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Queer Britain is the national LGBTQ+ museum that is preserving queer history for generations to come. If you have a black and white photo from Pride’s radical beginnings, you can submit it here for the chance to have it recoloured and donated to the Queer Britain Archive. “We rarely get to see images of this part of the LGBTQ+ movement,” she says. Do it more.”įemi’s delighted that the Lesbian Strength image has been featured in this campaign. “It really floored us,” Femi says, reflecting on how the sudden appearance of this virus changed the LGBTQ+ liberation movement during that time.īut if Femi could go back and give her younger self some advice, it would be to “dance a bit longer, take more of your clothes off a little more often. Lesbians cared for the gay men affected by the virus in their droves. Right in the middle of all of this was the start of the HIV/AIDS crisis, which created fear of and amongst the gay community.
#WHY IS RAINBOW GAY PRIDE FREE#
I was also a volunteer at Switchboard at the time, as well as a columnist for Capital Gay – London’s free gay newspaper.” So that was an amazing time to be a part of that. I was on the management committee for The Lesbians And Gays Centre Project and that had just opened, which was like a five-floor community centre in London. “But I was also part of a community that was growing out of both clubbing and politics. One year, she attended Pride in London and then immediately travelled on a Concorde and marched in New York Pride the next day. A bit of a shallow reason, but there you go!”įor Femi, it was also a time of clubbing. When I attended Gay Pride, I was more butchy, less campy because the competition was much higher. “The other reason I was there,” Femi jokes, “was because you could wear a dress to Lesbian Strength and stand out! If you were a lesbian and you wore a dress to Gay Pride, the drag queens would outshine you.
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I wanted them to see that it could be fun, no matter how tough it might be.” “So I felt very responsible to young lesbian and gay men who were coming up who might not have seen anybody like me, and looking happy about it. Femi was adamant she’d be that positive representation that was so sorely needed. But while white LGBTQ+ people would move to a big city and create chosen families, LGBTQ+ people of colour were faced with not seeing themselves properly represented within that community. It was common for LGBTQ+ people to be rejected by their families after they had come out. Living at the intersection of being a Black queer person in the 80s came with its challenges. I wanted to show different images of what lesbians could be like.” “And so I made it my mission to ensure, if there was a camera, or a microphone, I’d be right in front of it! It was really important for me to carry the Black Lesbian banner. “When I was coming out, most people I saw who were out, or able to come out and live openly as gay men and lesbians were white,” says Femi. Lesbian Strength was formed to create a space where lesbians could be seen on the street – and as a visible and an identifiable group. The Pride Flag, designed by artist and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker, had, by now, been widely adopted throughout the LGBTQ+ community.
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In 1985 there was a severe lack of queer female representation at Pride. I wasn’t one of the organisers of the march but one of the people who showed up on the day.” “They were my mummy, my aunt, my big sister, my next door neighbour, my everything. BBC One’s EastEnders has just debuted, The Colour Purple has launched Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg into the public eye – and Femi Otitoju is attending her fourth Lesbian Strength March.įemi came out in her last year at school “so the community was really important to me,” she says.
#WHY IS RAINBOW GAY PRIDE ARCHIVE#
In partnership with GAY TIMES, Switchboard and Queer Britain, the Recolour The Rainbow campaign has breathed new life into archive imagery to acknowledge and celebrate those who have come before us in the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation.Īlongside the recolouring of four black and white images, we have delved deeper into the stories of the people featured in the photographs to find out their memories of the moment, and to spotlight and preserve queer history for a new generation. That’s why SKITTLES® has given up its rainbow to re-colour moments from Pride’s history. During Pride, only one rainbow deserves to be seen.