 Welcome everyone. It's a shame I can't see your faces, but thank you so much for joining today for this very special event, and I'm really grateful for everyone's time, because I know how busy everyone is at the start of Pride Month. So welcome everyone to a SOAS special celebrating 50 years of radical gay pride in Britain, not Pride in London Corporation, which we shall delve into, a special SOAS event celebrating African Asian and Middle Eastern contributions to queer London. We have got an amazing list of speakers for you tonight. First of all, my name is Dan. I'm an activist with the Gay Liberation Front alongside our favourite troublemaker Ted here. And I was a tour guide with queer tours of London and Minstons time, where I went through the way and just decided to spend my life writing about queer London. And I'm going to be back in London very soon to actually live it rather than just write about it. I want to introduce you to our speakers, but before I do that, I'm just going to say what the running order is. And please, if everyone's got any questions, put them in the Q&A chat box or the chat box, I'll check both. If I'm going too fast, if anything needs repeating or anything, if you need any clarity, please don't hesitate to ask any questions at any time. This is our special two hours to explore many sides of London, which never get told enough. And I'm really excited to learn with everyone. So the running order is I'm going to read everyone's biographies. So a short film about the 50th anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front two years ago, which led to the 50th anniversary of the first radical gay pride this year on July 1. And I really hope everyone can join us on the steps of Sir Martin's in the Field Church in Trafalgar Square at 1pm Friday, July 1, where Ted and other icons who started it are going to recreate the route and tell us what mischief they got on the way 50 years back in 1972. So I'm going to start with a video, then Ted from the Gay Liberation Front, then Marwan, then Chiwan and Jamie, and then Asif. And everyone's, I'm going to read everyone's biography. Marwan Cabor is a Beirut-born London-based graphic designer, visual artist and founder of Taquir, a bilingual online platform and archive exploring queer narratives on history and popular culture. Marwan was formerly senior direct designer at Barnbrook, where he designed the much celebrated Rihanna book, as well as a wide portfolio of projects ranging from exhibition design, book design, marketing campaigns, branding and art direction. He has worked with some of the world's most exciting cultural institutions and publishers, including Faidon, ArtBuzzle, V&A Media, Hemsdon Hudson, Serpentine Galleries, Hayward Gallery, Somerset House and South London Gallery. In 2020 Marwan established his independent design practice. Thank you for joining us Marwan. And from Queer China UK, I'm going to have to tell me off of not pronouncing your name right, Chiwen, who has eight years of experience in activism, community building and empowerment. Chiwen established Queer China UK after realising the intersectional invisibility of the Chinese LGBTQ plus community. Jamie also from Queer China is an independent filmmaker and photographer. Jamie is the director of a documentary and photo project called Safe Distance. Jamie is also the co-founder of Queer China UK. Then we have Asif Nihan, who's calling from Dhaka in Bangladesh at the moment. Thank you so much for calling in. Asif has been working with the leading private and discrete Bangladeshi LGBTQIA plus groups since 2015. And Asif's expertise is in fundraising, organising and managing events, working as admin for online LGBTQIA plus groups, organising and leading private tours inside the country for the community people. And Asif and myself and maybe some of the others are part of the rainbow tree, a really exciting and fast evolving online global Bangladeshi LGBTQIA platform. Obviously I'm not Bangladeshi. I'm an ally. And over the years with Mars and Tash and Cynthia and others in London, we've been building a big kind of movement of solidarity and support. With mainly the East End Bangladeshi Queer community, but beyond. And last but not least, we have Ted Brown, Gay Liberation Fund, Black LGBTQIA activist, member of the GLF, Gay Liberation Fund since 1970, and is the man who held a mass kissing and made history. Born Theodore York Walker Brown 1950 in New York of Jamaican parents involved in the NAACP. This Earth's World Legal Case Worker journalist and yoga teacher found this background to be life affirmingly inspirational. Arriving in England, Ted came out to his supportive family in 1965 and found further inspiration when hearing of the Stonewall Uprising in New York June 1969. In 1970, Ted first met and joined the GLF after viewing Hollywood's first ever game movie, The Boys in the Band. GLF were demonstrating outside the lesser square empire belief against the film, motivated by heroes like Huey Newton and Bayard Rustin to expand queer rights, demand to calls for justice for all. Ted became active in the GLF and took the only photographs of the first march through London by queer people, GLF youth group age of consent equality demands August 1971. Ted lived in a GLF commune for three years, worked for Gallop at the anti LGBT hate crime movement, wrote for Gay Times magazine, co-founded black lesbians and gays against media homophobia, which successfully fought media attacks on black gay footballer Justin Fashnu and against Boudgey Banton's viciously homophobic song Boon Bye Bye. As Ted Walker Brown quoted in books, Ted's quoted in books, Blowing the Lead and Nobath for Plenty of Bubbles and My Book, which is in here somewhere, United Queerdom. And I've been, your ears must be red 24 seven as I've been writing about you for the new book Ted, Queer Footprints. And actually, Queer Footprints is the new book I'm working on, which initially was going to be 40 tools of walking tours, immersive tours in a book of London. Now I've had to reduce it to 10 because I've done too much research. And I'm personally going to find this super useful for incorporating everything into the book, which I hope we can have further conversations about that. Before I show the film, can we just do a quick go round of our amazing speakers, telling us how you're doing, how's your day been. And if there's anything particularly you'd like to learn and explore with each other over the next hour and 45 minutes. Don't be shy, jump in whenever you want. My name is Marwan Carpour. I'm the founder of the Queer, as Stan mentioned. I've had a pretty busy day actually today. It's been a bit manic, but I'm really looking forward to talking about my own experience and hearing everybody's and seeing how our trajectories connect and overlap. So it's about connecting trajectories and overlapping trajectories. I think we're all operating in our own, I don't want to say isolated, but we all have a particular set of circumstances that creates our individual queer identities in one way or another outside of the mainstream notion of what queer is. And I think we all spend a lot of time trying to make sense of it with me as an Arab individual, someone else from their own culture. And I'd be interested to see where these trajectories overlap and where they differ because I think being queer means many different things depending on the background and the culture and the history that you have. Amazing. Thank you so much Marwan. I can't wait, I've been following your stuff for ages and I'm so excited to interview you. So thank you. Who wants to jump in next? Don't be shy, I know none of you are shy. Go on Ted, you're on mute babes. Well, unfortunately I have something, maybe it flew or something that's been bugging me for the best part of a week. But there have been, and I was just on the phone a moment ago with somebody from the Guardian, as a lot of the press and the media are now paying attention, because the 50th anniversary is coming up on the first of July. But I'm also reading a lot of material, some of it quite a progressive and advanced. For example, here, there's a newspaper called I in Britain, which is associated with the Guardian newspaper. And here's an article by a lesbian writer there, which is making some of the points that I have been making for some time, because you may know that many companies are jumping on the bandwagon of LGBT rights and pretending that they actually care when in fact what they're trying to do is promote and advertise their own products and their own services. And, unfortunately, one of the major organisations in the country that's supposed to be leading the LGBT community pride in London is coming to exactly that kind of fake promotions. They're actually not really in support of LGBT QIA rights. They're just about turning it into a party and making it fun. And then, for example, I'll just read you one paragraph, a quite meaningful paragraph from this article, and Eleanor Margolis who wrote it is an out lesbian, and she is arguing that pride has become actually something for straight people. I'll read you the second to last paragraph here. Perhaps it's time for queer people to ditch pride entirely and pin our yearly celebration of ourselves to Eurovision and Eurovision only. There will be a little bit of Halloween for all the queer horror obsessives out there. Both occasions are deeply camp and involve dressing up. Leave pride for the straights. They need it more than us to convince themselves that they're doing their bit to fight prejudice. Bless them. And it's a sense of what's been going on. Now, as Dan has pointed out, we, the real veterans of GLF are holding our pride celebration on the 1st of July, but pride in