Queer Britain
We were lucky to visit London often while we lived in Liverpool. I made sure to visit as many museums and galleries as I could, but because London is such a large and ancient city it was difficult to visit them all.
As I was looking through Google maps I saw a place called Queer Britain. A museum of queer history and life in the UK. I had never heard of something like this, either in the Philippines or in the US.
Queer Britain is the UK’s first and only LGBTQ+ museum. It opened in 2022, and the building’s footprint takes up just a small part of Granary Square north of Central London. Despite its size there’s lots of history inside, and helps you realise all the untold (and suppressed) stories and struggles of human beings that are outside the walls and scope of the museum.
One of the first rooms you see is a wall of messages from museum visitors. It’s entitled “Why is it important for LGBTQ+ people to be seen?” Answers include, “Because when we stand together we are greater than those who oppress us,” “To show how diverse the world is :),” “Para educar e criar um futuro colorido! (Portuguese: To educate and create a colorful future),” “To give courage to queer folks who aren’t ready to be seen yet,” “To rep the flannel shirt!” “We are all human on this planet earth,” “Our stories have been erased, it’s time to shine!” “My vagina does not make me a woman. gender is a construct. xoxo” “Intersex bodies are beautiful,” “Protect Trans Lives!!!” “No Pride in genocide…”
Beginning with the wall is a nice way to remember that the LGBTQ+ community, like all other communities, aren’t a monolith. We’re all human beings who experience various things throughout our lives. For example there isn’t just one kind of Filipino: someone who speaks Filipino, eats adobo every day, and wears Philippine flag jackets – whatever the stereotype may be.
Queer people are as diverse as anybody else. I won’t forget what a fellow artist named Nima based in London said to me, “If you push people down long enough, the automatic reaction for them is to push back up.” People who identify together because of a common suffering or suppression will in fact make themselves known, and push back.
Taking a walk through Queer Britain was an opportunity for me to see Britain’s history that was more than just Roman ruins, royalty, or Egyptian artefacts. I got to see the hidden and ignored history of British people whose stories deserve to be heard and told.
The first photo I saw at the museum was the one below, of the UK’s First openly lesbian MP or Member of Parliament, Maureen Colquhoun. She was outed in 1976 protesting with the Gay Defence Committee after the local Labour party moved to unseat her because of her sexuality and “obsession with trivialities such as women’s rights.” The first male MP to come out as gay would be almost a decade later, Chris Smith in 1984.
This awesome jacket below belongs to Kate Charlesworth, a British cartoonist who has been producing comics and illustrations since the 70’s. The caption read that it actually “belongs” to one of their cartoon characters: “Auntie Studs, ‘an older dyke!” I loved all the campaign badges on the jacket. You can follow their Instagram here.
As I was walking through the room I noticed a man that looked like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. I wondered if it was indeed the actor who played Gandalf, and a welcoming staff member of the museum verified it was indeed Ian McKellen.
I actually had no idea McKellan was gay, so a staff member was nice enough to elaborate further on his participation in the gay rights movement in the UK. McKellen co-founded Stonewall in 1989, an organization that has a long history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It was named after the Stonewall riots that took place in the US after police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in 1969.
UK’s Stonewall was founded in response to British legislation called Section 28, which prohibited the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality in schools, but also essentially stigmatised lesbian, gay, and bi people. In doing so, it galvanised the community and Stonewall was formed. Since then, Stonewall has helped campaign and lobby legislation to end Section 28 in Scotland, England, and Wales, to allow for civil partnerships and marriage for same sex-couples, achieved the right for LGBTQ+ couples to be legally recognised as parents, and LGBTQ-inclusive teaching in schools, among other successes.
On the other side of the room was more clothing, this time provided by the Muslim LGBTQ+ community. Side-by-side stood a rainbow hijab, a camouflage shalwar kameez, and a Palestinian keffiyeh. Behind the mannequins was a photograph of two gay men in kilts getting married in Scotland. I thought this was a nice portrayal of the diverse people who make up the British queer community.
Faizan is an LGBTQ+ Muslim community organiser who founded the UK’s first, and the world’s oldest, LGBTQ+ Muslim organisation, Imaan. Their mother made the hijab and the shalwar kameez, which were worn for the first time at a Pride march in London in 2005.
Since 9/11 back in 2001, being Muslim or of Arab descent has been difficult for people around the world, let alone the US and the UK. To be queer and Muslim, in a religion that for the most part opposes homosexuality like its Christian counterparts, had become even more dangerous.
Faizan shared in this interview that queer Muslims were being stopped by police and facing prejudice, even in gay spaces and Pride marches. Fellow Pride attendants would make comments like, “Oh, didn’t know that terrorists were allowed to march.”
Learn more about being queer and Muslim in Mindanao and abroad, from this article about Mar Nur from Maguindanao.
Meanwhile the photo of two men in kilts features Joe Schofield and Malcolm Brown. They marked the first legal same-sex marriage in Scotland. Equal marriage was legal from 2014 in England, Scotland, and Wales, and 2020 in Northern Ireland.
As many people know, football (or “soccer” in the US) is big in the UK and the rest of the world. What’s ignored by mainstream sports is the first professional footballer to come out as gay. Justin Fashanu was a fierce contender on the pitch (or football field) during the early 80s. He played for England’s top teams, eventually getting signed £1 million with Nottingham Forest, the first British black player to do so. Unfortunately homophobia and ignorance continued to pull him down throughout his career.
Soon after signing with Forest he had a strained relationship with management due to his sexuality. His own brother, also an athlete, offered him £75,000 to “stay in the closet”. After fearing that he would be outed by a national newspaper, Fashanu came out as gay during an interview with The Sun in 1990. This placed him in history, but 8 years later he died by suicide at the age of 37.
Since then his niece started a foundation in his name, which continued to bring awareness to issues in football such as homophobia and suicide. The UK’s biggest football league, the Premier League, has partnered with Stonewall to equip coaches and teachers with resources and programmes that promote positive attitudes towards the LGBT+ community. Despite this, the 2nd professional British footballer to ever come out gay was Jake Daniels, who came out in 2022. This is 30 years after Fashanu came out. Though it may seem there is more acceptance of homosexuality in football, the “ruthless cultures” of English football and the inaction of football’s governing bodies continue to be barriers against more gay professional footballers coming out.
There are so many stories, photos, and memorabilia at Queer Britain that need to be shared. So far the small museum has received about 100,000 visitors since it opened in 2022. If you are ever in London, it is worth a visit. There are new updates in line for the museum as of this writing, including “20 years of UK Black Pride” and the appointment of Elton John as a patron.
Sometime after visiting Queer Britain, our friend Jaz visited us in Liverpool and showed us around the queer quarter. Despite having lived in Liverpool for an entire year, it was our first time there. I asked them if there were similar queer spaces in the Philippines I could visit. They said something that humbled me ever since, “A queer space is wherever a queer person is!”
Queer Britain: 2 Granary Square, London N1C 4BH, UK
Learn about the history and situation of LGBTQIA+ communities in the Philippines with an online workshop from Pinay Collection and Bahaghari, this June 18 or 19, 2025 (depending on your time zone):