Once I was Eleven Years Old, by Liz Kessler

I wrote this poem a couple of months ago, after listening to ‘7 Years’ by Lukas Graham. I wrote it shortly before the Orlando shootings in which 49 people were killed, shot dead for one reason only: they were in a gay club.

This blog is dedicated to the 49 people who lost their lives that night, and is posted in honour of the new Amnesty International book for young people, Here I Stand, a collection of stories by YA authors which I am immensely proud to be part of.

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Once I was eleven years old,

I had a best friend.

We used to try kissing.

Told ourselves we were practising.

Once I was eleven years old.

I moved up to the big school, grew up kind of fast.

Left the girl behind as we took our separate paths.

Had a string of boyfriends, and never questioned why

None of them ever felt a hundred per cent right.

Once I was sixteen years old, and I had some new friends.

Two of them sat me down one day

Told me they were gay.

I knew right then they had a love I wanted too.

But I had to wait. They told me, ‘It’ll come to you.’

Once I was eighteen years old.

I’d started at college, moved away from home.

I met a girl one night and I knew what I’d been missing.

I’d never known a feeling like when we started kissing.

It only took one night

To know this was a hundred per cent right.

I always thought when I found love, things would work out fine,

Thought it would keep me safe from danger, keep me warm at night.

Didn’t expect the words that hit me like a brick.

‘Dyke, queer, disgusting, you make me feel sick.’

Once I was twenty years old.

And a law was brought in by bigots and fools

Said my sexuality had to be kept out of schools.

Told us we were dangerous, told us we weren’t wanted.

So we fought back…we marched, we sang, we chanted.

Once I was twenty years old.

I poured my heart into the world.

Demanded that it listen. Demanded we be heard.

Went out there and fell in love a hundred times or more.

Nothing would stop me, no bigot, no law.

Once I was thirty years old

I knew who I was by then.

I had a life, a job, good friends.

I looked back on the times I’d grown up in, the things we’d lived through,

And gave thanks that the world was growing up too.

Once I was forty years old

I met the love of my life.

Society had changed so much

That this girl is now my wife.

I only see the future now, and this is what I say:

Those dykes and faggots of the past have led us to this day.

The ones who fought, who bravely stood and let themselves be counted

Their gifts have brought us where we are. Their lives should be saluted.

Once I was forty years old.

I looked at what I’d done.

Published books for the young.

But there was still one left to write, still one thing I had to say,

And the need to tell this story had never gone away.

I went back to the book that I had written years before.

Gave it everything I had, and then a little more.

I owed it to that girl in there to stand up, face the crowd.

To tell them, ‘This is who I am’.

I hope that girl is proud.

Soon I’ll be fifty years old.

The world is still evolving, still turning.

We’re still growing, still learning.

My country is a place where two people can hold hands, embrace

Without fearing abuse and disgrace.

But we’re not there yet.

Not even nearly, so it seems.

You only have to watch the news on your television screens.

Every day another story

Tells us progress can be slow.

It’s one world and we still have a long way to go.

Maybe soon. Maybe one day.

Maybe when we’re eighty.

But at least now I can hold my head up and say to the girl of twenty,

‘Look, I did it, I stood up, told the world who I am. Come stand with me.’

Once I was eleven years old,

I had a best friend.

We used to try kissing.

Told ourselves we were practising.

Once I was eleven years old.

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On Becoming That Person - Liz Kessler

Here’s a story. It’s set in early 1985. A girl is in her first year at university. Lots of things are changing around her. Politically, times are volatile. Margaret Thatcher is barely halfway through her time as Prime Minister. The miners’ strike is going strong. Clause 28 and the Poll Tax are only a few years away.

Inwardly, things are just as volatile for our protagonist. She’s been feeling confused about herself recently. Feeling things that she can’t quite put into words – or maybe she can, but she’s scared to.

She’s tried dropping hints to a couple of her friends about what she’s going through – but where to start? And does she dare? Sharing her theories about herself feels like a big risk to take on such new friendships.

And then she meets someone new, and the theory becomes reality. She meets a girl, and falls in love. Nothing has ever felt so right – but nothing has ever felt so scary either. The girls sneak around as secretly as they can, hiding their kisses, whispering their feelings, hoping that no one will guess. Of course, people do. Some are understanding. Others – like the girlfriend’s housemate who pours a pint over the girl’s head in the student bar and calls her disgusting – not so much.