London are doing theirs on the 2nd of July. And they have a massive amount of publicity, most of which tries to imply that the first pride was something to do with them, even though the first pride took place 45 years before they even existed. And they've actually taken one of my photographs of the first pride and labeled it as the launch of pride in London in 1972. And we are in a real, real battle with these people because they will be getting all the publicity and charging people or forcing them to wear armbands to participate in an event that should be for the LGBT community to run for itself and run by itself. But the flame still exists. There are still people who care about our communities and care about humanity and justice and fairness, and we are going to continue fighting within. Oh, thank you. It's a bit of a mouthful. Just very quickly and just be a moment. Oh, that's so great to hit it. Pam was talking about the book. Here is the first book about the Gay Liberation Front. And you can see people recreating the kiss in that we initiated in the first March on 1971, which I kind of became famous for. But in this one, what happened was we gathered at Trafalgar Square and GLF members dressed up as male and female in such a way that when they were kissing each other, you couldn't tell whether it was men kissing men, women kissing women, men kissing women or anything in between. But we were really challenging the law at the time because this kind of sexuality in public could lead to a seven year prison sentence. That's how radical people were daring and public in challenging the homophobia of those those days. So this is the book, and it includes quotes from all the major GLF activist action, sorry, activists, and is the strong and important memory for all of us. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much said I'll share the link round as well to the amazing no bath but plenty of bubbles and I shared the feature with you in the Guardian about kissing. But from what I'm hearing you say to this is focusing more on celebrating and continuing the journey for radical queer intersectional pride and absolute freedom for all and challenging the pride in London corporate. I'm not allowed to swear I don't think stuff. That article was so funny. Lee pride to the straights. But yeah so focusing on pride this year was the as the 50th anniversary. So thank you Ted, and I feel better soon. Can I just add one quick thing to show how things have have changed. Sunday there was the Queens pageant celebrating 70 years her 70 years on the throne in Great Britain for you know Queen Elizabeth the first right a second story. And there was a contingent of LGBT people involved, and it does show that there's been a certain amount of acceptance. But unfortunately, a lot of people watching the LGBT faction in that group will be under the impression that those people were supporting the Queen. And that they were only appearing because they wanted to make sure that this program, which is going to be circulated around the world would actually be inspirational for people in the Commonwealth in the 34 countries where equality is illegal to see what can be achieved by fighting back against prejudice, that even the Queen has to acknowledge our existence, and a certain amount of our acceptance. It's amazing that. And I've, you know that in terms of Marwan's thoughts about trajectory overlapping trajectories like we obviously cannot not talk about the cruelty of the British Empire. And the meaning of that today in terms of the Jubilee as well so anyone who wants to jump in about that, please do. Thanks Ted. Who else wants to jump in just with how you're doing and any specific things that you would like to focus on today. Yes, and I'm sure by I'm from a clear China UK's, you know it's interesting to that no tabs introduced this issue dislike conflict between the price and the like the claim price. Because when I just came into the UK in 2018, I joined the GLF meeting in LC at the time so I know all this like, like, like protect about the price also all this like, the colliding discussion. But the things is the different with in my communities, because we are not the citizen here. So we don't know the features about how the price come out how the price like the balance. So the some assumptions quite like different from my community they understand my from different ways about the price. And I will, I will give up because next in my presentation I will introduce our special channel UK the plan for the prime month is this month and this month, but I stop here to give the opportunity to other to introduce themselves. Thank you so much to when I can't wait to hear about the amazing work you've been up to as well. Thank you. I was really inspired by what has just said there. And I think it's not just a phenomena that's happening in the UK, where like pride is becoming one more corporate that kind of culture is happening all over the world like here in Hong Kong there's also that kind of situation where the majority of the event were organized and the focus was shifted from a protest to to what what it is right now. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to the discussion later. Oh, thank you so much Amy. Thank you. Hey, I will just take maximum one minute so I'm actually kind of nervous, because it is one of my first international event that I'm joining as a fan of it. And thank you Dan also. And the thing is that I was listening to all of you and where I'm from belong at a very restricted country where I will talk about all of this and I will try to represent in a bit of my country a lot. So lovely having you here as if as well. And you speak really great and eloquently so you've got nothing to worry about it's really great to to have you here and also just. I'm sure everyone wants to know how we can like coalesce and support and build solidarity as well. So thank you for coming. I am going to share the screen now. Sorry for a nine shut myself up for a nine minute film about the 50th anniversary of the GLS, which was two years back. Let's try this. Not that one. Sorry, let me find the way we go. There you go. Can everyone see that? Okay, great. I love this film. You little life being who you are standing. We have to go backwards as well as forwards and we have to be open but keep fighting because, you know, the battle is not yet one at all. Rights are not given to you on the plate. You need to fight for the spaces. You need to shout and it doesn't happen by asking politely happens through standing together bringing the fight to the streets and calling it out. 50th anniversary march on the Gay Liberation Front. We're here to say that we are proud to be part of the early movement, a movement which ignited the modern LGBT plus protest movement in Britain. I joined the GLF in November 1970. I think it's second or third meeting and since then it's changed my life. It's brought back so many memories of people who have been friends and colleagues for the last 50 years. We started on the back of the black movement and the women's movement in the States and it was the Queens in Christopher Street that stood up to the police saying we're here now and it was such an exhilarating time and some of that has gone on. Thank goodness and we're back there again however because some of those things have not been done and when pride became mainstream, the politics went out of it a lot and we lost some of that spirit. Pride means to me being visible, being out and defying centuries of being invisible and being invisibilised. It's not only a celebration of who we are, it is also a political protest and a mark towards one day hopefully liberation which is very different from rights. We want to send out solidarity to black lives matter and black LGBT plus people of colour all over the world. It's amazing to be here with all these veterans, some of their 70s and 80s, they're still fighting, they're still committed to the same ideals as 50 years ago and boy we need it because in this crisis period of COVID-19 and after the countdown we need a social transformation. We need radical social change for everyone, not just LGBTs but for our straight and cisgender friends as well. We are the police so we're going to be taking over the street together. Today was supposed to be pride in London but of course because of COVID we couldn't do that but we decided to do it anyway because it's such an important anniversary to really look at the roots of pride which was radical which was absolute freedom for all and specifically today was in solidarity with black lives matter so it was really beautiful to see the founders of pride in solidarity with black lives matter and then the younger generation walking past so it was a bit like it makes you like your heart warms for London. Some beautiful cigarettes, those are socially distanced fags. Gay men found it a convenient place to meet other gay men and you would light up each other's faces with cigarettes. Tonight was about commemorating in a nutshell 50 years of gay liberation starting from one pinpointable night 50 years ago when the first openly gay demonstration took place right here on Highburyfield. And it was because of the arrest of Louis to the care of the young levels who was arrested for cruising and we thought it was absolutely outrageous. About 70 or 100 of the Gay Liberation Fund protested a torch like vigil in solidarity with Louis and everyone else was at the cruise because queer people do not have the liberty to have public displays of affection. Today it's a celebration and we can move forward. Back then there was anger and we can achieve what gay liberation set out to achieve. I want to think about trans women of colour that are