Context

My current idea for my SDP is a documentary series about Malvern Pride, and event that I photographed in a professional capacity in 2022, and will be repeating this year. In preparation for the event, I met with the organising committee and volunteers to discuss the practical details of the day. I had the opportunity to talk to the assembled group, most of whom are part of the LGBTQ+ community, about my social documentary project, and in particular the ‘socially engaged’ element. I told them that I wanted my work to be from the perspective of people within the community, rather than as seen by an outsider like myself. It would require voluntary interviews and collaborative portraits of the individuals. There were many people who were interested in taking part.

The Group for Mature Lesbians

One of the committee members said that she wanted to be part of the project, but I might want to talk to a group that she belonged to that was founded by a friend of hers. It was formed to support lesbian women living in Malvern, acting as a social network because the founder felt that her demographic was under-represented in the town. She thought that I could tell the story of the group and its members as part of my project. I reflected on whether this could be the total focus of my SDP as an alternative to Pride, but said that I was interested in meeting with them to discuss further.

The Difficult Conversation

During this discussion, we were joined by another woman in her 60s who said that she’d only recently moved to Malvern and was volunteering for the first time. She asked me about the project and why I wanted to do it, which I explained. During my description, I used the terms positive and negative to describe the two sides of the meaning of Pride, the positive being the celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, and the negative being the ongoing protest against prejudice and the demand for equality and respect. Her reaction was instantly anger, which made me quickly realise my blunder. She demanded to know why protest was ‘negative’, which I answered by immediately apologising for my clumsy use of language. The other woman jumped to my defence, pointing out what she saw as the meaning of what I’d said. She suggested that the lady was overreacting, which didn’t pacify her. I continued to apologise and explain what I meant in a couple of alternative ways, until she calmed down and we moved on. I believed that things were now ok and we continued to discuss Pride and its importance to the town.

Aftermath

About a week later, I bumped into the committee member in the street, and our conversation soon turned to the group that she was a member of. She informed me that she didn’t think it would work, because the woman from the meeting, who was a member of the group, had mentioned me to the others. The content of the discussion wasn’t clear, but the result was that the members were now anxious about engaging with me. While the committee member was going to talk to the founder privately, she didn’t think the damage could be undone.

Reflection and Learning Points

• It was clearly a disappointing outcome that occurred because of my carelessness with the language. In the follow-up discusson, my friend suggested that it wasn’t a big deal, but clearly it angered the woman.
• Ethically, it’s my responsibility to navigate the sensitivities around a subject where a subconscious bias might be at play. I genuinely don’t see protest or campaigning for rights as ‘negative’, but I can imagine that many straight people do. Protest is a basic human right in this country, but as we see in the media coverage of disruptor protests such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, the wider public finds the methods to be frustrating and problematic. Ironically, that’s the point of their methods. In my case, I represent to the woman, a middle-aged, middle-class, white heterosexual male, who is most likely the demographic responsible for categorising LGBTQ+ people to suit their own ends.
• I acted appropriately and did my best to recover the situation. I later learned in another encounter with her that she is just a generally angry person. It wasn’t aimed at me personally, but it was sufficient for her to have (allegedly) spoiled a potential constructive relationship with an interesting group of people. I learned to quickly move on and look for alternative subjects and ideas.
• While it’s an important learning point, it’s also set in a much wider context of the project, which isn’t focused on a particular gender or sexuality group within the LGBTQ+ community. I have alternative options, so am not dwelling on what is a fairly small incident.