It’s Time For An LGBTQ+ History Lesson.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’ve all had a good week and are looking forward to having a little more freedom now that the lockdown rules are slowly reducing. Now, as you may already know, June is pride month. And since this is my first ever pride month being what I would consider ‘officially out’ as pansexual, I’ve been taking some time reading and learning more and more about pride and the history of the LGBTQ+ community.

So for today’s post I’m going to be giving you a brief lesson on some LGBTQ+ history. Most of my knowledge has come from the LGBTQ+ community, the Stonewall charity (thank you for teaching me about important moments and dates in history and supporting the community for so many years), some LGBTQ+ books (I will be making a list of these in another post very soon) and other websites that I have found online.

I’ll be going through the key dates that I’ve learnt about from Stonewall and some of the history I’ve learnt from some LGBTQ+ books I’ve been reading. Also, if you want to learn the history year to year, please check out Stonewall’s ‘Key dates for lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality’ as it’s super informative.

And with all that said and done, let’s jump into our time machine and get started.

One of the biggest moments in LGBTQ+ history, was the Stonewall riots in 1969. These were a number of violent demonstrations by the LBGTQ+ community against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall Inn was a pub, and it’s patrons had regularly faced unjust harassment by the police; and on Saturday the 28th June 1969, at 1.20am, eight police officers raided the inn. There were around 200 people in the bar that night and they had had enough of being raided time and time again and refused to accept what was happening to them. So, they refused to cooperate with the police.

The police decided they were going to take every person there into custody and to the station, but the police wagons were not there yet. So this meant patrons had to wait in line for 15 minutes, and if they weren’t arrested (it was illegal to serve alcohol to gay people, for gay people to dance together, to be dressed in drag and women were not allowed to be wearing less than three items of feminine clothing) they were released from the front door. However, to the police’s surprise, those released weren’t leaving, instead they stopped outside and a crowd began to form and watch.

After several minutes around 150 people were stood outside, and when the first police wagon arrived the crowd had increased to at least ten times the number of people who had been arrested. The crowd was tense, and it was when a lesbian was hit on the head with a club after saying her handcuffs were too tight whilst being escorted/thrown into to the police wagon that the crowd finally snapped.

The crowd then attempted to overturn the police wagon, and beer bottles and bricks were thrown. The police were outnumbered by approximately 600 people, ten officers barricaded themselves in the Stonewall Inn for their own safety as everything was being thrown at the building, from bottles to bins; smashing all of the windows and then a parking meter was uprooted and used as a battering ram on the Stonewall Inns doors.

The police trapped in the inn were then freed by the Tactical Police Force of the New York City Police Department when they arrived. And they arrested anyone they could get their hands on and put them in wagons ready to go to jail.

By 4am that same night/day (early morning? However you like to class the early hours of the morning), the streets were finally clear. 13 people were arrested, with some members who were in the crowd being hospitalised and four police officers injured.

Pretty much everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken. No one knows if it was from the riot or the police.

The news of the riot quickly spread through Greenwich Village and then, the following night, the rioting surrounding Christopher street began again. Thousands gathered in front of Stonewall, which had reopened. The crowd filled Christopher street and spilled out into the near streets. Fires were started in bins, and then the police arrived once again with the battle continuing until 4am the next morning.

On the Wednesday, approximately 1000 protesters gathered once again, with another battle between the crowd and police taking place. Protesters and police were injured, shops were looted and five people were arrested.

And that was the riots that put a lot of wheels in motion for the LGBTQ+ community and the changes needing to be made.

A few years after the riots, the first Pride was held in London in 1972, attracting around 2000 participants and has grown ever since!

And then in July 2013 the Marriage Act 2013 was passed in the UK Parliament which then came into force in 2014 with the first same-sex marriages in England and Wales taking place on the 29th March 2014!

Love is love. Love will always win.

I could make this post about 1 million times longer because we have a lot of history. You can check out a timeline here which was put together by Stonewall. And finally, last bit of history for today, here are some names you need to know and remember:

• Sylvia Rivera – a queer, Latina and self-identified drag queen who fought tirelessly for transgender rights and the rights of gender non-conforming people and was said to have thrown the first brick in the Stonewall riots. She also started S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) which is a group focused on providing shelter ans support to queer homeless young people with Marsha P. Johnson. She also fought against the exclusion of trans people in New York’s Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act.

• Marsha P. Johnson – a black trans woman, sex worker and activist who spent the majority of her life fighting for equality. She was a mother figure to drag queens, trans women and homeless youth. She was alongside Sylvia during the Stonewall riots and founded S.T.A.R together. They were central to the start of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s in the US.

