship,

which is the opportunity to volunteer
to serve in defense of your country.

I saw a guy protesting it,
and he had a placard,

and on the placard, it said,
"Pro trans rights, anti-war."

And I thought, "How egotistical!"

"This isn't about
what you think about war."

That's getting in the way,
that's stopping us mounting a campaign,

a huge alliance of people
around the idea of citizenship,

and fighting Donald Trump's attack
on the very idea of citizenship itself.

If we're going to find a way
of creating utopia,

we have to find a way
like we did with Stonewall.

We won because we made alliances.

We won because we convinced people,

our mothers and fathers
and brothers and sisters

and uncles and aunts and cousins
and colleagues and friends and neighbors.

We convinced people of a vision

of a country in which all of us,
them and us, could be equal,

a country which was not
just a gay country,

not still a straight country,

but a country in which equality
flourished for all of us.

The historic imperative
of politics at the moment

is for us to reach across boundaries

so we can unite around a principle
which the vast majority of us agree on.

It is not to strengthen
the sectional interests of the tribes,

but to build alliances between them
in the greater good.

And it's complicated.
Identity is complicated.

When people say to me -
Sorry, correction -

When white people say to me,

"Oh, I don't see race;
I just treat everybody equally,"

I say to them,

"If you don't see race,
you're really missing out on something."

But if you only see race,
you're also missing out on something.

And that's true whether
you're talking about race,

or sexual orientation, or gender,

or any of the other big identity groups.

In my life, I'm Simon,

I'm gay,

I'm a citizen,

and those things overlap and intersect.

And if we're going to build a utopia,

we need to seek to understand
each other's lives

and each other's experiences
and each other's differences

in order to collaborate to build a society
that we all can live in.

If the personal really is the political,

then we need to see difference,
value difference,

understand difference
and embrace difference,

of individuals and of groups,

in order to build a world
that's fit for all of us.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)