Remembering Lyra McKee

Lord Mayor, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends, thank you for coming here this evening. It really is a pleasure to be able to speak here tonight. I’ve said this before but every time I get up in a public space to talk about LGBTQI+ issues, I’m reminded of a time in my life when I thought I would never be able say the words, “I’m gay” out loud. I thought it was a secret that could never come out. Then I came out and fast forward nearly 10 years and I’m now standing in Belfast City Hall, speaking at the opening of LGBTQI+ Awareness Week. They say, “It gets better” – it got better for me and if you’re standing here tonight, questioning or fearing your sexuality, I can tell you what a wise gay man once told me: happiness is at the other side of fear.

So, tonight, I was asked to talk on theme of “visibility”. But what does that word mean? When I was thinking about what I was going to say tonight, I realised that the word “visibility” has so many meanings and connotations. The meaning it holds for me – a cis white gay woman – is very different to the meaning it holds for many other LGBTQI+Q people. If I detect that I’m in a situation with people hostile to my sexuality, I can just choose not to reveal that to them and, unless they know my work well, they’ll probably be oblivious to the fact that they’re talking to a gay woman. On the other hand, a trans person may not have a choice in how they’re perceived by others, especially if they’ve just started transitioning, or they’re unable to transition in the way they need. Visibility – hypervisibility – for other LGBTQI+Q people can be a frightening thing, and it’s up to society to help change that. My decision to be public about my sexuality, to be visible by writing about it, was my choice. Yet if I’d been born in any other body than a white cis one, I wouldn’t have had that choice. I had the choice because I had the privilege that comes with being born white and cis. So it’s important, when you’re listening to me today, to remember that what I have to say comes from a privileged perspective. The stories of other people – of bi people, of queer people, of trans people, of people of colour who are LGBTQI+Q – can be and are very different to mine.

If you’d asked me 2 weeks ago if I was “visible” as an LGBTQI+Q person, I would have said, “Yes, absolutely.” A few years ago, I wrote a story about coming out, called “Letter to my 14-year-old self” which went viral and I actually ended up discussing it on the BBC. My friends joke that I’m actually a closeted straight person, I just can’t come out because I announced I was gay on the Stephen Nolan show. I’ve written about LGBTQI+Q issues and my experience as an LGBTQI+Q person for newspapers, I gave a TEDx talk in Stormont about it last year. So my answer to the question, “Are you visible?” was an emphatic yes – the stable door was left open, the horse has bolted, I’m here, I’m queer, etc etc.

And when I was asked to do this talk, I was told it was because I’m a somewhat “visible” LGBTQI+Q person from Northern Ireland. And then I sat down to actually write this talk and when I started to really think about what it meant to be visible, I remembered an incident that happened just a few weeks ago. And it made me question just how “visible” I really was.

Some months ago, I met the woman of my dreams.  She is incredible. I can confirm that I am most definitely punching above my weight division. And as well as being beautiful and generous and caring and kind, she’s brave. She’s courageous and she is far braver than I have ever been.

She’s also one of the first women I’ve been with who has actually been out of the closet – my ex-girlfriends, who are all lovely people, were mostly not out when I dated them and most of them still aren’t. So I’d never really been asked to engage in any acts of PDA or anything that would identify me, in a public place, around people that I didn’t know, as a gay woman. On one of our first dates, we were walking from a restaurant – I think it might have been somewhere near here – and she went, instinctively, to grab my hand because that’s what people do when they’re mad about someone. And my heart skipped a beat but not in the way good way that it does when I see her coming out of the bus station or when she kisses me or when her name pops up in my notifications on my phone.  My heart skipped a beat because I felt fear. The first thing I did – within 30 seconds, it was like an automatic reflex – was to look around to see who was there, to see if it was safe to hold her hand. And maybe it was but I didn’t feel safe. In that moment, I had to weigh up the cost of holding my girlfriend’s hand in the same way I might weigh up taking a shortcut through a dark alley at night or hopping into a taxi I didn’t recognise. And after 30 seconds, I said to her, “I can’t hold your hand, I don’t know if it’s safe,” and she smiled at me and she understood but my heart broke a little that night. And this scenario has played out so many times throughout the course of our relationship. She goes to hold my hand and I freeze and look around to make sure no one is there and if someone is there, I then play a guessing game where I try to size them up and question whether or not they’re likely to hurt us. When I drop her off back at the bus station at night and we kiss, I worry that someone who is getting on the same bus will see us and harm her and I won’t be there to protect her. That hasn’t happened, thankfully, though she tells me a Translink staff attendant who seen us kissing did give her a wink as she went by him. Sometimes, though, the fears in your head are worse than the reality and the “what ifs?” torture you. I’ve fallen in love with this wonderful woman and I’m afraid to hold her hand in case something bad happens to either one or both of us. I wondered if my straight friends have ever had that fear, if they’ve ever had to second-guess themselves when they hold their other half’s hand walking down the street, and the answer is no, they don’t. You know, I’ve gotten so used to inequality – when you experience so much of it throughout your life, you just learn to get used to it because if you didn’t, you’d be furious all day every day. Yet this cut me.