• Josephine Baker – a bisexual woman and entertainer of the Jazz Age. She was one of the most successful African-American performers in French history and used her platform as an entertainer to advocate for desegregation. She refused to perform in venues that were segregated and even spoke at the 1963 March on Washington. Josephine also served as a spy for the French in WW2, passing secrets along that she heard from the German soldiers when she performed for them.

• Karl Heinrich Ulrichs – a gay man who was the first person to publicly ‘come out’. He was a judge in Germany until his colleagues found out he was gay in 1854, after resigning he became an activist for gay rights.

• Michael Dillon – the first trans man to undergo reassignment surgery and transition. He then became a doctor and then served as a naval doctor.

• Bayard Rustin – an openly gay man who was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr, and organiser of the 1963 March on Washington.

There’s so many incredible people that are a part of our history, and if today’s post has taught you anything (I hope it has!), it’s that learning about your history is important and you can never stop learning!

Did you learn anything new from today’s post? Are you celebrating pride this month? I’m excited to be celebrating my first pride and I am extremely grateful for all of those who have fought for what we have right now. Love will always win. Happy Pride Month my loves!

Have a great weekend my lovelies, stay safe!

Love,

If you can, please check out the link here to sign petitions you might not have seen yet, donate and help fight racism! #BlackLivesMatter

What Pansexual People Want You To Know.

Hello my lovelies! How’s your week going? I hope you’re staying well and taking some time away from the news and social media, and if you haven’t yet, I definitely recommend it; and besides, they’re all saying the same things anyway, so it’s not like you’ll be missing out for a few hours!

So, onto today’s post. Incase you couldn’t guess from the title, I’m pansexual, and today I’m going to be covering some of the most common questions I get asked, busting some myths and just letting you know what pansexual people want you to know.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know that I’m a pretty open book with you on here, so you may know that I was in a long term relationship up until the end of February this year. Something you won’t know is that I came out as pansexual over the course of 2019 to those who are really close to me, and then I came out more formerly to more people this year. It took me until the beginning of this year to come out officially to my then partner, and in doing so a lot of questions were raised (understandably). You may be wondering if that was the reason for my relationship ending, and I guess you could say that was part of it? The good news is that we’re still friends and it was a mutual thing.

What you might find funny is that I never really properly came out like you see in TV shows or movies when it came to my family and close friends, we were just talking and from memory I think we were watching a TV show where someone came out and a discussion started and I just went: “well I identify as pan, so.. yeah.” and guess what, they were just like “oh, ok. What does that mean?”.

Naturally more conversations have happened since then, with lots of questions being asked and answered. One thing I will say right now is that I am incredibly lucky and grateful that I have an extremely non-judgemental family who support and love me no matter what, so they are perfectly accepting of my being pan; and I understand that not everyone is so lucky when they come out.

Even though my family and friends and I have had conversations about me being pansexual, I do still get asked questions every now and again, and there are still a huge amount of misconceptions out there about what being panexual or any part of the lgbtq+ community is. So, today I decided to bust those myths, answer some questions and tell you some things that pansexual people want you to know; obviously I don’t speak for everyone, but I’m going to try and cover things as best I can.

And with that, let’s get into it!

What does pansexual mean?

Pansexuality is the sexual attraction to people regardless of gender. Some people may say they are gender-blind, meaning that sex and gender are not determining factors in a romantic and/or sexual relationship.

I like to say that I’m just attracted to humans. When I like someone, I like someone, I don’t think about what’s in their pants.

Also… no, being pansexual does not mean we’re attracted to frying pans..

Is being pansexual the same as being bisexual?

No, they are not the same. Bisexuality is the attraction to two sexes or genders, males and females; whereas people who are pansexual are attracted to all genders and sexes. You can think of it like this, the terminology is different: Bi=Two whereas Pan=All.

I get asked this a lot, and most people get it after me explaining it a few times, but I usually go with the explanation of : where people who identify as bi are attracted to males and females, I as someone who is pan, can be attracted to anyone, regardless of if they identify as male, female, intersex, trans, non-binary, gender-fluid, agender, bigender, gender-queer etc.

Are you sure it’s not a phase?

Omg, it’s definitely not a phase for crying out loud! I don’t expect people to understand how I identify, but I like to hope that people accept it and respect it. And if you don’t, well then the chances are that we’re not going to be very good friends in the long run. If I were to say I was straight or bi or lesbian, you wouldn’t even question it, so why question it now?!

