This year we’re celebrating Pride at Edelman by shining a spotlight on our LGBTQIA+ colleagues: their stories, experiences and reflections on what it means to be queer today.
Name: Dan Klein
Pro-nouns: they/them
Gender: Confusing honestly
What's the one action that you'd like people outside the LGBTQIA+ community to do to show their allyship towards your specific community?
Recognise that Pride isn’t just a bit of fun, and that the problem isn’t just people being a bit mean or discriminatory but that there is an existential risk occurring to our rights and lives. I want them to ask questions to their MPs about it, I want them to tell their friends and get them onboard too. Straight cis allies are important, it lends us credibility and power.
What is the biggest barrier your community is currently facing?
Increasingly our community’s fundamental rights are under threat, trans* rights in the UK and abroad are under sustained attack. We have many allies in the public space, but there needs to be many more, including and especially cis straight people. I hope our allies educate themselves as to what queerphobia really looks like – sometimes it appears in a major newspaper and sounds like a 'reasonable concern'. If we are going to protect our rights, we need people from outside the queer community to counter the damaging ideas being spread, we cannot do it alone.
Who is your LGBTQIA+ role model and why? What can we learn from them?
Michael Hobbes – Michael is a queer journalist and he writes on all sorts of issues regarding public discourse. His podcasts and his writing I find deeply insightful, and he is a great follow on Twitter/other platforms of your choosing.
