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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.
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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