‘The joy is waking up and liking who you are’: six LGBTQ+ guiding lights on the long road to now
As WorldPride descends on Sydney in one of the planet’s biggest celebrations of queer lives, images of youthful revellers will dominate television, print and online coverage and postings on social media.
So the arrival at Sydney Town Hall of the city’s first Coming Back Out Salon – already a fixture of the Melbourne queer social calendar – is something of a corrective. Welcoming all ages, the salon honours older LGBTQ+ people, recognising them as guiding lights.
“As much as we talk about inclusivity, it is an ageist community,” says Tristan Meecham, the cofounder of All The Queens Men, which produces the salon. “The experiences of older [queer] people – being imprisoned, hospitalised, going through an epidemic – the younger communities haven’t quite acknowledged or understood the amount of trauma still in elders’ bones.”
Ageism can compound earlier discrimination and stigma, says Russ Gluyas, coordinator of the LOVE Project (Living Older Visibly and Engaged). “There’s a youth obsession and it’s becoming more annoying, perhaps not recognising the experiences and lived history and the enormous amount of stories and love,” Gluyas says.
Guardian Australia spoke with six LOVE Project ambassadors about life, wisdom, issues still faced and hopes ahead.
‘We were told … there was no way out’
David Polson, 68
I grew up in
