James O'Hagan

speaker

34 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 27 Jun

James O'Hagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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The Pat Kenny Show · Pride 2026 · 27 Jun 2026 podcast

Well, yeah, I mean, I grew up, I was born in 1982, so the first 11 years of my life, I obviously wasn't thinking about or considering my sexual orientation.

But looking back now, I suppose I can understand that, you know, I sort of was lucky enough to come out after decriminalisation and

I was still in that sort of era of sort of tolerance, you know, kind of where people were like, we're tolerant of, we hadn't moved quite to the language we use now around inclusion and belonging.

So, you know, when I was coming out to my parents, when I was around sort of 16 or 17, there was a real sense of like, we love you, you can be who you are, but let's just keep this a bit quiet.

Like, let's not quite like, let's be careful who we tell.

And it wasn't coming from a place of shame around my identity, but it was coming from a place of wanting to make sure that

that I was protected and I was safe.

And I think it's exactly because of having lived through, for my parents, having lived through that period of time where they had seen the violence and some of the attitudes that existed towards members of our community, that there was a fear of what sort of life was I going to have?

And to be honest,

I couldn't have answered that question myself at the time.

I think I came out the same year that Queer as Folk, that sort of, you know, seminal TV show was on Channel 4.

And that was the first time I'd ever seen representation of people in a community that I could actually belong to.

And I think that that, you know, that visibility point is so important.

I think that it's insidious and it gets in in a way, you were talking about the sort of intangibility or you were mentioning the intangibility of these things and it is, it gets in under your skin and I think certainly, I look back to say 2015 and that period immediately after marriage equality and there was this real sense of you could walk with your head held up high and your shoulders and your back and you felt so...

confident that you could take the hand of your partner in public or if you were in a non-queer space that, you know, you could give your partner like a kiss on the cheek or you could be, you know, boisterous in your identity.

And certainly in the last 11 years that has felt like it has ebbed away and sort of, you know, anecdotal.

Would you hesitate?

I would, yeah.

I think that I have definitely noticed the sense of feeling sort of less comfortable to be sort of demonstrative or even less comfortable to kind of, you know, it goes back to the speech that Panty made at the Abbey in 2014, that sort of checking yourself, that feeling of

of kind of sort of looking around the room and thinking, well, is there going to be someone here that sort of is going to take issue with my identity?

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