If the ways young people are discovering to be truly themselves seems scary or alien, then perhaps it would help to see them as people first of all.
And you couldn’t hope to meet a more open, friendly and charming young couple than nonbinary Hen Edwards and their girlfriend May Cadman.
They are among the stars of our Live Pride Wide Open campaign that comes with a simple message: That hate closes and love opens. That being open to understanding and really seeing others makes you more free yourself. And their lives embody that message.
At the photoshoot for the campaign, I sat down with them to discover their stories.
Discovering queer identities
Tris: How did you guys meet?
Hen: We both just got out of our longest relationships before this. We’d been with our partners for three and four years. We thought we can’t do long-term relationships anymore and we both got on the apps.
We met and thought, this is going to be super casual. Six months later, our friends are like “This isn’t casual anymore. What’s going on guys?” And we were like “No, no, it’s casual.” Then I decided to ask May to be my girlfriend and she was like, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
May: I really liked you. I was slightly obsessed with you and I would be really nonchalant around Hen but in front of my friends I would come home and say “Oh my god, they’re so nice, they’re so sexy”. So it didn’t come as a surprise to anybody.
Hen: We announced it like it was this big thing. And our friends said “What’s the last six months been then?”
Tris: Hen, you’re nonbinary. May, do you identify as lesbian, bi, queer, something else?
May: It’s a really interesting question. I identify both as queer and lesbian. I think my queer identity has come more into fruition after Hen came out as nonbinary. But I think I’m comfortable with the label lesbian because I think for me, it really also represents the community that we’re a part of.
Lesbian visibility
Tris: We are in Lesbian Visibility Week shooting this right now. Do you feel there’s not as much visibility for lesbians?
May: I am in a slight echo chamber, so I’ve got a really amazing lesbian community around me. However, we lack a certain level of visibility and space.
For example Brighton only recently established a women’s sports bar, but it’s become a lesbian bar. Just from the amount of queer people that you see in that space you see how needed it is.
Hen: I think lesbians are fetishized quite a lot. And when there has been media representation it seems like it’s cancelled quite quickly. I Kissed A Girl [TV show] was amazing but they’ve cancelled it, which is sad because lesbians absolutely loved that representation on their screens.
May: What is also really important to say is there is definitely more representation of white lesbians in the media. We really lack representation of people of color who also identify as lesbians.
Tris: Identities like queer and being nonbinary are deeply felt but aren’t always easy to identify in yourself and explore. We often try to put single labels on ideas which are quite complex. Has there been a journey for you coming out as nonbinary and being attracted to women?
Hen: I still like to use the label lesbian for myself because it took me so long to feel comfortable with that label. It was such a journey because at school being called a lesbian was negative. The D-word was thrown around a lot and I didn’t like that.
I didn’t feel I was fully able to come out at school. So I did the whole “I’m gonna come out as bisexual.” I don’t think people should feel like it’s a halfway house but that’s how I saw it at the time. It felt like a struggle to accept myself as a lesbian.
Now coming out as nonbinary is still quite a new thing for me. It’s only been three years since I came out. But I’m reluctant to shift from being lesbian because I felt so proud to be a lesbian.
Tris: May, did you find it easy to identify as who you truly are growing up, or has that also been a journey for you?
May: I was lucky because I had very liberal parents. However, in school, I think I felt this pressure because I was in a kind of group of predominantly quite girly girls that cared a lot about the boys. So just in order to fit in there were aspects of myself that I changed even though it wasn’t who I truly felt inside.
I love the outdoors. I love sports. But I felt like embracing that too much would create a negative connotation around being a lesbian.
I had my first girlfriend at 15 or 16. So my journey has been fairly gentle. Being with Hen and Hen coming out as nonbinary – I was just so in love with Hen. I’ve never considered being with somebody who identified as nonbinary but it was the most natural thing and it made so much sense.
However they chose to identify, I was just happy to accept Hen in any form.
Harry Styles is my idea of gender expression
Tris: Were there people you could see in real life to make things easier?
Hen: I had lesbian neighbours growing up. And my cousin did come out about six months before I did. So that helped pave the way.
With gender identity it has been slightly different, there’s no real representation. My mum likes to intellectualize everything and she can understand sexuality. It makes sense to her. But she finds it tricky to intellectualize gender identity. What does that look like? And for me, it doesn’t really have a look.
