An Evening with Dr Cheddar Gorgeous

Many know Dr Cheddar Gorgeous from their appearance on Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK. This is where I’d first seen them and their appearance on television was inspiring, they were representing identities rarely shown, especially within the UK. They visited my university to give an anthropology talk.

I will try not to spoil too much as hopefully, you will be able to hear this incredible talk from Cheddar yourself.

Their talk was developed from their thesis on Manchester’s public sex scene, gay village and fluid identities. The talk focused on ambiguity within linguistics and the power of speaking and not speaking.

Ambiguity within language has always fascinated me and learning about just how ambiguous it could be was eye-opening. Cheddar spoke of what is and isn’t discussed within the cruising community as well as what is and isn’t discussed within academia itself. They used the phrase ‘meta-silence’, the silence within the discussion around the topic has led to a greater silence in academia.

I learned about the use of labels such as ‘sex worker’, ‘prostitute’ and ‘rent’ were too unambiguous for the community, they are too clear and constraining. This is something I was unaware of until this talk, I was also relatively unaware of the idea that sex work can be viewed as many social settings rather than one large intertwined ‘chain’.

As a queer person who has struggled with labels, it was incredible to learn about the use, or rather disuse, of labels within the lads of Manchester. The navigation of the ‘bisexual’ label has been mediated by the world around them and much like the language they use is incredibly flexible. Their identities are unlabeled and expressed passively rather than being openly expressed by being labelled.

Using labels to identify communities is important as it categorises vulnerable identities that need to be protected, however as Cheddar points out, these category ‘cages’ can be locked from the outside.

Cheddar was able to visually show the flexibility and ambiguity within the community through their comics, the narratives were shown from multiple perspectives and were flexible as Cheddar commented that the stories they were told often changed when being retold.

They were incredibly aware and conscious of the ethics of their research and their research’s place within anthropology and linguistics. To protect the privacy of those focused on, Cheddar took photos of the empty spaces they’d researched and sketched in various scenarios. These images were shown through a video that felt as if I was walking through the space, with the sound of chatter moving around me.

Cheddar’s exploration of the ideas around queer assertion both within the Manchester area as well as the queer community as a whole really made me think. I personally cannot put into words the emotions that these ideas provoke within me or how to explain the thoughts I have had around it, so instead I will have to use Cheddar’s words; “The world can be changed by a torrent or by rising damp”