As our lives continue to rapidly transform, shift to digital spaces, and new ways of living and working, we have the perfect opportunity to evaluate what happiness and prosperity look like for LGBTQ+ people, whether we want it to continue to be determined by where we live, and whether this is antithetical to the goal of queer liberation for all.

Not every LGBTQ+ person wants to live in a city, either. And as the pandemic continues, increasing numbers of people are re-evaluating their living environments and adjusting to an increasingly remote world. The aforementioned original lead singer of the Village People, Victor Willis, was once married to none other than famed actress Phylicia Rashād, best known for playing Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. Rather than expecting communities to travel to the big cities to engage with the community forever, Not A Phase is actively, from its inception, meeting people throughout the UK wherever they are based and supporting them in their existing community. Photography by Meg McGrady for their project on queers and rurality, Away With The Fairies Recently, the charity has launched a five-week programme for trans and gender non-conforming people in London focussed on fitness, self-defence, and confidence. But in the next year they are looking to expand their physical events (pandemic conditions allowing) to reach trans people across the UK. Not A Phase will be piloting their Safe Space workshops not only in London, but also in Glasgow, Manchester, and Bristol, creating spaces for trans and gender non-conforming people that are sober, accessible, and offering a variety of activities.Despite this, it is clear that some of the Thomas' (such as Dafydd’s parents) are capable of maintaining bisexual relationships, though their marriage appears to be quite open. He refused to accept that a new arrival to the village was a gay. He presented him with two questions, thinking that only a real gay man would know the answers to them. The man (and the rest of the pub patrons) answered the questions flawlessly. In an ironic twist, Dafydd had got one of the answers wrong. I was talking to the gay community about what they liked, what they wanted to listen to musically, and what was their dream, their fantasy. One day [producer Jacques Morali and I] were walking in the streets of New York. I remember clearly it was down in the Village, and we saw an Indian walking down the street and heard the bells on his feet. We followed him into a bar. He was a bartender — he was serving and also dancing on the bar. And while we were watching him dancing and sipping our beer, we saw a cowboy watching him dance.

Ibby had less positive experiences of these spaces: “The only support available were groups, which were a kind of crude therapy. It always felt as thought we [queer people] were the problem that needed solving. No one knew what to do with us.” He hypocritically accuses people of being homophobe's, when he is the one who makes blatantly homophobic comments. When Dafydd discovered that many of the people at ' The Scarecrow and Mrs King' were homosexual or bisexual following the aforementioned rugby match, he left the pub, stating his intentions to leave the village saying how disgusting he thought they were. What makes this particularly hilarious is that around the same time the Navy was allowing a group representing certain facets of gay culture to sing aboard a Navy frigate about the navy being a place “Where you can find pleasure…”- with original intent to use this music video in Navy recruitment ad campaigns- they were spending millions of dollars attempting to route out any gay people from their ranks… These efforts included a hilariously inept search for a woman named Dorothy, who they were convinced knew every gay person in the military.We didn’t start as a gay group, and not everyone in the group was gay — that’s an incorrect notion… The Village People was a mixture of ethnicity, races, lifestyles, sexualities, sexual orientations, it was a true village. It was a mixture of everything… As a community that resists binaries, we are still internalising and – often unintentionally – perpetuating a harmful dichotomy: be miserable in the countryside, or come to the city and thrive. Both of these are not only gross simplifications of the diverse queer experiences that exist, but also serve to reinforce classist and ableist notions of success. When Dewi admitted to Dafydd that he was homosexual, Dafydd refused to accept it. He asked Dewi if he could be bisexual, which Dewi, Pedro and Myfanwy strongly denied. In a retrospective of the song’s genesis and eventual success, the aforementioned Randy Jones expanded upon this story, stating:

One of Dafydd's hairdressers said that a new colleague of hers was gay, which Dafydd denied. Upon meeting the man, he claimed that it was still "To early to tell" and when the pair saw him kissing another man, Dafydd claimed it was merely the mans brother. Daffyd constantly attempts to draw attention to himself, even when the situation at hand has absolutely nothing to do with him.

Alice, a disabled illustrator and full-time wheelchair user felt first-hand how London’s inaccessibility impacted their connection with the queer community as their health worsened.

I didn’t even know gay bars properly existed apart from in movies and TV shows, while I was growing up”, says Prishita, who lived in several rural villages across the UK. “I had never been to a gay bar until I was at uni, and even then that was only because I would come to London to visit friends. It wasn’t a regular part of life.” I did go to one group that was a lesbian, gay, and bisexual group organised by a youth worker”, says Tiiva, a non-binary muscian who grew up in the Lake District and is now based in London. “Five or six of us would meet in Costa and it was amazing but very informal.” What is striking is that every interviewee reaffirmed the ideas that moving to London was an expectation and a quasi-requirement for being included within the queer community – irrespective of whether living in London is or was an option for them. Matt said he knows the character has been used as a tool to bully young gay people, but insists that was not the show’s intention.If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show ( iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as: Metronormativity places urban environments on a pedestal, but, on examination, LGBTQ+ people experience discrimination, prejudice, and exclusion in cities and rural spaces alike. Rural environments are not inherently harmful to LGBTQ+ people in the same way that urban environments are not inherently welcoming by sheer virtue of having greater population density and greater buildings. Others, like Ibby, feel they have less of a choice to return to rural environments if they want to pursue a career. Dafydd organised a gay night at Myfanwy's pub. He prepared to leave early claiming no one else would arrive, saying in a "defeated tone" that he would always be the only gay in the village. The second he opened the door, dozens of gays flooded in.