BECKY DAVIES

I am a Senior Lecturer who identifies as lesbian/queer and AFAB (assigned female at birth) and I am in a civil partnership with a non-binary/trans person who happened to work with me as part of the same course team at the University for several years.

In many of the education-based settings I attended growing up, you would frequently come across members of staff who were known by both staff and students to be in a committed heterosexual relationship and/or were married. Sometimes this was simply because they shared the same surname, or were introduced to new staff and students as such in a straightforward manner at the start of each academic year. The knowledge I had of their relationships was no more invasive or personal than that, but for some young people, this may have been the only example of a committed, healthy relationship that they had witnessed growing up. I believe we underestimate the importance of this, and upon reflection, I never knowingly witnessed an out and proud example of a queer, LGBTQI+ relationship, or a married couple in any of my educational settings growing up, or as an adult in education for that matter.

This is not to say that they did not exist, I am sure that was far from it. Often, due to both outwardly homophobic experiences, and subliminally, sometimes unintentionally homophobic messaging that still permeates day-to-day life, even here in the UK, people often feel forced to actively hide this part of themselves from their professional life. In my early career as a lecturer, I was even asked by my superior (at the time) not to tell students how I identify or that I was in a civil partnership with my spouse and fellow course team member, and to divert any questions on the subject, should they arise. No member of staff should feel that actively hiding this part of their identity is a necessary measure to take to be part of a workplace. This was a very different request to say, for example, being asked to keep personal information private and to only share information suitable within a professional context, which would have indeed been appropriate for a superior to ask a member of staff in the event that they had overshared.

Therefore, when my spouse and I introduced ourselves as part of the course team, we ensured that this was communicated in the same manner as it would for any other married couple in the workplace. We hoped that we were not the last example for the people we met during our time working together at the University, but we were, to our surprise, the first for many of our students who were questioning, who identify as LGBTQI+, or who came to the University from countries or belief systems where queer lives are not accepted and/or illegal.  Experiencing this reaffirmed the potential power of this seemingly small act towards combating homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. As said by the patron saint of Wales, Dewi Sant (St. David), "Gwnewch y Pethau Bychain / Do the Small Things"