The girl feels alone. Who can she turn to? She’s not ready to publicly walk through a door with a big ‘GAYSOC’ label on it yet. So she turns to books. It’s pre-internet, though, remember, so this isn’t an easy task, and involves building up the courage to go to the ‘Lesbian and Gay’ section of the women’s bookshop she’s heard about in London. But she does it. And there, she finds Rubyfruit Jungle, The Well of Loneliness, Patience and Sarah and a few others.

These books might be dated. They might be worlds away from what she’s going through. But at last, she is reading the words of someone who has trodden the path she is trying to navigate. Finally, she is not on her own.

You might have guessed by now, or you might not. (Which, incidentally, is a line from my first book, The Tail of Emily Windsnap, which my brother has always maintained is an allegory for coming out as gay, but which – well, if it is, it was purely accidental on my part.) The girl is me. Was me. The ‘was’ is important because of how different those times were. At least, in many ways they were different, and thank goodness for that.

If you spend a lot of time in certain circles, mixing with crowds who are cool, up-to-date, politically aware, cosmopolitan, you might be forgiven for thinking that we’ve advanced to a point where sexuality is no longer an issue. But that’s not the whole story.

In these advanced times, ‘That’s so gay’ is still commonly used as a derogatory term. In these advanced times, LGBT students and young adults still have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts. In these advanced times, a leading Cardinal in the Vatican feels able to go on record advising parents not to let their children have anything to do with ‘wrong’‘evil’ and ‘intrinsically disordered’ gay people.

So no, we are not there yet. But we're on our way. And I might be biased but I happen to believe that literature - and particularly Young Adult literature - is leading the way. 

Think back to the girl in her hall of residence, hoping no one had seen her come out of her friend’s room late at night, secretly reading books with lesbian characters and hiding them at the back of a drawer, hoping no one shouted insults as she drank in the union bar. Think about what she got from the books she found. The worlds they opened, the strength they gave her. The knowledge passed down from the generation that went before her.

And now think about this. I am that person. I’m not just the girl being called ‘disgusting’ by her girlfriend’s roommate. I am the person ahead of her too, the one further down the path, helping to light the way for the next generation. Because society has changed as much as it has, because my publisher wanted to be part of that change, not just watch it take place outside - my YA novel Read Me Like A Book was published. This month it came out in paperback.

I can hardly even put into words how much it means to that student back in the 1980s. In fact, I can, because I am her. It means the world. And I use that word on purpose. Because I am proud to be part of the world that has made these changes. And I hope to be part of the world that strives to make more, until a girl struggling to come to terms with her sexuality is such a non-issue that the idea of writing a book about it doesn't even make sense.

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To A Happier Year: LGBT Stories for Children, Teens and YA, by Tess Berry-Hart

When I was a teenager, in English class, we were discussing EM Forster’s classic novel Maurice, published in 1913, about the journey of a young gay man to find love in repressive Edwardian society.

Then our teacher dropped (to my mind at least) a bombshell. “You realise that the law prevents me from saying anything positive about homosexuality,” she told us, her hands picking anxiously at the bobbles on her grey fluffy cardigan. “I’m not allowed to tell you that it’s OK.”

When I was growing up, I hadn’t even heard of the word LGBT – I doubt it had even been invented. I remember as a child asking my mother; “Mummy, why can’t two ladies get married?” – to be honest, the context escapes me – and being told “because it’s against the law.” Later on, when I became a teenager and started to identify as the “B” in “LGBT” I started to look around for representation in the books I was reading. And very little there was too. OK, I was at school in North Wales and it was right at the end of the bad old Eighties – Margaret Thatcher was on the way out, but Section 28 of the Local Government Act (which prohibited “the promotion of homosexuality as a pretend family relationship”) was still in.

Now as it happened, Section 28 never applied directly to schools, only to local authorities, and many teachers such as ours were confused about what they could or couldn’t say. But such was the media blackout in those days, that any information seemed to be confined to the bad-news pages of the newspapers (hey, this was pre-Internet! Dark Ages!) such as (rather plentiful) stories of LGBT people being beaten up and murdered.

