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‘There should be no restriction placed on desire, appearance and behaviour’
Three contributors from Bristol24/7’s Talking LGBT+ Bristol film to tell us what they would change if they had one wish this Pride. The film gives a platform to the LGBT+ community in Bristol and aims to increase visibility and raise awareness of the love, struggle and change that the community has faced.
I would like to see a continuation of what is already slowly happening with the cultural imagination of gender and sexuality in the UK – the broadening of what is considered ‘normal’.
I want a critical lens to be held up to the hegemonic masculinity that has dictated gender and sexuality hierarchies for many centuries which I believe disadvantages all people however they identify.
is needed now More than ever
Although it affects some more than others, the expectations society has affect you, whether you are an LGBT+ person, or not, and so I think my wish would benefit every single member of society.
Already we see people living lives that only a few decades ago would have seemed impossible but we need to move away from identities and binarism, which I believe are inextricably linked to ‘othering’ and discrimination.
I would like more and more people to recognise gender and sexuality as a complex matrix of sociocultural and biological factors and that many characteristics we take to be biological or innate are socially constructed.
Recognising this could lead us all – those who feel part of the LGBTQ+ community and those who do not – to live freer, more authentic lives. There should be no restriction placed on desire, appearance and behaviour. We all need the opportunity for exploration without judgement.
Tom Nutting s a contributor to Talking LGBT+ Bristol and a medical student at the University of Bristol.
Read more: ‘So much has changed since I worked under the cloud of Section 28’
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