really being oppressed that are dying and we are losing people stills and I think we just need to keep on fighting. We are fighting a global force today and I just like everyone to understand and remember those around the world for less fortunate than us here today and please just remember them. And Louis Eicks, thank you. The legend of the Gay Liberation Fund and I have a chance to hear their stories. It gives us hope and it kind of puts things into perspective that maybe the fight is not the one just yet but we shall overcome. When I get tired of fighting and activism I just remember they're still going, they're still fighting, they're still shouting. Because of institutional homophobia, because of media homophobia we've never been allowed to learn really about our history and when we find out actually what are the key milestones led to our freedoms today they're complete gems, complete gems because they make sense of everything. I was very moved that people who weren't born at the time and who could take our rights for granted took the time on a cold and dusty and cold night to come out and appreciate what had been achieved at the years ago. In 1972, pretty well nobody was out as there's been galed from. Now lots of people are out, most people are out and that's very exciting because it's the only way that gender has changed things in society is to say who we are. Well I am optimistic because these issues are ones that affect our lives and when you're fighting for your life you can't give up. Let me stop that video before it goes on something else. There we go. Oh I love that film. Anyone else apart from Ted because we're going to go straight on to you in a minute Ted, any of our other amazing speakers got any thoughts or reflections or questions about the film? How did it make you feel, what questions did it bring up for you? It's just I think quite inspiring to, I think what it helps say is it puts things in perspective in the long chronology of this battle because I think we tend to have generational amnesia of not understanding the roots of the battles that we continue to fight and seeing a video like this really helps just give context and situate us and to make it clear that the battle is far from being over. Wow, thank you so much. Generational amnesia, you basically just made sense of my whole life, so thank you. Amazing, thank you Marwan. Anyone else want to jump in with any thoughts or reflections? You're on mute Ted. I think it would be useful for there to be a bit of a timeline on that first March because it's significant that you had Stonewall happening on the 29th of June 1969, and a gay liberation was formed within a few months in New York following that. Then we had the film that came out, The Boys and the Band for Hollywood's first film about supposedly from the perspective of gay men, but there were all sorts of problems with it. But the Gay Liberation Front was formed at the London School of Economics on the 13th of October. Within less than a month they had mounted that first ever march to Hybrion Islington to protest about the way that the police were arresting gay men and in fact using pretty police. They would get the police to go into toilets, handsome police and if a gay man or even a straight man sometimes so much has looked at them they wound up being arrested. Under those circumstances if they got arrested they might lose their jobs, they might wind up in prison, they might be beaten up, their families would reject them. So it was really important that GLF initiated those first campaigns within months, within less than a month of being formed. Both people were out there fighting, and even more significant, although male homosexuality was illegal, and the issue was the treatment of the police of gay men, almost 50% of the people that were protesting were women. They were fighting on behalf of gay men, and that caused a sense of solidarity that has continued right up to today. It showed that people can fight not just for themselves but for others. Oh, amazing Ted. I'm just picking up on key words in terms of like the truthful timeline, which obviously you don't get in Pride in London Corporation promotion. In fact, I think it's libelous and which taken school entrapment, the issues of entrapment, the issues of exposure, the issues of genuine recognition for those involved and what does genuine solidarity look and act like. Ted, we ask it. Yeah, yeah. Just add one other point is that GLF was never funded by any corporate institution. Every action was people paying for it for themselves, taking risks for them by themselves, and not relying on having friends in Parliament or in the government or in any such big business. The issue of what's happening with Pride in London now is that the big business has taken over, and their emphasis is on selling products, not on freedom and liberty for people. Exactly, the military, arms companies, right wing groups, the police, the rest of it. Thank you, Ted. Any other questions before or reflections on the film? No, that's okay. Another follow up. That demonstration in Trafalgar Square where the LGBT people were shouting the support of the Black Lives Matter. Some people think of that as the first time that black community and the LGBT community were working together. But in fact, in 1970, just after Stonewall happened, Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party wrote to his colleagues and said, we should be working together with LGBT people. He didn't use that term in those days, but with gay people because they are also being oppressed and in some ways they're even being more oppressed than we are and we should work together. So the movement of people fighting from different communities together against oppression actually started years before and we should never forget that. And what we want to resume is encouraging people to work across different communities for the same goal, which is freedom for everyone. Here, here Ted, thank you sweetheart. I dream that after this mammoth task of organising the 50th anniversary this year that we could go away together for six months somewhere nice and just sit and write your book. I've got nothing to say compared to you, I just would love for all of your experience and knowledge and wisdom to be in a book at some point. But Ted, we've got 10 minutes for the floor for you because I want to make sure that everyone has 15 minutes. So go ahead. I have one question. And this is for everyone really. Not essential, but if you can plot three max or more if you want spaces in London that are meaningful for you and your community's liberation would be amazing because it would be really beautiful to build a queer map of radical intersectional anti-racist, anti-colonial London. So yeah, over to you Ted for 10 minutes. Oh dear. I think I'm going to need a moment more to think about that actually because there are so many places in London, although you've probably already got Compton Street in your list haven't you? Not from your perspective, I mean not from your perspective. So tell us why Compton Street, old Compton Street for anyone who doesn't know is in the heart of Soho. Why is it meaningful for you? Now Compton Street nowadays is packed with gay and lesbian bars and pubs and clubs. But when we first went there back in 1972, 73, there were just one or two clubs, and you had to know somebody to be let in. If you knocked on the door, somebody would pull back a little sliding eye, a little portion and look through and talk to you and discuss whether or not you were going to be let in. And everybody was very furtive. You would go into the club, and if you were dancing together, the proprietors would be very careful in case there was a police raid, and they had a little button under their desk, and they would press the button. The lights would go on, and everybody would stop dancing or drinking because the police could come in and arrest you for dancing with somebody of the same sex. And that shows how much things had changed. I also want to point out that when we were demonstrating and marching in Compton Street back in the 70s, we had no idea that we would achieve queer marriage and civil partnership within our lifetime. And when you think that what we overcame was over 2,000 years of oppression, where that was illegal, it's an astonishing achievement, and it came about from people saying, I'm tired of you having your foot on my neck. I'm fighting back. And once you fight back, things start to move. So that's Compton Street. Then there's St Martin in the Fields, which was a large church very close to Trafalgar Square, where Mary White House, a very reactionary Puritan, organised a group called the Festival of Light, who were trying to repress sexuality, particularly lesbian and gay sexuality. And they had a big meeting at St Martin in the Fields at one stage. And some of the gay and lesbian activists managed to get in dressed as nuns with their hands together and bowing humbly. And they got onto the stage where the audience expected that they would be singing hymns in praise of Puritan morality, but instead they started to do the can-can, lifted up their skirts, did the can-can, lifting up their legs and released a lot of mice and caused a panic in the building. And the press reported on this, and it's so embarrassed, the Festival of Light, that it gradually filtered away. And we had a great success at St Martin in the Fields on that particular occasion. The third place I would think of would be Hampstead Heath, which is a large park in North London, a large area in North London, where a lot of gay men and some lesbians would have sex in the bushes and so on. And when we went there in the early days, we were giving out condoms and we were