Dan Harry From “I Kissed A Boy” Is Concerned About LGBTQIA+ Safety In The UK
Reality star Dan Harry believes that LGBTQIA+ safety teeters on the knife’s edge with conservative politics in the UK.
Dan found his fame when he competed in the first season of I Kissed A Boy this year. He has since teamed up with Stonewall and is speaking out about anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment in the UK.
Words have just as much power as actions
I Kissed A Boy is a UK reality dating show featuring all gay men. Although it’s not the first of its kind, it has been received with critical acclaim for its simplicity, its fun and its setup. Dan Harry speaks about being approached on the street by queer people who thank him for being part of a healthy, sex-positive representation for gay men.
“People would get really emotional, saying: ‘Thank you for what you’ve done for this community,’ and I don’t necessarily see it like that. I just went on holiday and kissed some boys,” he tells The Guardian. “But when you hear from people who have never seen themselves on TV before, never heard their stories told, you realise it’s not just another dating show.”
Since coming off the show, Dan has been getting involved with many other positive LGBTQIA+ institutions including partnering with the Terrence Higgins Trust for Pride and participating in a ground-braking HIV vaccine trial at St Stephen’s Centre at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital.
Partnering with Stonewall, Dan shared a harrowing story of being threatened and hunted by a gang on the train platform in London. Luckily, he managed to escape by running onto the carriage of a train. Nobody helped or offered him support during the ordeal. Dan decided he wanted to just not report it.
With Stonewall, Dan wants to challenge the UK government to gather accurate hate crime data to glean better ways to implement preventative measures. With the Conservative Party in power, many queer people don’t trust the system in place to protect them.
“As a cisgender, white man I get through life more or less fine. But there are members of the community who are more vulnerable than myself, such as people of colour or the trans community,” says Dan. “Those are the ones where I imagine it’s hard to walk down the street right now and not feel like they are a target – because targets have been put on their backs by political leaders and by certain parts of the media.”