However, somewhat to my surprise, a few LGBT-themed teen books suddenly crept into our school library. I came across them by accident – God knows how they got in there, either a forward-thinking teacher had ordered them (the same English teacher perhaps? We’ll never know!) or they’d just slipped in as an oversight. Anyhow, I quickly squirreled them away, and read them from cover to cover. My favourite was The Other Side Of The Fence (1986) by Jean Ure, about a friendship between young runaway Bonnie and posh Richard, a gay teenager who has been thrown out of his house by his homophobic father and their journey to find somewhere to live together. 

The second was Dance On My Grave (1982) by Aidan Chambers, about Hal’s search for “a friend”, where sex was rather euphemistically referred to as “giving him a present from Southend.” (Yup). The title of the third escapes me now (and even asking around on the Internet hasn’t yielded any fruit, hit me up on Twitter though if this sounds familiar) – was about a teen lesbian couple who had to break up because one of them was raped (the causation between being raped and having to break up with your partner was taken as so evident as to not warrant any explanation in the book).

So there were characters like me in books then! Unfortunately, with life mirroring art, the situations encountered by characters were often rather upsetting or depressing. Despite the relative doom and gloom though, these finds were somewhat exhilarating – contraband! forbidden fruit! – and I’ll be honest – the idea of possessing something AGAINST THE LAW was kinda exciting. I searched around in community centres and classified ads at the back of magazines and found a whole new hidden world, of photocopied flyers to club nights and books of hand-drawn cartoons. I also came across Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit which again started with a bleak picture of the journey of a working-class girl but slowly blossomed into hope. Despite my differences, I still came from a middle-class, arty family where tolerance was the norm, and reading about the hardships other people in different situations had to bear was enlightening.

For this article, asking around my peers who grew up the same time as me for other LGBT-themed books of our schooldays bore little fruit. Many didn’t come across anything at all until their early twenties when they discovered Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde. “There was none o’ that round Dorset way!” quipped Matt, a friend from the days of our university GaySoc (well, it was the Nineties.) “There’s no queers up north, y’ know!” replied playwright Leon Fleming. “I didn't read any LGBT fiction growing up at all. I don't think I ever saw any. It’s unlikely there would have been any around in school or the local library to just accidently drop on anyway, and with no internet then (I feel really old now) searching for such things without giving myself away would have been impossible as well.”

Others managed a couple of suggestions from more recent years – actor Jack Holden mentioned Hero by Perry More, a fantasy story about a teenage superhero, and writer Paul Hewitt found a parallel in the inequality and social discrimination referenced throughout the Harry Potter series:  “Whether it be Muggle hating, disrespect of muggle-borns, societal acceptance of half humans or the treatment of non-human magical creatures, hopefully the generations after me that have loved those characters and stories will learn something about equality and community, too.”

These days of course, years after Section 28 was repealed and with the introduction of equal marriage, British society has become far more accepting of LGBT families. A brief search on Google reveals hundreds of strings of “LGBT books for children” and “LGBT Youth Fiction.” Parent friends, both gay and straight, reeled off lists of LGBT-friendly children’s stories – among them King and King, by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, about a prince whose parents want him to marry. They bring him princess after princess, but he eventually falls for the brother of the last princess. 

There’s And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell – the true story of Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins who adopt Tango, a baby girl penguin, at Central Park Zoo, suggested by my friend Heather. "It's great for all kids growing up today in a more varied parenting environment because it is just so affirming about love and family and can help start a discussion. I've been meaning to get it for my little one as one of his friends has two mums and no Dad and he'll be asking questions soon I expect." A particular favourite with American friends is Mama, Mommy and ME, by Leslǎ Newman, about a toddler’s day playing hide-and-seek, dressing up and bath time with her two mothers. There’s sites dedicated to how to introduce LGBT-friendly books into the classroom – there’s seen to be a distinction between books where such things are “an issue” – ie being teased for having a same-sex family, or feeling “different” when growing up – and other books where LGBT characters – such as having two mums – are presented merely as part of the story.