Next!

So does this mean you’re attracted to everyone?

Again nope, being pansexual means yes, we can be attracted to ANYONE, but that does not mean EVERYONE. Just like if you’re straight, that does not mean you’re attracted to everyone of the opposite gender or if you’re gay, it does not mean that you’re then attracted to all people of the same gender as you.

Chances are, out of most people in a room, we may only like a few, not all of them. Yes, our pool of people we could find attractive is bigger, but that doesn’t mean we fancy everyone we come in contact with. Sorry not sorry if that’s you.

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Pansexual’s are unloyal romantic partners.

Absolute bullshit. No, we’re not going to cheat on you because we’re pansexual, just like if I were bi I still wouldn’t cheat on you because I can like more people. If someone cheats on you and they happen to identify as panseuxal then it’s nothing to do with how they identify, it just means they are an unloyal person to you. If I’m in a relationship with you, it’s because I like you, so stop thinking I’m about to run off with the next person I see!

We don’t care about how others identify.

Again, this can be a misconception and confusion. Although being pansexual means we don’t see gender when we’re attracted to someone, that doesn’t mean we don’t respect how other people identify. If I’m with someone who identifies as a trans-man, then I’m going to respect that, just like everyone else would. We don’t dismiss or not care about your gender identity, just like how I identify as a female and expect to have my gender identity respected, we’ll respect how you choose to identify and we won’t ignore it.

How did you know you were pansexual?

I’ve always gone by the saying ‘if I like you, I like you’, but it wasn’t until about two years ago that I fully realised that I was pansexual. And then it took another 6 months after that to begin coming out to people because I was scared that people wouldn’t believe me because at the time I was in a relationship with a man. When people ask me this question, I usually say that I knew when I realised that I was attracted to people and I just didn’t think about what was in their pants, I just liked who I liked, and I am extremely attracted to the androgynous look. Some people identify as bi first and then identify as pan, and that’s perfectly fine.

You can come out whenever feels right to you, you’re never too old to come out. If you come out after years of being in relationships with one gender, that does not devalue how you identify. You do you.

We’re still humans. Just like everyone else. We just have a wider span of people who we could fancy.

I’m attracted to humans.

And those are the myths and questions I am asked and presented with every now and again! I hope that this helped anyone who has questions about pansexuals, and I hope this is cathartic for anyone in my shoes! Being fully out as pan has allowed me to be my truest happiest version of myself, and that’s all because I decided to love myself as I am and accept myself for who I am.

Whether you’re out or not, learn to love yourself, and know that you don’t need to change who you are to fit other people’s norms. Be yourself, love who you want to love, and don’t be afraid to explore what your sexual orientation means to you. Being pan for me might mean something slightly different for someone else who identifies as pan and that’s ok. Both are valid and should be respected.

I can’t believe how far I’ve come from when I first came out, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me. I know that one thing that will lie ahead for me is pride! I can’t wait to go to my first pride event, I’ve just got to wait for all of this isolation to blow over!

And with that, I’ll leave you with this:

LOVE IS LOVE.

Enough said. Feel free to ask me any of your questions in the comments or you can always dm me on instagram @theweightofmyworlds ! I always appreciate when someone is asking questions because they are wanting to learn something new and to educate themselves. As long as you’re being respectful, are in a safe place to do so and know that the other person is comfortable, don’t be afraid to ask questions (within reason obviously) and learn something new.

Have a great weekend everyone and stay safe out there (or should I say in there?).

Lot’s of love,

Rainbow Cake Recipe

Hello my lovelies! Who’s in the mood for some cake? Because this week I’ll be giving you my recipe for a big rainbow cake! And to make this cake even better (because who doesn’t like rainbow cake..) this recipe can be diary free should you need it to be!!

This cake is a simple vanilla sponge cake and can be adapted for any flavour of cake! I use this for all of my cakes and I’ve never had someone not like it. You can also make this into cupcakes – I’ll probably do a cupcake recipe soon too.

So, here’s what the cake looks like:

Looks pretty tasty doesn’t it!

Right, onto what you’re going to need, I’ve put together a shopping list you can download here!

For the cake:

• 9 oz Salted Butter (it can be spreadable or not, I used Vitalite as my mum is intolerant to buttermilk!)
• 9 oz Caster Sugar
• 9 oz Self-Raising Flour (make sure you save a little flour to thicken up your cake batter if you need it!)
• 6 Large Eggs
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• Red, Orange, Green, Purple and Blue Food Gels (these can be found in sets or separately)
• Baking Paper
• Cake tins (2 minimum, I used 6, but it can be done with 2!)
• A cake stand or plate to put the cake on!