I’ve got lots of nonbinary friends and for them it’s about being quite masculine in their gender expression. Whereas I’m not a masculine person at all. Really, I’m quite girly. I would love to be like Harry Styles. How Harry Styles gets to be masculine and wear the dresses and be really androgynous. That’s my idea of gender expression.
I find that really liberating. That’s why I like to play with makeup and clothes. We’re not trying to create a gay hetero couple, we’re not trying to emulate our parents in the way we are as a couple and May let’s me play with all of that.
Tris: So you’re living your open selves?
May: Definitely. And I think we have really been on a journey and a lot of that is a journey of my self-expression, thinking about gender identity. But it feels quite light and we just have a lot of fun together. We don’t really think about it. We just exist as we are. Like, I use she/ her pronouns but really I am also fairly fluid.
Hen: There’s no expectations.
There’s no end goal for us. We’re just working out what works along that journey.
Tris: There’s a very toxic, polarised conversation around trans people in this country, which is just so sad to see. But within that, nonbinary identities haven’t been well understood. So you’re experimenting and making it up for yourself?
Hen: Definitely because there doesn’t seem to be one route and I don’t want there to be one route. It’s not about one one size fits all. I guess that’s the whole point. We’re not trying to be in the middle. It’s about that fluidity. I find it fun. It’s exciting.
A big queer family
Tris: You’ve already talked about a lesbian community which is supportive. You’ve talked about how seeing your friends has helped you work out who you are yourself. So how does your wider friendship support you?
Hen: They’re a really mixed group. The whole spectrum of queerness. They’re working it out for themselves. So we’ve got loads of lesbians friends, we’ve got trans friends, we’ve got non-binary friends. But some lesbian friends don’t look like the other lesbian friends. My nonbinary doesn’t look like our friends’ nonbinary.
I think that’s the beautiful thing about living in a place like Brighton is that it’s almost expected that there are going to be all of these different funky people. It’s not unusual to walk down the street and see someone wearing a lampshade on their head and writing.
So with gender identity and expression, it’s exactly the same. We both went to university here and we stayed because we love that. You can just be friends with anyone. And everyone’s super accepting.
May: Within the beginning of our relationship, we naturally sought out relationships with other queer people. That’s really special because we just have this amazing big queer family.
Neither of us are from Brighton originally. Yet we have one of the strongest feelings of community, I’ve ever felt.
Hen: I think as queer people, we have to grow up faster in a lot of ways. And that means that we just end up being one completely different in completely different places to some of our friends. We may have started off in the same place but the way that we’ve grown up, might be different to them particularly if they’re straight or cis, they’ve got a little bit more freedom in this world.
Brighton is an incredibly accepting place, there are still people that can’t develop in a way that they want to. They might be queer and their families don’t allow them to. I’ve definitely lost people along the way.
May: Also in the political climate around trans people and stuff like that. We see stuff on social media and I might not necessarily be friends with these people. When I see people on social media that are negative around like the existence of trans people, I think “block”.
The gift of being gay
Tris: And with this collection of queer friends, do you think you’ve helped by being yourselves or by reaching out or being a sounding board for anybody?
Hen: We’ve got friends that have had to fundraise for surgery, so top surgery in particular. They’re on the other side of the phone when something’s happened?
May: It’s just being there as two people who love our friends. That’s what we’d want from them if the tables were turned.
We’re incredibly supported by our friends, by parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles.
Hen: We live with our housemate KK who is also part of the campaign. We wouldn’t function without her. We’re like a little mishmash family.
May: Despite all the hardship and the stuff that people go through – it’s really hard in so many ways being queer – but every day I’m grateful that I am queer because of the people around me. I think it’s such a gift to be gay and to be able to meet and have a mutual respect and understanding and love for the queer community because they are just fabulous.
Hen: You can make so many decisions in life. One different decision would take you in a different direction. But I would make all of those decisions again to be surrounded by all of these amazing people because I’m just so happy in myself and in my identity as I am right now.
Live Pride Wide Open
You can see the Live Pride Wide Open campaign throughout June 2026 on JCDecaux outdoor screens around the UK and at Outernet in Tottenham Court Road, London. Read the stories behind the images on our Pride Wide Open page. And if you can, please make a donation so we can keep tackling hatred and promoting a world where all LGBTQIA+ people can thrive.
