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Meet the LGBTQ+ Londoners shaking up sexuality and gender

Johnny Cochrane
Johnny Cochrane

Anyone who went to Pride or Queer Picnic this summer will find it hard to believe that it was only 50 years ago on 27 July, 1967, that this country decriminalised — and only partially at that — homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21. It was not an Act passed graciously, either: one law lord, Lord Arran, insisted that ‘ostentatious behaviour’ should be avoided, as it would be ‘utterly distasteful’.

How far we have come. Today, we live in a multigendered, sexually and socially inclusive city where the freedom to be whoever you want to be — and to fancy whoever you want to fancy — is cherished and celebrated. Our lexicon has expanded: while not everyone’s chosen self-description, the word ‘queer’, for example, has been reclaimed as a positive and inclusive term, representing many shades of identities in the not-straight world. Once a Victorian term of abuse, it can now mean everything from women who want to be men, to people who prefer to express no gender, to drag kings and drag queens. Likewise, our understanding of gender has evolved, moving away from the strict binary choice of male or female as prescribed by born sex. Sexuality, too, is viewed with more nuance; as writer and activist Charlie Craggs points out: ‘We’re in an interesting time, moving towards a more liberal age. Fifty per cent of millennials don’t consider themselves straight and see gender and sexuality in shades of grey, not black and white.’

The city has risen to the occasion, as it always does, as a place where all human life is welcome. Here, we meet the Londoners at the vanguard.

Lyall Hakaraia, 49

Creative director, designer, owner of VFD and fairy godperson to the LGBTQ+ scene

‘I’m bisexual, homosexual, I’m pansexual, I fall in love with who I fall in love with. I am not gay. I am male, but I love being androgynous,’ says Hakaraia, a key nurturing figure in the queer community and a dad of one ‘typical teenager’. He arrived from rural New Zealand in 1990 and fell in love with the mother of his child, with whom he parted amicably — ‘It just happened’. Having designed costumes for Madonna and Beyoncé, seven years ago he opened Vogue Fabrics — a club, arts space and ‘crazy bubble of acceptance’ — in an old Dalston haberdashers. He changed the name to VFD, but it remains a beacon on the queer landscape. Its influence on fashion is undeniable, too, Charles Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY line having sprung from its shabby shopfront. (vfdalston.com)

Tayylor Made, 26

DJ and club promoter

‘Coming to London from Washington DC four years ago I was like, “Wow! Look at all these girl-oriented venues,”’ says the woman born Taylor Hilton, whose roving east London Vibrate night is one of the city’s coolest lesbian club events. She began DJing aged 12, growing up with culturally open, ‘very cool’ middle-class parents in predominantly white, suburban Potomac, Maryland, and is unbothered by labels. Calling her lesbian, queer or gay is fine, but one thing that does rile her is ‘the disbelief that a feminine-looking woman can’t possibly be lesbian’. Based in a warehouse in Tottenham, she shares her home with all types of people and says that ‘the best parties are the ones where just anybody turns up. The sickest warehouse parties are full of all kinds of people.’

Sadie Sinner, 26

Founder and curator of Cocoa Butter Club

‘Really, I feel off the binary,’ says ‘black, queer, female’ Sadie Sinner. ‘More part woman, part goddess.’ A contemporary dance graduate who grew up in Enfield, Sinner was born to Zambian parents — her father was once the country’s vice-president, while her mother is a doctor — and now lives with friends in Islington. ‘London is doing the best it can. So many people call it home because it’s multicultural and accepting. You leave this city and it’s not so great out there.’ Her fury and energy is poured into her Cocoa Butter Club cabaret collective. ‘We do things differently,’ she adds. ‘Just because it’s not all pin curls and shaking tits and ass doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’