So then I asked myself, how do we – as a city and as a society – get to a place where people like us can hold our other half’s hand without thinking about it? Without it being dangerous? And I believe the answer lies in that word, “visibility”, and in another word: “normalisation”.  LGBTQI+Q people are often perceived as being “different” when, in reality, we’re just like everyone else. The stories that are told about us are often told by people who don’t know us, by people who are afraid of us. The remedy for this is visibility. When we have a Premiership footballer who is as famous as Wayne Rooney and or as David Beckham or Alan Shearer were and he just happens to be gay, you’ll see a shift in what young straight men think about LGBTQI+Q people because their hero is LGBTQI+Q.  When you have a UFC fighter with legions of straight fans but who himself just happens to be bisexual, the same thing will happen. You can be an LGBTQI+Q role model but you can also be a role model who is LGBTQI+Q. The more straight people see LGBTQI+Q people on their TV screens, their doorsteps, their bookshelves, the more “normal” LGBTQI+Q people will become to them. And so seeing us holding hands in the street will no longer be an oddity. So we need LGBTQI+Q people and their allies to become visible, to take their place in the mainstream – in business, politics, sports, publishing, entertainment, technology – across industries.

To do that, though – to make LGBTQI+Q people more visible – we need to create a massive funnel of LGBTQI+Q people climbing career ladders. And that is where we run our biggest obstacle.  When I was thinking about this, I realised how difficult it is just  for them to get a foot in the door of an industry, never mind to the top of it.. In general, it’s incredibly hard for people from disenfranchised groups – whether they be female, LGBTQI+Q, a person of colour – to get their start because it’s not about what you know. It’s who you know. And the people who can make or break you in an industry are often white cis straight people because they hold so many of the key jobs. And of course most of our allies are white cis straight people and they’re fantastic – I’m not meaning to have a go at that group –  but the problem is that people tend to promote or collaborate with the people in their networks and their networks tend to be made up of people that look like them. And this becomes a barrier to people from diverse backgrounds. To give an example, I heard a literary agent give a very honest interview where she admitted that she tended to get most of her clients by being introduced to them by somebody else but the problem was that her network was overwhelmingly white and so the writers that were recommended to her were usually white too.

In the last two months, I signed two book deals – one with a local publisher and another with one in London. My London book deal happened, as far as I can tell, because my literary agent sent my book proposal to an editor who just happened to share an office with a close work colleague whose parents were from Northern Ireland. So I had someone with connections to here who got what I was trying to do and understood why the book could work. I had a literary agent  because an editor I’d worked with in London – an absolutely lovely woman – had bumped into him at an event and he had just happened to complain about the fact that all his clients kept immigrating to America and she said, “I know somebody whose stranded in Belfast” and that was how I got signed to the agency. I met that editor because around 3-4 years ago, I was invited to speak at a journalism conference in London and she saw me speak and asked me to pitch her an idea for a story. Luck has been a deciding factor in my career. I worked very hard and I didn’t come from money – I grew up in a single parent family – but I spent years trying to get a literary agency to represent me or a publisher to look at my work and it wasn’t until I had the connections that things started to happen. And that scares me because I know people far more talented than me – LGBTQI+Q people and people of colour especially – who haven’t had the lucky break they need yet because they just haven’t met the person who can make the right introduction for them.

So how do we get round this? How do we promote LGBTQI+Q people and those from other disenfranchised groups and get them into positions of visibility? Well, there’s exceptions to every rule – and so there are LGBTQI+Q people  who’ve managed to get the door open or to climb up the ladder. And if you’re someone whose managed to do that, I believe you have a responsibility – to proactively identify talented people from within the community and pull them up the ladder with you.  A victory for one should be a victory for all. For me, it means looking out for writers who need a lucky break because the publishing world tends to operate on introductions and recommendations – and if you’re a writer in this room tonight and you’re trying to get a publisher or agent, please do come see me afterwards.

With every success you have, you need to ask, “How do I pay this forward? How do I promote someone I know?” Remember, there are layers of privilege – if you’re an LGBTQI+Q person who is white, you are automatically in a better position than your peers who are not. If you’re gay, you’re probably in a better position than your trans friends. So if you’re an LGBTQI+Q person advancing in an industry – and I know we have some amazing LGBTQI+Q people in the room tonight who are making waves in their respective worlds –  then take stock of the privilege you have and how it puts you at an advantage compared to your peers and then ask yourself how you can use it for good. We can’t help that we’re born with privilege but while we try to dismantle it and even the playing field for everyone, we can put it to good use.  And if you’re an LGBTQI+Q ally, even better – because if you’re a white cis straight person, you have even more power and privilege which you can also use on behalf of others.

Thank you for your time and thank you for listening to me talk, hope you have a safe journey home