DIVA DICTUM
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
EDITOR’S LETTER
It’s Sunday night at HearHer in Dorset, and musician Toya Delazy has closed the festival in spectacular style, leaving 500 jaws on the floor with a spellbinding set. Everyone is on the dancefloor, there’s an Electric Slide happening, and I’m laughing so hard I think I might have broken something. As the music stops, we come together in a sweaty embrace, and it feels as if the room is vibrating with joy. What a contrast from a few days before, when – yards from the DIVA office – a colleague and I were called “dirty lesbian whores” by a man in a white van, egged on by two friends beside him. It’s not the first time I’ve been subjected to verbal abuse. I’ve had every disgusting name you can think of spat in my direction by men in cars, men in vans, men next door, clearly shaken by my existence. Sorry about me. But never before have I reported it. I guess that’s what low self-esteem and internalised homophobia will do to a person.