Charlie Craggs, 25

Writer and activist

Defining herself as ‘just a straight woman’ who ‘since four, just felt like a girl’, Charlie Craggs is the brains behind Nail Transphobia (motto: ‘Fight transphobia, fabulously’). ‘I sit down and do someone’s nails and have a chat,’ she says of her pop-up salon. ‘They can ask whatever they like. It might be about my transition or it might be about The X Factor. The goal is to bring humanity to a media narrative about trans people that can feel pretty alien.’ Reflecting on past experiences as ‘an effeminate gay guy’, Craggs, who grew up in west London, says she knew she was trans — but ‘didn’t want to go there. It just seemed too much until I saw [trans actress] Laverne Cox, and suddenly saw what I could be: intelligent, beautiful and most important, happy.’ After some harrowing times — ‘I’d say a hail Mary every time I left the house’ — she says her company has made her realise she has ‘more allies than expected. London is built on respecting differences. For all the prejudice out there, I live in a city where I am allowed to be me.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

TeTe Bang, 26

Club personality, drag artist, DJ, professional fun producer

A ray of exuberant sunshine, Bang calls herself ‘queer. Gay is not the right word: it’s too limiting because I’ve dated men, women, transgender men and straight drag queens.’ She identifies as a woman, ‘but when I’m in drag, I’m someone else’. Known for her events such as Jingle Mingle at Her Upstairs, she also DJs at nights like Dollar Baby. Bang grew up in the Lake District and Spain with a ‘very glamorous’ stripper mum and a construction worker dad who is ‘not as homophobic as he was’. In her teens, dating another girl, Bang ‘experienced so much hate’, but a decade on, living in Manor House, straight culture fascinates her. ‘They think there are only certain options in life based on their genitals. Once you get used to dressing like a drag queen, it’s difficult to go back to being a normal girl.’

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Lasana Shabazz, 30

Performance artist, actor and writer

‘I am queer and I don’t like to gender myself. I’m gender non-binary. I’m me,’ says lifelong Londoner Shabazz, whose highly politicised cabaret pieces can provoke ‘shock, rolled eyeballs and tuts’ at their commentary on sexuality, race and class. Shabazz is also a teacher, working for clients including Camden Council, the British Museum and the V&A, and ‘once did a vogueing workshop for OAPs’. Shabazz’s childhood was spent in Kilburn and Clapton, though now they are based in Haggerston. The current visibility of queer culture, says Shabazz, ‘means we’re at the start of a slight revolution’.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

D’relle Khan, 29

Creative director

D’relle Khan (born D’relle Wickham) describes himself as gay, but says he ‘never really came out. I just fell in love with someone when I was 14 who happened to be male.’ An east London boy who recently became a Vauxhall resident — which is ‘the new Soho, the new gay hub, supposedly’ — he defines himself more by his lifelong passion: dance. As a 15-year-old he flew to New York in search of ‘the vogueing houses: the LGBT dance families that were created because people in them had been abandoned due to their sexual preferences.’ Since then he has revitalised the UK vogueing scene — in 2010 even performing ‘Vogue’ at a Mayfair club for Madonna as her birthday present — and is now European Father of the Big Apple’s famous House Of Khan. On 5 August he will present Werq: A Voguing Ball to a crowd of 700 at the Barbican. Given that he has had his house set on fire, been kidnapped and been stabbed because of his sexuality, it’s unsurprising that he thinks ‘we still have a long way to go’ in terms of collective attitudes. ‘The gay scene is still so segregated,’ he says. ‘Where can we go to be one big celebration without all the hierarchy and divides?’

