Pride or safety? This is the reality of being LGBTQ+ on public transport  

Last week, Saoirse Ronan went viral for saying the quiet part out loud. Eddie Redmayne joked on the Graham Norton Show about being coached to use a phone as a weapon while filming Day of the Jackal, and the male guests ran with it.  

Saoirse let them laugh, then paused and said, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time.”  

Needless to say, the men went quiet. So it’s perhaps timely that Big Issue asked me to write this piece on queer people’s experiences on public transport, because that simple sentence resonated with me so much.  

Because as queer people, we too, must think about that all the time.  

Let’s get this out of the way. I’m white, and yes, I’m non-binary, but to the average passerby, I look like a bloke. I move, dress, and sound like a bloke. I have a beard and a deep voice. I don’t present this way to avoid scrutiny, it’s just how I like to show up in the world, and I don’t owe anyone androgyny to ‘prove’ I’m non-binary.  

I have a lot of privilege that queer women, trans people, and queer POC don’t. As I write this, I’m sitting across from my colleague, who’s transmasculine and has faced far more verbal and physical abuse than I ever have, simply because some people don’t find them ‘acceptable.’ 

This isn’t some piece about my journey towards proudly wearing nail polish in public (Honestly? I love nail polish, but I hate the feel of it). It’s about the fear that, even when looking and sounding the way I do, that someone will verbally or physically attack me in public if they ‘realise’ I’m queer.  

And when you’re on public transport, essentially trapped in a metal box with nowhere to run, that fear increases exponentially. This isn’t an irrational fear either. The numbers don’t lie.  

A 2023  report by London TravelWatch on the experiences of LGBTQ+ people travelling in the capital revealed that 82% of queer people change their behaviour or appearance to avoid abuse.  

It also found that one in five experienced hate crimes on the transport network in the past year, echoing a survey by LGBT HERO in Lambeth, with 84% not reporting the incidents. Imagine how living under that threat feels. 

In fact, I’ll go one better. I’ll tell you. This next part will ring true for any queer person who’s ever been to a Pride event. We travel there in packs, on trains, buses, the tube. We’re loud, camp, fierce, queer, dressed to impress, probably wearing glitter, and possibly a little drunk already. But that day, and that space we occupy right then. It’s ours.  

And after a long hard day of partying, protesting, making new friends and possibly swapping numbers with a cutie, the festivities come to a close. The makeup is a little worse for wear, the glitter is wearing off, and somewhere along the way, you probably lost your hat, tiara or at least one item of non-essential clothing. 

It’s time to start heading home. And the ‘editing’ begins. Off come the accessories, the stickers, the badges, the bangles. The signs get packed away or thrown in recycling. Out come the baby wipes for the glitter and makeup, and the hoodie goes on to cover the outfit.  

Every mile further away from the safety net of Pride, the more pieces of our queerness we strip away, just in case someone says something. Just in case someone does something. Just to be on the safe side. 

We pack away the euphoria, the joy, the feeling of belonging. We sit quietly with our phones talking in the group chat about the day. Just for a while. Just till we get home where it’s safe, and we can go through the pictures that we’re going to post on Instagram. 

Just for a few minutes more. Just while I’m in this metal box with nowhere to run but the end of the carriage. 

Yeah. Queer people have to think about that all the time. In 2022, Lambeth Council commissioned LGBT HERO to run a survey of Lambeth’s LGBTQ+ residents, the largest queer percentage of any borough in London. What we found shocked us. 

More than one in five LGBTQ+ residents said they don’t feel safe while living, socialising, or working in the queerest borough in London.  

That’s why we launched the Lambeth Allies programme, a free training scheme that teaches service providers how to create inclusive, safer spaces for LGBTQ+ folks. It’s been so successful we’ve turned it into an e-learning module, which is live now. 

On November 18^th 2024, when LGBT HERO and the South Western Railway Pride Network jointly adopted Vauxhall station—a historic LGBTQ+ spot—we knew it was about action. We kicked off with a Pride-filled day, a waiting room full of art by local queer artists (which isn’t going anywhere) and celebrated South Western Railway joining our Allies Programme. We’ll be there all year, hosting events and ensuring our presence is felt. 

And when I pack up and leave for the day. I won’t take off my pronoun pins or rainbow badge. Because I hope, through initiatives like Lambeth Allies and partnerships like the one we have with SWR, we’ll go some way to creating a world where LGBTQ+ people don’t have to ‘edit’ ourselves out of fear.  

A world where that metal box feels less like a cage, and more like a safe way home.  

Kristian Jackson is communications and content officer at LGBT HERO and The Health Equality and Rights Organisation. 

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