Canal Street

This is Regent's Canal in London, actually nothing to do with Canal Street, the key location in Manchester's Gay Village. However because I've watched the film Moonlight tonight, seeing this canal earlier today allows me to make a lame segue.

Moonlight depicts a socially deprived black community in Miami and a boy struggling to realise and acknowledge his sexuality; a state of affairs that persists into adulthood. The film does it subtly but conveys powerfully how pressing social problems, fear and lack of open communications contribute to the bottling up of these situations.

Even amongst people in the room of millennials studying at Cambridge who were watching this film at St John's College, a demographic entirely different to that shown in the film, there are parallels for those who have been through the same journey in their own community, wherever that may be.

I was debating my sexuality when studying in Manchester in my early 20s but didn't do anything about it or mention it at all until my late 20s. In retrospect a decade or so of possibility and experience was wasted because I wasn't open, couldn't communicate and thought it could be buried.

For many people who struggle to say something, it's because they don't know how it will be received or they are not accustomed to expressing themselves in order to form the words. For teens in the UK this seems to have changed for the better in the last 10-15 years. I imagine there is a large cohort of people of my generation and certainly older who have never said anything and live more unfulfilled and closed lives than they deserve.

I nearly missed my chance but feel so much more liberated having done it. The challenge for UK society is to prevent anyone from struggling in silence, when demonstrating understanding and openness can simply only help with what is an entirely natural fact for a significant number of the population. People do not want to be pressured into coming out but they do want those around them to create a non-judgemental environment that lets them speak at a time right for them.

Vive la France. Mort à l'intolérance.