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Alexandre Simões, 22

Artist, muse, nightclub promoter

Growing up queer in Lisbon, Simões says, was not easy. ‘I had to move to London so I could actually find people like me.’ He is now admired for his ability to unite the queer art world in one room at his ‘creative and political’ Rad Festa at VFD (the next one is on 15 September). Poets, artists, fashion designers and film-makers from the best of London’s art colleges including the Slade, Central Saint Martins and his own college, Goldsmiths, all come together. Simões, who lives in New Cross, has also been a (reluctant) muse and model for several London designers. After a few attempts at nailing down how he feels about his sexuality and gender, he settles on ‘non-binary, gay man’.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Whiskey Chow, 27

Artist and drag king

Chow’s story began in her native China, where she founded the first LGBTQ+ music festival in the country, the Lover Comrades Concert. Ultimately though, she left. ‘They say in China that people have freedom, our country is democratic, rich and powerful,’ she says. ‘Yet all queer people in China are excluded because “homosexualism is a foul offspring of capitalism”.’ Chow, who identifies as lesbian and lives in Battersea, arrived here two years ago to study for an MA at the Royal College of Art, and now her work explores ‘female masculinity, stereotypes and cultural projection of Chinese and Asian identity’. She likes London because ‘people are being given more space to explore their desire and identity’, but also says that ‘those spaces can be overwhelmingly white’. She looks forward to the day when ‘we won’t need categories to empower ourselves’.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Bishi, 34

Singer, composer, co-founder of WITCiH, label boss at Gryphon Records

Bishi says it is her duty to speak up because ‘sex is something you don’t talk about in my conformist Bengali culture’. Defining herself as ‘a queer woman and a person of colour’, she lives in Earls Court and describes London as ‘historic in its acceptance of people’. As a young artist she performed with Minty: the band behind the late and astronomically influential performance artist Leigh Bowery, whom Lucian Freud so loved to paint. Since then, she has performed with big acts such as Yoko Ono, the London Symphony Orchestra, Pulp and Goldfrapp and also composed film scores. Her WITCiH (Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub) project brings together and celebrates ‘brilliant women pushing the boundaries and narratives of creative technology’.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Krishna Istha, 23

Performance artist and actor

It’s hard to nail a gender on Istha. ‘Trans-masculine’ is as close as you can get, ‘but when people read me as a man, it freaks me out so I wear these.’ Istha waves some talon-like nails. ‘I don’t identify as a man, I just want to look more masculine. I’m gender-queer. I don’t mind if people call me he or she, but if they can’t tell either way that is a great result.’ Sexually, things are more straightforward: ‘I’m a greedy bisexual. Gimme everyone!’ Istha is half American, half Indian, and moved to London six years ago but is currently living in Derby rehearsing a play, Bullish, which opens 12 September at the Camden People’s Theatre. ‘London’s the best place in the entire world,’ Istha says, because ‘there are so many layers to its queer underground.’

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Dolly Pawton, 2 Lucy London, 40, Stella Clements, 34

Instagram star, Fashion lecturer, Writer

When gay (not lesbian) couple Lucy London and Stella Clements posted a rainbow pin on the Instagram feed of their dog Dolly Pawton, it quickly became a focal point for LGBTQ+ activism. ‘We get 100 messages a day,’ says London. Clements comes from a religious conservative family who have given the couple what London describes as ‘years of hell. None of her family came to our wedding three years ago. It was during this stressed and unhappy time I decided to get Dolly.’ Today Dolly has 80,000 followers and her fans, London says, ‘made us feel accepted when our families rejected us.’ They prefer describing themselves as gay over lesbian. ‘We don’t really use the term lesbian: it’s too loaded by the thought of what lesbians do,’ says London.

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)

Umber Ghauri, 25

Make-up artist

‘Labels have always frustrated me,’ says Ghauri, who identifies as ‘agender’ (‘It means I just don’t have preferences’). Ghauri found success doing make-up solely for the LGBTQ+ community: especially for trans people of all skin colours — ‘I help them use make-up to get a more masculine or feminine look.’ Their proudest moment so far is working with the American rapper and activist Mykki Blanco, one of hip-hop’s queer pioneers. Having grown up in a Pakistani British household in Richmond, Ghauri studied art history at The Courtauld and talks about the recognition of a third sex going back many thousands of years. ‘I find it comforting,’ says Ghauri, who is now based in Chiswick. ‘We’re not just millennial aberrations.’

(Johnny Cochrane)
(Johnny Cochrane)