Amelia Abraham - Queer Intentions: A (personal) journey through LGBTQ+ culture

A (personal) journey through LGBTQ+ culture

For Emily, and my grandmother, Doreen

From LGBT to LGBTQIA+, there are lots of ways of referring to our community. I have decided to use LGBTQ+ throughout this book as an inclusive shorthand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other identity categories like intersex and asexual. That said, mainly in the Istanbul chapter, I have used the term LGBTI because this is what is generally used locally. Elsewhere, I have stayed true to my interviewees acronyms of choice within their quotes. When I am speaking about a specific subsection of the LGBTQ+ community I have named this subsection. Similarly, I have used the word queer where relevant, either as an umbrella term for the identities that fall under LGBTQ+, or to refer to a more radically politicized sector of the LGBTQ+ community. I hope this usage becomes obvious in context.

A note on pronouns: I have used the pronouns that my interviewees asked me to use at the time of writing. I acknowledge that these may have changed, or might still.

And finally, on a couple of occasions names or other minor details have been changed to protect privacy.

Thank you to my agent, friend and life coach, Emma Paterson, and my editor Kris Doyle at Picador, as well as everyone else at Picador who lent their expertise, particularly Grace Harrison. Thanks to Emily, Natasha Bloor and Bryony White for being my first readers, and so generous with your time.

To Sarah Raphael, Kate Ward, Christene Barberich and Gillian Orr at Refinery29 for your support and mentorship. To the editors at Vice who taught me so much when I started, and later, Nosheen Iqbal at the Guardian, Hanna Hanra at i-D, Sam Wolfson at Vice and Alice Casely-Hayford at Vogue for the work that allowed me to support myself while writing this. Plus my colleagues at Dazed and Dazed Beauty who have been very encouraging and understanding.

Id like to thank everyone who let me sleep on their sofa or in their spare room after Iceland Tessa, Kirsty, Ella, Kate and big sis Hannah Philp and when I was writing and researching this book: mad aunts Debbie and Joanne, and Alix, Lottie, Madde and Patrick I owe you.

Also, a huge thanks to my unofficial fixers; Masa Milutinovic and Jovana Netkovi from Vice Serbia, and Cathy Renna in New York. In Turkey, Louise Callaghan (Id never tell you to your face but Im in awe of you), as well as the incredibly kind and brilliant Ekim Aun.

To Gays Aloud for teaching me how to be gay: Zara Toppin, Zoe Marden, Samuel Douek, Bryony Stone, Hannah Hopkins, Luke Ferris, Fiontan Moran and Rafaela De Ascanio Hughes. Then, of course, to my loves Tom Rasmussen and Amrou Al-Kadhi. Im so proud of both of you (and highly recommend your books to anyone reading this). And to the divine goddess Paris Lees, for always giving great advice, whether or not I asked for it!

It also feels important here to thank Professor John Howard, who first taught me what queer studies was and who has remained a dear friend, Amin Ghaziani for your kindness and for informing the way that I think about things, and Michael Warner, Sarah Schulman and Jack Halberstam for your work, which has been a massive influence.

Id like to thank Claire, Lyss, Fiona, Lottie, Jenna, Nat, Sara, Poppy and Trew for your support over the years, and Sasha, Penny and Alice. Plus, of course, my family: my father Steve Abraham, my mother Martine, my stepmother Tessa, and my brother and sister, the lovely Harry and Stella.

And finally, Id like to thank everyone in the book for sharing their stories.

The original Lady Marmalade was written in 1974 by duo Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan. The lyrics quoted on page 146 are from the 2001 cover version, recorded for the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmanns Moulin Rouge!, by Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, Ma, and Pink, and produced by Missy Elliott and writing partner Rockwilder. The lyrics from Vogue quoted on page 230 were written by Madonna Ciccone and Shep Pettibone.

Some small sections of this book appear courtesy of Refinery29 UK and Vice UK, where they were first published; my thanks to them both.

chapter one

On 29 March 2014, forty-seven years after homosexuality was partially decriminalized in Britain, same-sex marriage was legalized, making England and Wales the sixteenth and seventeenth countries in the world to adopt the law. The night before, I was sent on my second proper reporting job. I had to go to one of the UKs first gay weddings and write about what it meant for the LGBTQ+ community.

For many people, marriage was a watershed moment in gay rights: the final frontier in gaining equality, the ultimate public symbol that gay people were recognized as being just like everyone else. I also knew the counter-arguments. That it was too little too late. That marriage was a trivial pit stop on the way to actual equality, which should improve the lives of all LGBTQ+ people, whether they wanted to get married or not. That queerness is supposed to be radical, whereas marriage is in many ways the ultimate institution, something to submit or conform to. The queer theorist Lisa Duggan famously described it as a political sedative, sarcastically suggesting that first we get marriage and the military, and then we go home and cook dinner, forever.

Personally, I wanted to have the choice to get married as an LGBTQ+ person, but I didnt want to take it. My reservations were a combination of Duggans ideas and the fact that I thought of marriage as a horribly sexist institution. Until the late nineteenth century in Britain, a man marrying a woman meant she was his property under the legal doctrine of coverture. But while I didnt necessarily believe in marriage, I did believe in weddings. Weddings are great. Theyre a positive affirmation of our ability to love one another, a place where you can start drinking before midday, and an opportunity to eat a delicious meal that has been pre-paid for. The couple whose wedding I was being sent to, Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway, were extremely accommodating on this front; they invited me to watch them get ready at home, then to attend the ceremony and the after party too. The exchanging of vows was to take place at midnight because that was when the law would formally come into effect; Sean and Sinclair would be racing a few other couples around the UK to get there first.

Sean and Sinclair had met on the gay hook-up app Grindr in 2013. They were both in Los Angeles at the time, and arranged to meet at Seans hotel for drinks the Beverly Wilshire, which, coincidentally, is the one from Pretty Woman. Sean, a thirty-two-year-old TV producer from the UK, was on a business trip to LA, where Sinclair, then twenty, was living as a student. Sinclair was downtown for his aunt and uncles wedding anniversary dinner, but when he saw Seans profile picture, and learned that he was from London (Sinclair had always found the British accent sexy), he knew he had to skip out early. He knocked on Seans door late at night and they ordered room service, fooled around and talked until daylight. They told me it wasnt like other Grindr hook-ups, where you usually just fuck the person and leave. It was romantic.

Two nights later, they met up again, and things were the same, only more intense and this time there was more sex. In the morning, Sean had to fly back to the UK and their relationship moved from Grindr over to Facebook, Skype and iMessage. Sinclair booked a flight to London, but Sean went quiet. Sinclair started to panic; the same panic I would later experience with Salka. He wondered whether he should even make the trip. Was he going to get rejected on the other side of an ocean?