For the icing:

• Salted Butter (I eye-balled this and made more icing when needed)
• Icing sugar (I eye-balled this too, but would recommend getting 2 large bags of icing sugar, this icing is all personal preference!)
• Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue Food Gels
• Mini Marshmallows
• White chocolate icing tubes – I got these from Tesco (pipe dairy free chocolate if you’re making this dairy free!)
• Any other decorations you want to use! (I used smarties)

So, onto making the cake! Here’s a quick clip of the process!

 

1 . Pre-heat the oven to 180°C for fan-assisted ovens or 200°C for other ovens.

2 . Lay out baking paper on the worktop and draw around the bottom of your cake tins and cut them out, I recommend cutting out the baking paper like this:  After this I grease my baking tins and put the grease proof paper into the tins shiny side up. Then put the tins aside for a bit later.

3 . Measure out all of your ingredients. When making this cake I luckily had access to 6 cake tins, but if you’ve only got 2 tins don’t worry, to bake your cake in batches of two cake layers, use measurements of 3 oz per ingredient and repeat this another 2 times, which will give you 6 layers of cake.

4 . Add the butter and sugar into a big mixing bowl and cream them together.

5 . Then sift in the flour , pour in the eggs, add the vanilla extract and mix together. I usually start mixing with a wooden spoon and then move onto using an electric whisk. If the cake batter is too runny then you can add a little more flour. (I love how you can just chuck everything in the bowl with this recipe!).

6 . Once the batter is mixed, separate the batter into bowls into equal parts for however many tins you’re using.

7 . Then, add in the food colouring gels! I used quite a lot to make my cake extra bright, but it’s up to you how much you use!

8 . Pour your batter into your tins and smooth it around to make sure it’s evenly dispersed. (When you pour in the batter, it may seem like you’ve not got enough, but the cake will rise a little and you don’t want the layers too thick or the cake will topple over!).

9 . Bake the cakes for 13-15 minutes and check they’re cooked through with something small and sharp, I use toothpicks, if it has no batter on it, it’s cooked! Take out the cakes and place them on a cooling rack.

10 . Repeat stages 1-9 twice if you’re using 2 tins per time! When you’ve taken your yellow cake out of the tin, use a knife (or cookie cutter) to cut out a circle from the middle. Then slice the cake in half; this will leave you with two rainbow layers for the top of the cake! Then you can go ahead and snack on the circle of cake you just cut out haha.

11 . Whilst your cakes are baking and cooling, it’s time to make the butter cream! This one doesn’t have specific measurements as everyone has their own preference for how they like their buttercream to taste. I use quite a large amount of butter and icing sugar.

12 . I begin mixing the butter and icing sugar together with a fork so the icing sugar doesn’t create a huge icing sugar cloud, and once most of the icing sugar is mixed in I go in with an electric whisk to make the buttercream light and fluffy.

13 . Put about 4/5 of the buttercream into a piping bag (you can use a sandwich bag if you haven’t got one! Or you can get a box of disposable ones from Tesco). Then begin by putting a small amount of icing onto the cake stand/plate to stick your blue layer of cake onto the stand/plate.

14 . Then pipe layers of icing onto each cake layer, the colours should go (bottom to top): Blue, Purple, Green, Orange and finally Red. Then cover the top and sides of the cake in buttercream and smooth out as best as you can.

15 . To help smooth out the buttercream further I use baking paper, shiny side to the cake, and use your hand against the paper to smooth over the icing.

16 . After you’ve smoothed out the cake, ice the two rainbow shaped layers together, add icing to the top layers of the rainbow shape and put on top of the cake and smooth over with baking paper.

17 . Separate the left over buttercream into 5 bowls and add in the food colouring gels.

18 . Put the coloured icing into different piping bags or sandwich bags and pipe over the rainbow to give it some colour!

19 . The add on some white mini marshmallows onto the bottom of the rainbow so it looks like clouds.

20 . Then warm up the white chocolate icing tubes (follow the instructions on the tubes for preparing them) and squeeze drips over the edge of the cake and cover the top layer.

21 . Finally, decorate with any sweets you want and enjoy!

Here’s how it looks when it’s finished!

I hope you like how this cake looks and tastes!! If you decide to make this yourself then please tag me in any photos you put on instagram @theweightofmyworlds or on twitter @worldsweights, I’d love to see your cake creations!

Have a lovely week everyone, you’re the best! Love,