We need some more girls in here,

We need some more girls in here,

We need some more girls in here

There’s too many men, too many, many man

Too many man too many, many man.

What was originally a distasteful and perhaps unintentional exposition of the fragile nature of heteronormative masculinity, can, when appropriated by me, become a relatively fair assessment of some of the LGBT+ events at Cambridge, and our community as a whole. Even I would admit that this was objectively quite an embarrassing song choice as an opening, and I would like take this opportunity to eschew any allegations that it is reflective of my music taste.

When I first came to Cambridge, approximately 7,000 coffees ago, I remember being shocked by the state of affairs on my first queer night out. Picture this: Life, a Tuesday, towards the end of first term, with the characteristically sticky floors and the smell of corruption in the air. A lot of it was what I had expected – there was dancing, glitter, and questionable pop music choices. But what I didn’t account for was the fact that so many of the people I would be surrounded with on those club nights would be men: not exactly my target audience.

I remember discussing the night afterwards at a debrief with one of my friends, calling it “a sausage fest” – and this was even back in the days of Kaleidoscope, a night that for some reason people still refer back to as an example of a successful student-involved LGBT+ club night. My experiences were slightly exaggerated by a couple of factors: my college is predominantly male anyway, and some of my closest friends are gay men, increasing the amount of time that I spend dancing around with them and other gay men. And yet I would not say that any other events that I go to run by the straights™ have this same gender bias across their attendees as a whole, so why should it feel like this within the queer community at Cambridge?

I’m not saying that I don’t have fun on nights out, or that lots of the gay men at Cambridge aren’t very inclusive of the rest of the LGBT+ community. In fact, most of the guys I know are incredibly lovely and inclusive. However, if you are outnumbered within a space, encountering few other people quite like you, this becomes a problem. When I get invited along to have drinks or go out with some of my queer friends, it can feel as if they are inviting me into what really ought to be everyone’s community, regardless of their gender expression.

By being friends with gay men I’m able to experience a privileged position within the queer community, and be friends with the people who form the lion’s share of attendees at a lot of the LGBT+ events. Yet this privilege is ultimately borrowed from them, and might not be afforded to women in other friendship groups. It’s not that men can’t be extremely compassionate (shock horror), and that many of them haven’t been incredibly supportive of my position within the LGBT+ community, but when my friends have said things like: “everyone will be out” about a night on for the visit of a drag queen, I want a little bit more thought to be put into who “everyone” might be from their perspective – predominantly men.

"I’m not saying that I don’t have fun on nights out, or that lots of the gay men at Cambridge aren’t very inclusive of the rest of the LGBT+ community"

In London there might be enough queer spaces for some of them to be heavily occupied by old gay men, but in Cambridge we certainly do not have enough spaces for them not to be entirely welcoming for everyone. I’m told that the male-heavy nature of queer nights at Cambridge is also unique from the nightlife at strongholds such as Manchester, but I think a field trip might be necessary before I can prove that hypothesis.

You can see this bias even on the promotion for some Cambridge events, such as the Glitterbomb club night, where a few lucky lesbian emojis have made it onto the event flyer,  yet most of the design feels pretty phallocentric. Could we get some scissors on there at least? I would argue that a lot of this isn’t malicious, but when you’re part of a majority it can be difficult to step back and assess who “everyone” is in relation to who it ought to be. This is true for the side-lining of genders and sexualities, but also for race, another integral issue for queer spaces and inclusivity, especially in Cambridge.

There are clearly a number of women who are absolutely killing it on the #scene, and are very visible. I’m trying to find a polite way to nominate myself, but perhaps there isn’t one. Yet, this number to me feels small in relation to the number of men with the same visibility. While it’s perfectly fair enough for LGBT+ students to not want to be visible, or to attend queer events, it seems difficult to reconcile that these attitudes should be so proportionally different across different identities within the LGBT+ community.

To the left, to the left

We need to continue moving forward with considerations of just who is being represented in the queer nightlife scene, and across our community as a whole. Another year into my degree, and I’m pleased to say that some of my pres have become slightly more representational, but encouraging non-male students to feel comfortable in queer spaces still feels of ongoing importance.

It’s an issue that can be tackled socially, but also through the continuation of discussions and forums (which have been held on this topic in the past). It’s obvious that, in relation to other people within the queer community, I do have a lot of privilege – and yet if I feel a bit decentralised from some things, I can hardly imagine what other members of the LGBT+ community must regularly experience. We need to take up space within the space that the LGBT+ community is taking up, even if some of this space is only used to throw shapes across the dance floor