For young adults, there’s countless options – amongst which only a few are Boys Don’t Cry by Malorie Blackman which features homophobia, Luna by Julie Anne Peters about a girl whose sibling is a closeted trans girl, Beautiful Music For Ugly Children about transgender teens by Kirstin Cronn-Mills and virtually everything by David Levithan (start with Boy Meets Boy if you haven’t already). Don't shoot me if I haven't included your favourite - you can add it in the comments section.

However, we can’t lose sight of the fact that there’s still countless countries and regimes across the world where homosexuality is an offence. Last year I was commissioned to produce a verbatim play interviewing gay Russians after the introduction of the law prohibiting “the promotion of homosexuality to children” – words eerily similar to the wording of Section 28 back in the day. A new production of it is coming to the International Youth Arts Festival in Kingston on the 15^th and 16^th of July – if you’re around, come see us!

Hopefully, there will be new generations growing up in a vastly different Britain than the one we grew up in. Yes, there will be pockets of prejudice and certain cultures or religions that are slower to accept difference, but on the whole, the landscape has changed beyond recognition. These days the Internet provides a lot of different ways for young people to see themselves - though chatrooms are already outmoded, they have a plethora of coming out videos, gay YouTubers, gay Instagrammers, how to’s and guides and questions and quizzes all over the Internet, and of course, numerous books.

Forster’s dedication in the frontispiece of Maurice, over a hundred years ago – “To a happier year” – has finally come true. The question I asked as a child to my mother – “Why can’t two ladies get married?” will never have to be asked – or answered – again. 

What’s in a word? by Liz Kessler

Ten days ago, something wonderful happened for me. The very first book I ever wrote was finally published.

It took fifteen years. Coincidentally, it became my fifteenth published book – and my first YA novel.

The book is about seventeen-year-old Ashleigh Walker going through the final year of her sixth form in school, and the journey she takes during that year. It is what can loosely be called a ‘coming of age’ novel. It is also about Ash coming out as a lesbian.

Some people prefer the word ‘gay’. I don’t mind that. Some people use the word ‘queer’. I don’t mind that either (as long as it’s the modern usage of the word – ie celebrating diversity in sexuality rather than the older definition used as an insult to abuse and offend). Some (not many) still say ‘homosexual’. I don’t even mind that, although it makes me cringe a little to hear it, as it’s a bit old-fashioned.

One thing I have become aware of, during the lead up to, and aftermath of, this book’s publication, is the fact that there are an awful lot more words being used in discussions of sexuality than there used to be, and that for many people – particularly those who are new to the discussion – this can be bewildering. I’ve been in this game over twenty years, and I’m getting a little confused myself.

I’ve found that in discussions about the book, I use different terms, depending on who I’m talking to. In that respect, I’ve been feeling a bit like a chameleon, changing colour to suit my surroundings. One interviewer referred to my novel as ‘the gay book’. I wasn’t too keen on that (and told her) but that wasn’t because of using the word gay; it was that I hope it is much more than just ‘the gay book’. But other than that, I’ve found myself using different terms interchangeably, to fit in with the language of the people I’m talking to.

And I think this is OK. It’s a bit like having a wardrobe full of clothes and deciding which outfit is appropriate, depending on where you are going and who you are mixing with.

For example, I was (gasp, squeal, slightly hyperventilate) on Woman’s Hour and I don’t actually think that the words lesbian, gay or queer were used at all. Jenni Murray introduced the book by saying it was about a girl who realised she didn’t fancy boys, she fancied girls. We talked about coming out. But that was as far as the language went. And I am 100% OK with that. This is mainstream, national, hugely popular radio, so going back to the wardrobe analogy, I guess this is the place to put on my smartest outfit and do my best to blend in.

At the other end of the scale, I was the guest author on the lovely Lucy Powrie’s very popular #UKYAchat on twitter. If we’re to describe this in terms of the wardrobe, I guess this was the event where I stood in front of my clothes, trying to find something I looked cool and young and hip enough in (and cursed myself for even using the word hip, as that only showed how actually unhip I am) found my wardrobe a little wanting on this score – and decided just to go in what I had on.

The discussion on this forum was great: it was amazing to see such a variety of books being recommended; it was heart warming to be part of a discussion that was so open to books about sexuality. Hand on heart, though, there was a small part of the discussion which I have to say left some of us slightly running to catch up: the terminology.

