A STAGE FOR OUR STORIES
Literature is about exploring and experiencing. It’s about learning and teaching and growing and being inspired, and sometimes it’s about knowing that we’re not alone in the world. What happens when you love to read, but you never get to read stories about people who are like you? You start to believe that your voice, your story, doesn’t matter. You end up feeling like you shouldn’t be who you are. I was in my late 20s before it occurred to me that I could write stories about women and girls who loved other women and girls. Almost the entire world is designed for straight people. And I’m lucky, I’m surrounded by kind, accepting and loving people for whom my identity is not an issue. If the most trying experience I come up against day-to-day is referring to “my partner” and having to correct someone when they ask what “he” does, then I’m endlessly privileged compared to the horrific experiences of other LBTQ women. But what I realised this weekend, is that there’s an insistent pressure there, all the time.
Whether that’s weighing up whether I should out myself to someone new, or whether it’s safe to hold hands with my girlfriend in a public place, or wondering whether I’m going to get to see someone like myself represented in a creative or public sphere, or just making myself a little bit smaller out of fear of someone thinking I’m being a bit too gay (whatever the hell that means). We live with this every day – and many people live with a hell of a lot more. This is the weight we carry, and I didn’t realise just how heavy it was until this weekend. This was the first time I’d ever been in a space inhabited purely by LBTQ women, and for the very first time – it was gone. And it was breathtaking. I listened and laughed and talked and danced, and I cried a little bit as well. I heard the stories of so many courageous, hilarious, fierce women, who are making the world a better place by putting their stories out there. It was a privilege. I can’t even put it into words. Thank you DIVA Literary Festival, and everyone who made it happen – for creating a space where I didn’t have to make myself smaller. KAT H