giving out notices saying to people, you don't need to just be furtive. Although this is fun, what you want is an ability to have make love in your own home or and to be acknowledged that your relationships are valid. A lot of people were shocked, but some people joined the Gay Liberation Front as a result of us going to that park and arguing for freedom and liberation for lesbian and gay people. So those are my three places, Hampstead Heath, Old Compton Street and St Martin in the Fields. Thank you so much, Ted. I've actually got this tattoo of the Festival of Light action on my arm because I think it's brilliant. You see the nun, the mice and the can-can there. And it was so well orchestrated as well, but we can go more into that. That, and I'll send the link is also in Stuart Feather, our con babe at the GLS book, Blowing the Lid, which is amazing. And I'll send the link to that as well. I've also everyone just sent a link because the week before July the 1st, we will all be in Hampstead Heath on Saturday the 25th of June for a 50th anniversary of Gay Pride, Radical Gay Pride Party, doing a catwalk in the spirit. I don't know if people are fans of George Michael and particularly the two funky song with the supermodels. Anyway, we're doing a catwalk in the woods in celebrating the celebration of everyone fighting for sexual freedom, where our friend is from the Bangladesh rainbow tree. We'll be doing part of the catwalk with some of the other activists from the rainbow tree. And I was going to email everyone else on our panel about that as well because it would be amazing to all be together. But please do. Oh, by the way, I've just given the venue away because I've been saying it's top secret like I do every year just to try to keep the police off. But we all know it's in Hampstead Heath. Follow the signs from Jack Straw's castle. All the details are in there. Thank you so much to you. Who would like to jump in next? Who did I have initially in the running order? I can share. Yeah, please do. Thank you. Jamie, can you help me share the screen? I select some photos. Wow, thank you. Here are some pictures I chose just when I moved from China to UK in 2018 because you mentioned some heritage. It's why I can see many rainbow animals in London. And then I explore every corner, the queer footprint in London. So also I believe that London is what they say is the place you can love wherever you love. But since I realized maybe the sentence is true, but it's not complete correct because by the intersectionals identities, even though I in the UK's LGBT communities, I still feel cannot live completely being myself due to I raised some reasons by the language barriers culture differences. And also in the Chinese communities in the UK's, I also had to hide my sexual orientation as a woman, even though I, even though in the Chinatown, I also experienced the street harassment, the place like Chinatown I saw it represents, it represents out, but actually it's maybe not. And this slide, I cannot find a place where I can fully slide comfortably being who I am in London's. And that's why I established Queer China UK with the last slide. Jamie, can you move to the last slide? Yeah, I create Queer China UK. We are just a volunteer, less or committee focused organisation. We had to be a homestead be a sense of belonging for the Queer Chinese diaspora and allies. And the moment I established Queer China UK was in 2019, I'm still in LCE. I remember our first meeting was in the LCE student units, maybe a similar place where the GLF first meeting happened. Because I know the founder of the GLF or LCE student. Yeah, that's right. It's a coincidence and I literally, my nonflow, the GLF nonflow, the British Queer history. And we had a round along the committee event just like a gallery or mutual support like this. And the first thing I want to highlight for all the audience is our annual Queer Chinese affectables. And the next slide. Yeah, just what I mentioned is that our community, our member from Queer China UK is not, we are not a permanent citizen. We are maybe like just newcomer just by living here several years. And so I want to create a space, create the safe space for our communities. The first one I want to highlight here is the QCAF. It's the, this one we think is like through ours, we can explore the possibility of activism. We also can like bring the communities together. We can like through the army, like army events or through like every committee or event to bring all the communities together and they can through the art to embrace our culture, our identities. We still have free coming performance, creative activities and conversation in the rest of this month. So if you are interested, feel free to check it out in our social medias. And the last one, yeah, the next slide. Next one I want to share is our pride place, past patients and the committee empowerment because we watched this video about the hitches, the first prize pride place in London. And in 2019, actually, I with my friends organized a Chinese career teams to participate in London and Birmingham's pride place. And the challenge for me was, I know that like the radical, radical histories of the pride place for my communities. They don't know those criticism about the pride in London's communities. They also don't realize the problem that you can see with the like current price. And they even didn't understand why the UK black pride, like reclaimed pride, why did you say when we already had the London pride place. So at that time, I was quite like conflict and I sometimes feel quite disappointed about my communities. But meanwhile, I still observed some change happen in my communities. The first one is that just I mentioned, they are mainly from mainland China. Well, we don't have like, we don't have pride place. We cannot go to Australia to celebrate our identity place. When they had the opportunity in the UK, it may be the first time they like feel proud of themselves in the public space. And then, and also most of them, they were after graduation, they might go back to China's. They were just left UK. They don't have so much time to like follow up with the criticism like what was going on about the price each year. But I still can see that after they came back, they still post the post the pride place that participate before India social media in each prime in the 17 ways. And so this year, I, I, this year, I'm thinking a powerful on participating this various pride place, like trans trans protest by the, by the London price by the first July. We also participate. I plan to also do something to record this, this logistic like this our activism, because I want maybe the future newcomer. They can see our documentary. They can know all this. This was going on in the last few years, and also just a good document can say our hitches. And also I want to put my cross culture understanding of this clear Chinese communities participate in, in, in London price like what does it means to us when we are as a diaspora. And also slide for this today's event, the topic is celebrating 15 years of gay price in London. And is this relevant to us and then how our communities respond to it. It was also the question I'm curious, maybe during the documentary interview, I can ask this question to my communities. And let's see whether we what I will finish this after that. And then, and then the last last one I want to mention is that I had decided and create also guide a decolonizing LGBT tour in Mandarin and Cantonese in the British music and around British music. But I found there was very few stories of these anxious queer people. So that's why I, with Jeremy will share later, we plan to have whether how we can like discover our hitches, whether we can like have more, have more like LGBT landmark related to our communities around the, around London. Yeah, and now I will hand over to Jeremy to share, share her thoughts and plan. Yeah. So, she was talking about documentary, we have actually made one documentary last year, which is called safe distance. And it's actually going to be shown soon at LSE on the 26th as part of the queer Asia festival. There are a lot of film going to be shown there from all over Asia. And, and the document our documentary will be part of that so if you're interested to know more about the queer Chinese lived experience during the pandemic in London, and you can, and you can go there and have a look. And we have done also collaboration with the Gay Liberation Front in October, where we had this community screening and also like Q&A afterwards with the audience to talk about like the experience and like also to see if there's like an intersection of experience with the audience. And another screening that we have done was at the Bishop Gates Institute, also in collaboration with the Gay Liberation Front. And it's actually very nice to have this interaction with the audience to share different experiences. And, and we can also see there are some positive impact, for example, on the day of the screening, there's a psychiatrist who went to see the film, and then he wrote about like the film and the mental health implication of Asian hate crime. And he wrote an article, which was published at the psychiatric eye, and it shows like how this kind of community event do bring certain impact in other fields, and also trying to address the problem of like the, like, on the mental health well being of the Asian community, which was often neglected before. And we also did like a photo exhibition at LSE from last November to March, where like people we have interviewed, they have, we have their photo on the wall and some of their stories here written. What project that you buy was mentioning is, we found