In which I attend a conference

(S)

This past weekend I was incredibly excited to attend the National Union of Students LGBT conference in Manchester along with other people from my university. I had no idea what to expect, but the idea of being surrounded by so many other QUILTBAG people, more than I’d ever met before in my life, was just exhilarating.

I arrived at the conference in the middle of the first day (thanks to the joys of university seminars) and walked into the middle of a motions debate. It was crazy to say the least. People were running around the room to put in motions, some delegates were doing jazz hands instead of clapping (something I later discovered was a substitute for cheering) and there were already all sorts of decisions being made. Luckily, though, it didn’t take too long to pick everything up and soon I was voting and jazz handing with the best of them.

After a slightly daunting start, it turned into a fantastic weekend. There were some really important motions put forward, ranging from the definitions of bi and trans* within the campaign, to education regarding the legacy of section 28, to the treatment of those outside the gender binary on the NHS. For a lot of the time it felt like we were doing some really good work, especially on the last day.

There were also some truly controversial and difficult motions, as well as some difficult issues raised. I quickly discovered how hard it is vote on something controversial when you’re the elected representative for a group of people. To try and consider all those people in one decision, and to take into account a vast spectrum of opinions that people might held is next to impossible. All I found I could do was vote from the heart and trust that the diversity in our delegation would make up a truly representative vote.

The democracy was all well and good, I love it as much as the next person, but for me it wasn’t the motions and the voting and the conference floor that made the conference for me, it was the workshops and smaller groups.

I really appreciated the opportunity to meet with other delegates from different parts of the country and different backgrounds to me, but nevertheless people who I had some small thing in common with. I always think that nothing is more important than speaking to other people, listening to them and learning from them. Talking to people from around the country who have different sorts of campaigning and activism experience really opened my eyes to a lot of things and gave me so many new ideas.

Really, I found the conference at times incredibly inspiration, and at others incredibly moving.

Nothing, at the moment, makes me as emotional to talk about as my religious experiences. There’s often a feeling of being trapped somewhere between my religion and my sexuality. I often don’t feel fully able to participate in religion because of my sexuality, while simultaneously, I don’t feel like I can celebrate some of the victories of the LGBT campaign with the rest of the community because my religion denies me access to those victories (specifically that of equal marriage).

At the conference, it was something of a revelation to go into a room of other religious LGBT people who not only understood my feelings and experiences but shared them. At university there are only a couple of other religious LGBT students, and of those there is only one other person who has any sort of affiliation with the Church of England. (It goes without saying, I think, that outside of university I know of no one who is LGBT at all.) Therefore, to meet and talk to those people was an incredibly inspirational and important experience. It’s nice to know that you’re not alone and that someone, somewhere understands.

I think that that is also the value generally with events such as these. Out in ‘the real world’ heterosexual, cis-gendered people are the norm. To suddenly find yourself in a safe space, surrounded by a group of people who get how you feel is really special. They might be an incredibly diverse group (we saw some statistics at conference showing the diversity of the delegates) but they do share some of your experiences and feelings.

I truly hope that LGBT people the world over get to experience, at some point in their life, the incredible feeling of being normal and understood somewhere. To spend some time in a place where you’re one of many LGBT people takes the pressure off a little. Not to mention the fact that community seems to be a central part of why the LGBT movement can be so powerful. At times it can be a very divided community, but at its best it is a proud, supportive and friendly community, who stand together to fight and survive.