Pride Month: Creating a Queer-Inclusive Magical World

I absolutely love fantasy books. I loved them as a nerdy kid with glasses, as a reading teacher in a struggling school and now as an owner of a global entertainment company that’s all about bringing magic to life with technology. I love fantasy for many reasons, but the one that sticks out most is that the characters and lessons from fantasy novels helped me to grow up – to understand empathy and compassion, to celebrate the weird and wonderful in each of us and to better understand and accept myself. It’s such a beautiful thing that a genre (like fantasy) can speak to so many types of people for so many different reasons.

For me and many other queer people like me, fantasy books played an important role in adolescence because they were an escape where we could find safety and comfort in knowing
characters just like us who we hadn’t yet met in the real world: people who were different from those around them and were looking for a community where they belonged. I mean, growing up is hard enough before you add in the realities that queer people around the world experience on a daily basis: self-doubt, societal shame, familial rejection, discrimination, homelessness and violence. Depending where you live in the world and the beliefs that your family and larger community hold, your life growing up can be very good or tragically bad.

I can’t really emphasise enough how scary it is to clock this reality as a young adult, and then try to navigate your way through it to a point where you’re in control of your own life. Plenty of us do not make it.

According to the Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, in the US LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers, and more than half of transgender and non-binary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year. Rates of LGBT homeless youth are also disproportionately high. According to LGBT Scotland, as many as 24 per cent of young homeless people are queer. And data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK show that in 2020, 28 per cent of trans people experienced crime compared with 14 per cent of cisgender people. Those statistics are even worse for transgender people of colour —2021 was the deadliest year for trans people since records began, especially for Black and Latinx trans women.

These statistics are alarming to read but even more alarming to live firsthand, and being on the receiving end of this type of discrimination greatly colours a person’s worldview. I was fortunate that things did get better for me, but that was helped in part by support from my family and the societal privilege that comes with being a white, middle class man with the ability to pass for straight when needed. However, understanding what it’s like to be a member of one minority group has made me a more empathetic person towards every minority group. Creating safe, inclusive spaces for the people who work for and with me has been an important part of my professional life.

Before co-founding The Cauldron Co., I worked as a high school reading and English teacher in Florida, a state where you can legally be fired for being gay, and which has recently enacted the “don’t say gay” bill, which bars teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. As a teacher, I came out to my students during an inclusivity lesson during anti-bullying week, and made a video about it as a teaching tool for other educators. It was important that my students know someone queer and hopefully for some of them, to not feel so alone.

I now co-own a company that employs over 100 people globally, and the question of “How do we make our company inclusive?” is at the very core of what we do. It’s an absolute no-brainer. My co-founder Dave, who is a strong ally to the queer community, and I put topics of inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of The Cauldron Company’s culture and mission. Our company creates immersive hospitality experiences that bring magic to life, and the overlap of queer people and their allies who love fantasy means that many of our customers and staff are LGBTQ+. It’s important that we vocally and visually create safe, inclusive spaces.

From what we observe, the subset of the LGBTQ+ community that needs the most support right now are people who identify as trans and non-binary, and who are facing similar levels of discrimination and violence that gays and lesbians experienced in the not-so-distant past and in some countries, currently still. It’s why we adopted Mermaids as our charity for The Wands & Wizard Exploratorium, our family-friendly venue in Soho, London, and why we are currently running a charity initiative with them called “Magic is for Everyone” (Go buy a shirt, all proceeds go to Mermaids!).

Trans, non-binary and queer people have always existed and been featured prominently within the genre of fantasy. For us at The Cauldron, it is important to celebrate that diversity and bring the wider lessons of love and acceptance from the pages of fantasy novels into our real world. We are all human beings and deserve to be treated with the dignity and respect that we ourselves wish to be shown.

Magic is for everyone, full stop.

As part of Dish Cult’s Pride month celebrations, we are proud to be supporting Stonewall – the largest LGBTQ+ charitable organisation in Europe. Stonewall work in each nation of the UK and stand for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning and ace people everywhere.

Stonewall’s campaigning work drives positive change in public attitudes and public policy, helping transform the day-to-day experience of all LGBTQ+ people. The work continues until the world we imagine is the world we live in.

If you can imagine a world where there is freedom, equity and limitless potential for every LGBTQ+ person – stand with us. Donate to Stonewall now.

*All donations made will be donated directly to Stonewall