out that there are not much information when we try to look at like the queer Chinese heritage. And when we're trying to find about like a role model or sometimes trying to dig into the roots, it's, it's hard to find. So, but it's so important for us to know about the past. To see where we have come from. So, like, for example, the documentary that Dan has shown earlier, it really did connect, like, and what Ted has shown, like, it made me feel, oh, they have gone through this 50 years ago, they've taken that much risk. And, and at that time you were saying, oh, it was not. You didn't thought the same sex marriage will happen in your lifetime and then seeing how this history has projected. It really has touched me. And what we want to do this year is trying to map out the heritage of like the queer Chinese community to try to see what their experience were, and to see, like, how far we have come and and also to try to see where where should we go and to think about like a solution and see the trajectory. Yeah, so that's our plan. Oh wow, thank you so much. That was so inspiring. Let's have an informative I mean I've got so many questions but let's go to the floor. The floor is in the zoom floor for any questions or thoughts on on both on both presentations so far. That's from our other panellists and from the audience as well. I'm going to look at the chat and the Q&A thing. Any thoughts or questions or responses. I think I suspect that a lot of the queer activism is to West focus. I imagine that almost everybody knows about Stonewall. But I think it would be very good to know what happened in China, for example, what was the great movement or activism in China that helped to unite LGBTQ people there. And what elements of Chinese culture would be positive in supporting LGBTQ people. Because I mean, for example, over here in the in the West, there are some aspects of Christianity, which talk about loving other people, even if they're different from you. That sometimes some people have been able to appeal to. And I wonder what it's like in those other countries that we never hear about because so we're so busy here talking about ourselves. Yes, Secretary is a very good question. And also the share, also the share is because because in our hitches, we have, we had the LGBT hitches in like Chinese hitches, but it's like under process of erasers from the mainstream hitches. And a lot in UK, I found like a lot of the academy or they are artists or they may be a scholar, they would have like Chinese study or Chinese, like queer study. And that's the one inspiring is that outside China still has the space to discover these hitches, to say these hitches. And also I think I had to use the space here how to collect those information to empower our communities, even though they are, they are like peer, they are LGBT. They actually they are in China or they are in the UK, they don't have access or they don't know how to, how to know those, those longings when they are LGBT themselves. So that's why I still need to do a lot of things to educate, to empower our communities. And the other hand, the last year actually I launched a small events series or small ideas about the UK, China, queer dialogue to bring the Chinese activists and bring like the British activists together, talk about the same issues. The one topic I remember is about the child child's life. After this sharing, you can find many like common in our trans women. And also is by each other, it's not something like you know from me or I learned from you. We find, we are common, even though we are have so many like different identity, you are like from UK, I from China, but you can still find many similarities. So this is still a place we have a lot of things to do, like how to bring our communities or how to bring like Chinese queer talking, become more reasonable. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And of course also just what it made me think from your amazing presentation were two fit three things is, you know what you're doing with the meetings at LSE is that you know you're creating history as you're going as well which is so beautiful and phenomenal and emotional to hear. And of course all the overlaps with the GLF in the same room 50 years back. I had one question for Ted and then one for you. Ted did the first pride radical gay pride in 1972 go through Chinatown. Or have there been any significant GLF protest that you've been on that have gone through Chinatown. No, not as far as I know. No. Because I know that Andrew at Lumsden from the GLF, who was the first editor of gay news, the first LGBT plus paper since partial decriminalisation lived at to a new poor place. It's just by Lester Square. It's got a blue door in the 70s when he was editing gay news. There's that connection. But I guess one question for me is like, what for this 50th anniversary. What does what does active solidarity look like for you for queer China UK from the wider community. And I found that pride is quite a good way to empower our communities. That's why we are all the lives of different teams to participate in different pride. Just join the enterprise talk to that. You can make some new friends. This is quite straightforward. And now the point you mentioned remind me that I remember in 2020 or 2021 that we claim pride protest come close to Chinatown. I saw the photo. Actually, I also saw it very quickly. And at that time I knew it because that's why I go through the Chinatown is the protest when to show the support to Chinese communities before the racism. And I just look at Chinese people like in the Chinatown what they reaction. But I also feel a bit disappointed by my communities. Just a protest of the Chinatown just shows support to us. But they look less quite irrelevant. Maybe they are curious what is going on. But that's why I'm thinking we still have a lot to do to help our community to know the protest or this revolution or how this celebration is important. It matters. Thank you so much. It's such groundbreaking work that you're doing. And on July the first this year, we will be starting in Trafalgar Square. And it's kind of going on the edge of Chinatown and maybe we can organise a stop just by Chinatown where you can share your thoughts and your experience and demands as well. So maybe that's one kind of overlapping trajectory. Any other questions so far for Jamie? Well, I'd like to ask. Sorry if I keep butting in, but I wanted to know in the different countries, what is the biggest opposition because here we some of the opposition is political. Some of it is religious and some of it is social. You know what your neighbours say, right? Or what the church religious organisations must say or what politicians might say about our sexuality or about our roles in society. So how do these things work in China and other countries because we don't know very much. As I said, we focus in the West. We're so eager centric here. I think, Ted, you have pointed out quite a very good question. And as you were saying, religious is one of the main obstacle for the West and that's not a thing for China. Because actually before we went to the V&A museum and if you look in the museum there's a statue of Guan Yin with just like the goddess and the goddess gender has been, like, there are different pronouns in different years. So there are years where the pronoun is he and then there are years where the pronoun is she and then there will be years where the pronoun is he again. So you can see that the goddess or the gods pronoun fluctuate. So it's fluid and for some time we used the same pronoun for he or she and it was actually around, it actually happened in London where there is this translator who have started to westernise the pronoun and then so the Chinese pronoun suddenly have the he and the she version and so there has been a different influence throughout history and another thing that you say with the obstacle. And I think for the moment it has to do with the social situation. For example, right before there has been a one child generation, one child policy. And right now, because of the decrease of population, they have increased to they're now allowed to have three child actually encouraging to have more children since like two years ago. It's also come with a certain that comes in parallel with certain setbacks for the LGBT community, because I think that's, it happened, they didn't say that it's interrelated but when you see the pattern that it's happening at the same time you kind of guess that's why they're targeting. They think we're affecting the population or something like that. So, I think part of it is social, political. Yeah. I don't know if you want to add any. Amazing. Thank you, Jamie. So much which has come up. Marwan, do you want to share? Well, just to go back to, you know the original question of, let's say significant places to the queer community in my case, the, I mean whether it's the Arab, the Muslim, the Middle Eastern, because that could also incorporate non Arab countries like Turkey and Iran and so on. There hasn't been, there aren't many landmarks and there's a reason for that because we face such strong and in many cases quite violent homophobia by the state, by the family, by heads of religion, by the authorities and so on. That even when we are here in the UK, which are, you know, like supposedly a safe space, we are still kind of concerned to be openly visible and that has hindered organisation for quite some time. I'm in a very privileged position that I come from a progressive family that don't have a lot of social or religious hangups and I don't feel their acceptance or tolerance is something that can stand in my way. I'm also up and from two years ago and