A bit of background.

The gay movement is generally credited to have begun in the 1960s, with the Stonewall Riots. It was about rising up against years of being abused, beaten, oppressed and even killed by homophobic laws and actions. Back then, using the word ‘gay’ instead of ‘homosexual’ was radical and liberating.

The word ‘lesbian’ was later added and became widely used by many lesbian feminists in the 1970s.

My own political awakening came in the 1980s and this was around the time that there were arguments in the movement about adding the word ‘bisexual’ to the banners. Those arguments were huge and divisive within (what eventually became known as) the LGB community. Look how far we’ve come!

Similar arguments raged over adding the ‘T’ for transsexual, and I think these arguments lasted even longer. But now, LGBT has become a term that many are familiar with, and a banner that I am proud to stand under.

But even that already feels out of date in some circles. In terms of sexuality, we are living in times where people no longer want to define themselves with broad labels which basically divide everybody into three main headings: straight, gay, bisexual. The times we are living in today are about a richer, more diverse, more grey-area-y way of defining ourselves.

For some of us, this can feel challenging. I freely admit that I find it difficult to keep up at times. Over the last year or so, I’ve been introduced to the acronyms QUILTBAG, and LGBTQIA+ and others like this, which are highly-inclusive acronyms and umbrella terms that many people choose as their label. If this is how people choose to define themselves, I believe it is their decision to do this and nobody else’s. If people feel that ‘queer’ is the only word that sums up their own sexuality, again, that is their decision. Some people struggle with words like ‘queer’ and ‘dyke’, associating them with the negative connotations of the past. For others, ‘queer’ is the only word that they feel truly expresses who they are. It is up to each of us to define ourselves – not to listen to instructions from others.

But in the struggle for more and more inclusive terms, I believe it is also important to remember that not everyone is where we are, and to keep our hearts and our minds open to those who are on our side but might not have all the language to express that just yet. To some people, a coming out novel is brave and risky. To others, every YA novel ought to have characters from every bit of the sexuality spectrum and not be making a big deal about it.

Some might say that YA authors have a responsibility to represent every aspect of our diverse society and to use our novels as ways to educate young people in areas where schools, parents, newspapers and the internet are lacking.

I don’t actually agree with this. Yes, I do believe that books need diversity – and I am proud to be part of doing this in the world of YA books. But I do not believe that we have a responsibility to represent every aspect of society in every novel we write. I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves, our consciences, our deeply-held beliefs – and above all, actually, to our stories and our characters. If we start to think of our books as places where we owe it to anyone to write about certain things in certain ways, our books will turn into political manifestos rather than worlds of characters and stories to entertain, illuminate and impassion young readers.

I have never written a book where my starting point has been political in any way, or where I have sat down and decided that I want to educate or bring about an awareness of certain issues or themes. If I did that, I believe I would kill the story flat and no one would want to read it. Instead, what I have learned to do is to trust that if I open my mind to my stories, and allow my characters to explore and follow their own journeys, the things that matter to me will find a way of sneaking into the pages. And if they do, you can guarantee they will find a way of sneaking into my readers’ hearts and minds too, somewhere along the way.

So whilst the twenty-something-year-old me might have been out there with a megaphone, telling people how they should think, talk and act, I am more comfortable with the way the forty-something-year-old me does it, which is to move more gently, to compromise, to be more accepting. I am willing to listen, to learn as well as (hopefully) educate, to know for a fact that I am not always right and to be willing to let someone tell me how I can do things better.

I have also (finally) figured out the acronym I am comfortable using for myself. It is: LGBT+ which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender with the + as a way of not excluding other sexual orientations or gender identities, but stopping the abbreviation becoming too long! I have seen this used quite a bit, and it feels like the right one for me. See, the great thing is that I get to choose that for myself.

Going back to the wardrobe (which I’ve just realised could also be called a closet) analogy, this feels a bit like I’ve been looking for the perfect outfit for ages and have finally found it. And so I’m going to step out of that closet and wear my new outfit with confidence, and I’m going to shout about my new book with pride, and I’m going to continue to bang a drum for LGBT+ people everywhere, and hope that one day there will be so many of us standing under these umbrella terms that we find we have the whole world in one place and the labels are not needed at all.

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