Stories
Published: 1 June 2026 by Violet Spillers
On paper, my life can look deceptively straightforward: I am married to a cis, straight man, and from the outside that can make my queerness feel invisible. Sometimes it feels as though marriage has nudged me back towards the closet, even though I have loved women, men and non-binary people equally throughout my life. I often find myself saying, half-laughing but entirely serious, “No, we are not in an open marriage, but yes, I am still queer.” Growing up in Singapore, where being gay was only decriminalised in 2022, I was often made to feel wrong for my identity. Perhaps that is why everyday recognition now matters so much to me: the small, ordinary moments when I do not have to explain myself, and can simply exist as I am.
Over time, those moments of recognition began to find me in the London skateboarding scene. There is a particular kind of hope in being greeted by people who understand you without needing a full explanation – rolling up to a skate spot, spotting familiar faces, and knowing you are among queer, female, non-binary and trans friends who see you clearly. I feel it there in the easy conversations, the shared jokes, the scraped knees and words of encouragement shouted across concrete. In those everyday moments, I do not feel like a contradiction. I simply feel held.
My journey to being out was not simple, which is why tenderness feels so radical to me now. I was outed by my dad after he read my text messages without my consent, and he handled it badly. I remember the fear of that time vividly: the panic that someone would tell my mother before I could, the dread of losing control over my own story. But when I finally told her, she laughed softly and told me not to be silly – she realised it long ago. She said she was my mother and knew me well. It was such a small exchange, really, but it gave me something lasting: the quiet relief of being loved in a moment that could so easily have gone another way.
My husband isn’t LGBTQ+, but he has never made my queerness feel negotiable or inconvenient. Instead, he has folded it naturally into the life we share. He understands how much it matters to me not only to champion LGBTQIA+ rights through my work, but to remain rooted in queer community and culture. As an advertising creative, I have worked on projects such as Today Is Gay and Sex Ed Gay, a sex education platform for queer Singaporean young people created in response to the narrowness of mainstream sex education. What stays with me most, though, are the ordinary ways he shows his support: coming with me to queer events, sharing my work proudly, listening when I need to talk, and never acting as though my queerness is separate from our marriage. Hope, I have learned, often looks like this – not grand declarations, but everyday acts of recognition.
Queer joy also arrives in lighter, brighter ways. It’s there in the thrill of hearing an artist like Chappell Roan on repeat, in seeing Billie Eilish and Reneé Rapp occupy space so unapologetically, in feeling that pop culture can sometimes crack open a little more room for all of us to breathe. I also see it in watching Singapore shift, even slowly. The fact that “A Lesbian Love Story: The Musical” was allowed to perform at the Singapore Fringe felt meaningful to me, precisely because progress so often begins in these seemingly small cultural moments. Joy is not frivolous. Sometimes it is the clearest sign that change is already underway.
At my previous company, I ran the queer affinity group, and it became one of the most joyful parts of my working life. At first, some people were surprised to learn I had a husband, but once they knew me, that surprise faded into genuine connection. We built community in wonderfully ordinary ways: organising socials, going to plays, becoming investors in The Common Press, an intersectional queer bookshop, and making room for laughter as much as advocacy. Those moments mattered because they were not only about policy or visibility; they were about what it feels like to belong on a Tuesday afternoon, in a meeting room, at a drinks table, in the easy warmth of people finding one another.
Before I left that role, one of the last things I did was help create a trans and non-binary inclusion policy. As part of that work, I invited my friend Casey, a trans woman and skateboard instructor, to speak at the office about her experiences. We opened the session to the whole agency, and what moved me most was not only that allies and senior leaders came, but the quality of the conversation that followed. One person shared that they had a trans niece and asked how best to support her. It was such a human question, asked with sincerity, and it shifted the room. That is another form of queer hope I hold close: the moment when curiosity becomes care, and care becomes action.
Beyond work, some of the deepest hope in my story comes from family. For all the homophobia I have encountered from some relatives, the love I received from my grandparents remains one of the most hopeful parts of my story. I had assumed that their age, and the conservatism often associated with older Asian generations, might mean rejection. Instead, my grandmother met me with warmth. She told me she would love me whether I ended up with a man or a woman, although she still gently held onto her wish for me to have a child. At the time I had a girlfriend, and my grandmother invited both her and her mother to our Lunar New Year dinner. That invitation said more than any speech could have. In welcoming them to the table, she made something beautifully clear: queer love, too, could be part of the family.
Last year, at Pride in London, my husband spotted a large rainbow flag, bought it for me and tied it around my neck. It was such a simple moment, almost throwaway in the sweep of the day, and yet it has stayed with me. I remember the weight of the fabric, the noise of the crowd, the ease of standing beside someone who was not threatened by any part of me. I have had male partners in the past who felt insecure about my queerness. He does not. His love leaves room for all of who I am, and there is a quiet joy in that which still catches me by surprise.
These days, I think queer hope lives less in spectacle than in the texture of ordinary life. It is in being recognised by friends at the skatepark, in a husband who buys me a rainbow flag without hesitation, in a grandmother who sets an extra place at the reunion table, in colleagues who choose empathy over assumption. I no longer feel the same need to prove my queerness to anyone. Instead, I find joy in the everyday moments that let me inhabit it fully – quietly, confidently and with love.
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Want to share your moment of hope and joy? Send a selfie and a short story about what gives you hope and joy to [email protected], or share using #LGBTHopeStartsHere and #hopeandjoy and tag @lgbtfdn.