naturalised British citizens so it has this has allowed me further level of freedom to be vocal. However, I think for the Arab community specifically I have to mention the group slash the party pride of Arabia or they go by power. They, it's a group that began organising perhaps about 10 years ago as a space to allow for Arab and Muslim and neighbouring queers to come together. In a safe space to celebrate their culture, the party, so it started as a party and then it kind of, it continued to be a party but there were other things. There was a book club and discussions and virtual check-ins organised by a variety group of friends and colleagues from different Arab nations. The party began in Clapton and then it kind of resided in its semi-permanent space in the Yard Theatre in Hackney Downs, in Hackney Wake, sorry. They haven't thrown an event in quite some time, COVID through a big spanner in the works but that is to me the one kind of obvious space I could suggest. But again, like even if you Google it, you're not going to get a lot of information because to maintain the safety of the community, the organisers would ask people not to take pictures, not to share anything on social media. Due to the fact that someone might be here feeling safe and having fun but if their picture got circulated online and someone spotted them and decided to out them that would be quite a big problem. So we are going through the process. We're just quite early on. We still have a long way to go. I come from Beirut, Lebanon, which is relatively speaking comparatively more progressive than other Arab or Muslim countries. So growing up in Beirut, I did have a relatively healthy social life. We had queer bars and clubs. They were underground but they existed, which I cannot say is the same for other Arab nations, but we are still incapable of showing public display of affection. So there's a long way to go, but I think the internet has really galvanized the queer community to be more vocal because they now understand that there's a different, better alternative for them. They don't feel so isolated, which kind of brings me to the project that I've been doing for the last few years, which is called Taqir. Taqir is a kind of a bilingual English Arabic word that means to make queer or to see within a queer way. It really takes into consideration the fact that sharing physical spaces is kind of challenging. So I've created a digital space for the community. What the project aims to do, it aims to create an archive of queer and Arab narratives in history and pop culture. It tries to either talk about stories from history or instances in pop culture and cinema and music and literature and poetry or even, you know, sometimes queer references from history to say that we did not just, you know, the queers and the Arab nations that didn't exist just about 20 years ago. We've been here literally from the dawn of time, pre-Islam, during and post Islam. We had a caliph for the fifth century. We had a queer caliph who was having sex with men, women and eunuchs. We had mentions of queer women in history and so the page tries to plot or archive these instances. So it either, you know, like it goes into literature and tries to dig out instances where queer people made an appearance and it tries to share that with the world. It goes into cinema, for example, and tries to see where queer individuals also made an appearance and they were loved and embraced. They weren't assaulted and hated. It celebrates queer icons. In this case you see painter and artist Etel Adnan, who passed away last year, who has lived with her partner for a long time. And it also, you know, it also shows, for example, this is an exploration of the Arabic language to explore how to celebrate the tomboy in Arabic and to see how the tomboy is referred to in different countries. So it's a very ambitious big project. Also it talks about instances like this one, the Queen Boat, the Cairo 52 Queen Boat case, where 52 men in Cairo were arrested on top of a party boat and then dragged through the media and imprisoned and there was a smear campaign against them. So it also tries to situate us in the bigger, to understand what our history as queer people from that region is. So this is a project that I founded in 2019 and I continue to do. And it aims to, I think, building on what you guys were saying with queer China is trying to create a history or it's trying to create a reading of history so that we understand that we have a past, we are here and we most certainly have a future. And it allows for people digitally to communicate without repeating their identity and to feel a sense of solidarity and collectiveness. So, besides Pride of Arabia, which I also showed here, if people would like to check it out and maybe hopefully they will restart events and you could attend the events. It's a space where I feel the digital space as a very valid important organizational space for us to organize and as well as tell our stories. And so this is my kind of contribution. And it's a project that I feel is going to be a lifelong project for me. And I think it's very interesting to see how these attempts are happening from different angles from around the world and how we are trying to address it in our own ways because I know that each one of us has a different set of skills and we try to contribute with whatever we can. Well, thank you so much, by the way, and that was amazing. Thank you. Oh, I love the platform for eternal fierceness. That's amazing. And all those, how long have you been working on Taqwia? I began Taqwia in September 2019. It's so sad to say that it's my proudest thing, but it's also my side project. So it's like something that I do whenever I have time. But I'm now understanding the value and the scale of this project and essentially I would like to begin dedicating a lot more time to it. It's huge. I mean, that was my question. Oh, and when you've got a moment on the chat. That was my question for you. I mean, how are you? I mean, personally, like, how has it impacted you because it's such phenomenal work that you're doing? It must be a variety of emotions. Well, it's funny because when I began the project, it was really just like I need a space to collect my thoughts. It was not about the community. It was about me trying to put things together. And then it started to exponentially grow and I started to understand that I'm doing something that perhaps within the Middle Eastern or Arab or Muslim context has not been done before. And how much value to people like in my position connect with. And I get messages of people saying this account makes me feel like I belong or this account makes me feel like I'm safe, which is incredibly, incredibly overwhelming. I have to tell you because I never thought I'd be have that kind of responsibility to create something that has that kind of value. But I also and I feel a huge sense of responsibility and I would like to, I'm happy to take that on because I am in a privileged position to be vocal and I'm planning to use my voice quite loudly actually. Yeah, where did you do the like firework emoji? All the love. We've got a question in the Q&A. Akshara, thank you for your question. I think the idea of public displays of affection also varies across countries and cultures, which is interesting to explore in how one expresses their queer identity. Anyone's got any more thoughts in relation to public displays of affection? Any point. Well, it's, it's still an issue. I mean, there are two things about what's happening with the 50th anniversary, which is pride in London is trying to give the impression that everything's okay here. But even for people who have been very much involved in the Gay Liberation Fund and other free movements, we still have to be careful. There are many areas and times when I wouldn't hold hands with my partner. Still areas and places in England where I would not kiss my partner without looking over my shoulder or not doing it at all because it's still risky. But now when I want to say, it's very easy for people to underestimate the value of the kind of thing that you're doing. Because there are two things that are incredibly powerful for LGBT people. The first one is a sense of culture that you that you belong. It really is so important for everybody and you everywhere in the world. And the other is our history. Because what people who are opposed to LGBT people try to do is to tell us that we have been invented, that we are fake. But if you can show that we have always been there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That we've always been here. It shows that we are natural. We are part of humanity. And to add to that in quite like Arab discourse or like let's say post-World War II Arab discourse, they try to sell us this thing that this is a Western import. I'm like, you should look 20 years ago and you're going to get a very different story. The Arabs have been way more frisky than you can ever imagine. It's just, you've been telling us for the last 20 years that we're really conservative and we're very sexually conservative and romantically conservative. But then you go digging into history, the near and the far and it shows an extremely different story. Yes. So keep up the good work. It's wonderful. And one of the things that we often don't realize is you doing something and there are people that you don't know who value what you're doing incredibly and it will affect their lives in a positive way. From today to the day that they die. And it's really, you know, good to know that what you're doing helps people. It's incredible. Thank you. It's huge. I've got one question and anyone else do jump in in questions before we go to Isif. It sounds like