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[title]Eurovision is beloved by many across the world, but its queer fanbase might just be the biggest, with hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ+ people marking the event in their calendar every year. The song contest has become known for celebrating and platforming queerness, in a way many TV shows still don’t. With a long list of iconic camp performances over the years, Eurovision is often referred to as the ‘gay olympics’, and it’s also become a safe space for people to express themselves and their identities, as well as promote LGBTQ+ activism. Some of the competition’s most memorable historic moments include a drag troupe performing alongside Norwegian singer Ketil Stokkan in 1986, two years before Section 28 was implemented in the UK, and Israel’s Dana International becoming Eurovision’s first transgender winner in 1998.
This year, the competition is being hosted by Liverpool on behalf of Ukraine, which won the 2022 competition, and the city’s LGBTQ+ community is well and truly prepared for (at least) a week of Euro-fuelled celebrations. The official Eurovision committee is putting on a number of events as part of EuroFestival, including Queerovision, an online commission showing digital video reportage of Liverpool’s Queer Fringe, and a LGBTQ+ festival featuring drag, performance, choreography, vogue, music, carnival, circus and more.
But the city’s thriving queer scene is already more than equipped to host a Eurovision-size party. In fact, it’s difficult to think of anywhere better to spend the weekend than in Liverpool’s Pride Quarter down Stanley Street and the gay bars in the surrounding area. There’s The Lisbon, a pub in a Grade-II listed building; Superstar Boudoir, the best place to see one of Liverpool’s beloved drag queens; and late-night spots like OMG, G-Bar or Heaven, all of which stay open until the very early hours (Heaven is affectionately nicknamed ‘Heaven till seven’ by locals).
One of the oldest gay bars in Liverpool is The Masquerade, which opened in 1993. John Kenny, who co-owns the bar, says that it was one of the first established safe spaces for queer people like him in the city: ‘There were very few places to go then and if you did go anywhere, the bars were generally hidden away downstairs or in back rooms.’
Still today, these venues are often the first port of call for young queer people in the city starting to explore their identity. ‘I grew up in Liverpool and went to school in Liverpool but most of my friends I have now are within the community because we relate to each other and we love each other,’ says 20-year-old Hannah Day-Evans, who was interested in exploring the queer community in Liverpool as a lesbian.
Josh Reais, a 20-year-old model who is also from Liverpool, found many of his friends by becoming part of the city’s queer community, which is when he was first properly introduced to Eurovision too. ‘When I met my queer friends, we started doing watch parties and gathered round to watch it because it’s just such a massive thing for the gay community,’ he says. ‘There’s a camp culture – every single artist on the Eurovision stage does it in such a camp way. In a way, they all perform like drag queens.’
Compared with London and Manchester, our community is very tight-knit. We’ve got each other’s backs
Liverpool has a history of producing world-class drag queens. Fifty percent of Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK winners are Scousers and the late Paul O’Grady, who was Liverpool born and bred, put drag on the map as early as the 1980s as Lily Savage. But while queens like The Vivienne and Danny Beard are now known and loved internationally, the local drag scene in Liverpool is still thriving, with many bars, including The Masquerade, hosting drag shows every single night of the week.
Despite this global recognition, the LGBTQ+ community in Liverpool isn’t huge – Liverpool is a fairly small city, after all – but Day-Evans says that this is a positive thing in some ways: ‘Compared to other places, because it’s a smaller community than the likes of Manchester and London, our community is very tight-knit and we’ve got each other’s backs.’
However, this also presents some problems, particularly when it comes to representation. Naomi Lea, 21, is a trans woman living in Liverpool and says the city has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to trans inclusivity. Having worked as a dancer in a number of bars, Lea explains that she made the decision to stop working on the Liverpool queer scene because it didn’t necessarily feel like a space that was eager to celebrate trans people. ‘There isn’t really room for trans performers, apart from in clubs like Heaven. But in Manchester, when I go over there, they gag for me honey,’ she adds.
Manchester’s Canal Street is widely considered one of the best nights out in the country for LGBTQ+ people, and it’s difficult not to compare Liverpool’s queer scene to the neighbouring city. But Lea says Liverpool should look to cities like Manchester when it comes to not only including queer people of all gender identities, but actively celebrating them within the community.
This is something Kenny says The Masquerade is trying to focus on, and he stresses the importance of moving with the times as the queer community develops. ‘Years ago, gay bars were predominantly just gay men and in some bars, it was probably around 70 to 80 percent men,’ he says. ‘The lesbian community was very much underrepresented on the scene too.’ Recently, The Masquerade launched an initiative with a local Pride organisation, which encourages people – especially those who identify as trans or non-binary – to come to the venue if they ever feel unsafe, having trained the venue’s staff on how to deal with this.
Eurovision could be just what the city needs when it comes to celebrating the queer community
The need for spaces like this is evident. In 2021, Liverpool made headlines for a number of homophobic attacks that took place in the city in the space of a month. One of the victims was Kolade T Ladipo, who was attacked three times in one day over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Having moved from London to Liverpool for university, Ladipo noticed that there was a lack of safe spaces for queer people of colour in particular. ‘After my attack I realised there was nowhere specifically for the intersectionality of black queer people in the city,’ he says. To try and combat this, he founded Noire Gayze, a community designed to amplify and celebrate Black queer voices.
As well as hosting club nights in Liverpool, Noire Gayze also has a digital platform, with a magazine and discussions around intersectionality and queerness. And while many parts of the LGBTQ+ scene in Liverpool are bricks and mortar-focused, it’s no surprise in 2023 that social media has a big part to play too. Tyler Da Claire, is a non-binary TikToker based in Liverpool who has been part of the queer community for several years, including a stint working at one of the gay bars. They explain that speaking about their non-binary identity online has helped them connect with other non-binary people, many of whom have never ventured to the gay quarter. Da Claire says that they often bump into these people in what they describe as ‘straight town’, as well as in queer clubs: ‘Especially with non-binary identities in the region, people are able to come up to me on nights out and say “I’m non-binary too” and know that there’s a bit of representation in popular clubs in the city.’
With Eurovision promising to platform queer voices in Liverpool – via the contest itself and the many other events taking place in the run-up to the finale – it could be just what the city needs when it comes to celebrating the queer community. Both Lea and Ladipo are performing as part of Eurovison celebrations, including a Eurovision Vogue Ball organised by local collective House of Suarez and a cabaret at the Everyman Theatre, part of the EuroFestival. Ladipo has also photographed Lea for the Stay Queer No Matter War exhibition, a collaboration with Homotopia and UKRAINEPRIDE.
There’s certainly a sense of anticipation within the Liverpool queer community right now as they prepare to welcome LGBTQ+ people from all over the world to the city. ‘I’m super excited about Eurovision because it’s going to bring a lot of queer European people to Liverpool to visit our scene and see what it’s like and understand our culture as well,’ Da Claire says.
On top of this, Eurovision being hosted in Liverpool also allows people who live in the city, particularly cisgendered straight people, who might have never even come across places like Stanley Street, to experience queer culture. ‘They can appreciate where we’ve come from and the stuff that we do because at the end of a day, no one does it like the queer community,’ Day-Evans says.
That’s part of why Eurovision is so special for the queer community in general. ‘A lot of the acts are people who are queer, people who are gay, people who are trans, and it breaks down that barrier of people who aren’t in our community seeing us as different people,’ Day-Evans explains. ‘They just see us as humans and we can all enjoy ourselves together. They’re not seeing us as these people who are different, weird or strange – they’re just another human being who is enjoying the same things as us.’