a broken record. We're in London. Of course you have touched on this. Where would you like there to be more energy and attention focused on in London, whether they're places or areas which are part of the solution or part of the problem? Can you elaborate? For example, I imagine that it could be potentially infuriating or reductive that a lot of the, or is also vital. A lot of the energy goes around, around pinkwashing and pride and the Palestine Israel debate debate, which obviously is fundamental but could also override other aspects. Look, it's just that because when it comes to the Arab slash Middle Eastern slash Muslim community, it's a conglomerate of many different countries versus certain communities in the UK who have been here in large numbers for many, many years and have established very strong ties with this country. The Arabs slightly less so because I guess they are more present in, you know, the countries that did colonize them by France, for example. So we have, and we are little in number compared to others. So I feel like our voice is still not particularly loud. And as you said, there are such big issues like war and Palestine that take precedence. I think what we do is what we have to do is just for us to be given space to be to express and to showcase our, our views and our skills and our talents and express our pain and our joy. I don't know where that space is. I think it's as we have seen with many of the people who are taking part here as we create those spaces ourselves. Yeah, I mean, I would, I would like to ask before it's like, give us more platform us more, give us more voice because we do tend to be, you know, but I think this applies to all of us platform all of us. It's not, it's not just, you know, my community specifically, it's just when these discussions happen, you only get a very narrow version of the picture and not the full picture the full picture is right here in front of you actually. Oh, amazing. I mean, I am going to email you all tomorrow, I was going to do it today, about the 25th. If, if you, if it's a queer would like to say something slash have a nice dance around the catwalk in the woods that would be so great. And then on July the first two as well because Ted and me are actually off to a meeting after this. Sorry, I just let you off Skyving if that's what you were planning to do Ted for the for organizing for the first curating the route and it'd be so beautiful to have you there and, and if you want to say some things on message about that. And yeah, thank you. Any, any other questions for my one from any of other speakers or participants. Me again. If, if any of you are paying any attention to the 50th anniversary here. Can we try to make it an opportunity to reach out and make the movement more international that we acknowledge that there are LGBT people everywhere. And that the most effective way for us to move forward is to move forward together. And to look outside our cultures. And for you to teach us because America and Britain are famous for looking inward we everybody else is like somewhere to us. And we know it's a problem. We need to learn more about other cultures. And, and we need to work together and stop being so elitist. Yeah. Because we're all human. And we all want love and we all want respect. And that cover that crosses all barriers. Thank you so much Ted. Any other last thoughts or questions for my one. Or do share them in the chat box. Over to you, Arsif. Thank you again so much for for joining. I mean, just just didn't breathe my. I mean, but. And events that with Mars and tash and Cindy and others from. Rupan and and the rainbow tree is obviously organising around April 25th, the anniversary of the murder of Paul hasen and tonnoy outside of Bangladesh High Commission in Kensington and. Yeah, so you can talk about that if you want but please do just share your experience and, and, and your desires for a building global solidarity in and around where you are and in London as well so yeah flaws yours babe thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. So, before I started, I want to answer a question of Ted that he asked what is the obstacle of your faces that you need. I just want to point out the point of clicking that political, social and religious things. So in my country, the most big obstacle is the religious, because in, we have the 95% of mostly country I'm living in so the media is the most important thing here. So in my religion that is this, this thing that me being is forbidden. The I am who I am is being forbidden in my country so it's kind of, you know, that's good for us. And of course the social and the political issue that they are because background I born and my family, my social, not be acceptable as me as I am. Let's not go there. I'm just starting. I will be sharing something with you. First of all, I've been working in Balangladesh with you community since 2015. And basically what I do is organizing and managing events and leading the private schools for community people inside the country. And I basically look after the Balangladesh part of the rainbow tree. We are creating a platform. And let me give you a short brief about the group rainbow tree the United Kingdom with British Bangladeshi and Bangladeshi community group, which aims to create a state online platform for all the Bangladeshi and Bengali queer people around the world. So welcome all the queer people, and if I like to join in our group. The group has currently two parts, this is Bangladeshi and Bangladeshi. So it's a contributing and aim to continue London for community door activities here in the UK, there's a hearty, any platform for people, but the rainbow tree has created a private and state platform. Which is going to be the largest and reliable community platform to know that we hope actually. So if you observe the statistics, it says that half of a million British Bangladeshi lives in the United Kingdom, which is approximately 0.7% of the total population of the United Kingdom. So we don't have any information how many of them are part of the community but we can give a large number of them will be part of a community people from them. People living in greater London, you will be surprised that we still don't have any proper British Bangladeshi organization community to support the Bangladeshi LGBTQ community. Also, we have noticed that British Bangladeshi people are more homophobic than the original Bangladeshi people because Bengali Muslims have prominently been migrating to the UK since 1914, most original from the select region, selectly the part of Bangladesh. All these people who have been settled down in 1940 are passing the hate cradle to the generation against the LGBTQ people as there is no one to dictate them. Many of the million British Bangladeshi gay men are afraid of coming out to their family and friends because born and brought in a family which is not gay friendly or very religious. So at the end of the day, they are getting married. We can show many examples of that type of people. Can you believe that all these homophobic people living in London whereas here in the United Kingdom, we are so surprised. Actually, the rainbow group has come forward to create a separate networking platform for this community. And that's what is our contribution to London every year. Many students come to London for higher education and many of them are the part of the LGBTQ people. And it's easy to see they didn't have any British Bangladeshi based platform for support and networking, but now they do research on top of the rainbow team. The rainbow team has practically made a bridge between Bangladeshi and the UK LGBTQ activists and community from where we both have been benefited. We must work and see to educate British Bangladeshi and the Bangladeshi community. We need more visibility and I believe commonwealth-based LGBTQ organizations can come forward in powering the trust of the LGBTQ people and bring the changes to contribute more to the great city of London to make it more better ever. And I would love to talk about a project that has been discussed or conducted through the rainbow team. It's a book. It's about stories of different people from different around the world. It's called Untold Stories. Me and my rainbow team members have been taught about it that the story will be like the thing in your life happens you can't tell anyone or you didn't tell anyone. So that story will be one year project. I am trying to do that maybe next year we are able to publish that book in London and Bangladesh as well. So I want to share something about the tragedy in the Bangladeshi LGBTQ activity in 2016. Two of our activities also has Marlon and Mahabu Ponoic where murdered in 26th of April 2016 in the evening. It's called some feminist group or feminism or the Muslim feminism that murdered but I really don't know what happened. So it's very sad because they were, we were actually publishing some magazines named Rupan in Bangladesh. So they are the main people and they got murdered on 15th of April. Anyway, I think that's all from my side. Thank you so much Arasif for sharing. It sounds, I'm really excited to hear more about Untold Stories as well. I'm just sharing the link to who has Tunoy here. Thank you. Any questions or reflections from our panel or from attendees? I'm not sure if you, because you're not in London at the moment but in terms of the areas in London where a lot of the activists are based or a lot of the, or if you know the supportive spaces or places, do you know where would they be? Many Bangladeshi people that I already mentioned in my, that is the reason where people are going to London. So maybe that could be Bangladeshi people are more living like East London. Is there any place called East London or something? So I guess that's going to be the place where Bangladeshi people are living and Bangladeshi people are living. Yeah, no, I know they just, I was with Maz and Tash the other weekend, the kind of dialogue and the work they're building both with like East London Mosque, Brick Lane Mosque, Altab Alley Park. Yeah, there's a real, and obviously Bethnal Green work in Men's Club with Odd But, Performance Night, and there's lots of incredible movements happening in those areas. Yeah, I have a question for Ashes, sorry if I pronounce wrong, like in your communities. I wonder if the queer woman is LGBT class woman. How is it like if they had a network of roles, how is their life? I know quite a few years, if you know what I mean in China, many queer women, many women that are forced to get married to their children, I'm curious whether it's like some of their seniors in your communities. Thank you. Actually, the scenario is we, the LGBT people are afraid of coming out. Okay, that I am me, we are afraid of coming out about real, so we need to maintain social values, and we need to maintain relations so without sharing who I am, what I am and what I love, we are getting married. It's like forcefully, like if I tell about myself, I am thank you so much and already I'm getting a marriage pressure from my family. So this is the scenario after, but because the scenario is that we are like kind of locked up, we are not allowed to explore who I am, but who actually I am. Well, thank you for sharing, Hasif. Carry on any other questions or thoughts? I have got a question for like, I think it's the last question for me. Please also, as you have been chair, any links where people can support on any different level, or should be in active solidarity with them. Please share links there. Obviously a lot has come up in terms of the issues, the overlapping issues that we need to work on, and are working on when it comes to, you know, human, social, spiritual freedom. But there's also a lot has come up in terms of celebration through documenting. And there's a lot of overlaps with the formats of our activism. One question, which might be a nice way to end, if there was because all of you in all of us, we're all documenting, which creates so much power. If there was one person for now that you would, you really want the world to know about from each of your perspectives and cultural perspectives. A queer icon from each of your perspectives, which the world needs to know about, who would they be, and if you can write their names down as well. Just like, you know, like you said Ted, it's like the West for all the many obvious reasons are self involved. So does that make sense, the question. I know, I know my one you're like there's so many that you've been putting on on the Instagram page. If there was one. Well, it's a tricky one because there are queer icons who don't know that there are queer icons, and there's some who like you know that who inspire us but without them knowing. And there are some who are, you know, more more actively or visibly I would. I will go with Basim I will include their name and Instagram handle in the in the chat. So Basim is. They don't refer to themselves as a drag queen, they refer to themselves as a celebrity female impersonator, because that's where you can get away with things. And they have managed to fool the entire Arab world into loving them and embracing them and applauding them. While flaunting about as as a camp over the top woman from Dubai to to Tunisia to Beirut to Syria and so on. And they have had a successful career by simply changing the way they describe themselves so they're a celebrity impersonator, and it's a full blown camp over the top drag queen that parades all over the Arab world. And that's, that's someone I would like to highlight. Wow. I'll just take them out there like phenomenal. Thank you marijuana. Thank you. And also any other last like it was really good what you were saying before about sharing platforms and sharing events. If there's any other events. Yeah. Do do share more. I will be giving. I will be giving a talk at the standard hotel next month. They invited me to be in discussion to talk about the queer and the project, but I don't have the details set in stone just yet. If you follow the Instagram page, I will make sure to update which I shared in the chat. I will make sure to update. It's going to be a free event with a performance and some music and a discussion. But we're still working on tightening the details. I've unfortunately I don't have a link to share just yet. No worries. What day is that the 26th of July of July. Of July. Yeah, exactly the 26th of July. Amazing. Amazing course. Oh, thank you so much. Let's carry on with queer icons. In my communities, where are we? We talk about the icon you think about many a line Western figure because they are they coming out. Like if I look like Chinese teachers, like someone you may be thinking because it's famous person, they are LGBT, but they are not officially come out. So it's quite like. Yes. I hope it knows, but I would, but when I someone asked this question, I usually would say. You should like yourselves or your friends is the best to icon or your role models, you can learn from your communities from your friends. I just want I have so many ideas from the commentary or this idea is from Jamie. Subscribe. Yeah, because we are all very, very, very nice. Oh, amazing. You're my icon with everything that you're doing. Thank you. Jamie, did you want to jump in? I have one that I can recommend, and she's a queer Chinese feminist called she told, and there's a documentary that she did which I'm going to send a link over here, where they documented like the queer feminist movement in China. And, and she's also the first person I think to come out on television publicly. Yeah. And I think in the video and the link that I share is in Mandarin, but the texts are in English so you can see about her work there. She has also done quite a lot of film that are queer. She's incredible just checking around now. Thank you so much, Jamie. Oh, and, and both of you. And any other. I know you shared the event at LSE on the 26th, the screening of Safe Distance. Any, also in terms of the film, I'm super interested in the film, and how that's developing, and also the mapping project, but any other events, both to one and Jamie that you want to share. Chobai, you can share the queer Chinese art festival. We still have. I already, I already shared it. The PH has affectable. You have three upcoming events. It's online performance. Yes, it's going to be on the 12th on the 19th and 26th. Oh, I will share another one is in the London LGBT committee centre. We will host a mandatory conversation. You can come and come to mandatory for the beginners. Amazing 1296 brilliant. Oh, thank you so much. I hope you're getting all the support. It seems like you are the support from LSE as well, but it's such incredible like historic connection. Ted or Asif, in terms of queer icons that the world needs to know about. I will be a woman or a first-class icon as Mel, who is currently living in London. I know him. He is a kind of my family friend. So he did a lot, a lot. The first boundary to queer organisation for boys of families. He was one of the founding member of that thing back in 2002 or three maybe. He was a, he organized the thing in the country of the queerness and he needed to be other people and now he is in London. And from there he, as I said before, was a tragedy of murder of queer activists. So from London he protested so many things. He sent letters from Bangladeshi lawyers or something to fix this thing. I would refer him at times where I come from. Thank you so much, Asif. I've just shared the amazing interview with man there when he won the Attitude Award. Thank you, Asif. Over to you, Ted. Queer icon the world needs to know about. Bayard Rustin. I think I'm typing his name in here. I'm not sure if it's the right place in the chat. Is that the right place? I mean I can type it if you want. Bayard Rustin. He was the man who encouraged Martin Luther King to have a peaceful demonstration for civil rights for black people in America. But at the same time, he was openly gay in 1963, years before a stone wall, and also while being gay was totally illegal. And he once said that one day gay people will be fighting for their rights in the same way that black people were fighting for their rights during segregation and all that in America. And not enough people know about all the great things that he did. He was also a good singer. There are some videos of him singing. And he's very inspiring and courageous. And I'm devastated that I only found out about him about 15 years ago. But considering that he was doing all this great stuff in 1960, it's very sad that he's not better known. Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much, Ted. And if he influenced you, then he's even more of a legend. I'm just taking down the notes. Any other final questions or thoughts? Oh, my computer overheating. I'm just going to have got these notes. Let me just thank you so I can't. Can anyone else copy the notes? I'm confused. Let me try one more time. Okay, thank you so much. There will be further events. There's none as planned yet from a SOAS perspective, because we're all going to be on the streets and in the woods. And then July 1. And it will be really joyful to be together in person. Just for me, thank you so much for everything that you're doing. It's so nice to connect. And for all of our attendees as well. And have the best powerful nourishing pride month everyone. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.