Stories from our community: Pride Month – Herefordshire Board Gamers

Stories from the community: Over the month we’ve been contacted by people who have wanted to give statements on being queer and what HB means to them!

It has helped us greatly in collecting wonderful feedback, so THANK YOU to everyone who’s shared.

We love learning about the people who attend the group and what it means to them! Here are a few of those messages people have said we can anonymously share!

(Text in the descriptions)

“The culture of inclusion and respect within Herefordshire Board Gamers has created a space for queer people like myself to feel not only safe but welcomed while we share our common interest. It has enabled me to make many queer friends I may never have met otherwise and I’m so grateful.”

"HB is more than a board game group to me. They are among the nicest people I've ever met. The people who organise will go out of their way to help, support or show compassion. They've created a space I can go to and not worry about what people will think. I'm a shy person, very introverted and worry how people perceive me, but there I don't feel that. It's just a place to play board games and have a chat I consider myself non binary but this is fairly new to me and I continue to investigate that part of me so I'm not publicly out. It wasn't the starting point but the variety of people, personalities, and identities has widened my worldview and allowed me to be myself. While I'm not public with my identity, I know that HB would be a space I'd be able to do that if I so chose"

“I joined HB after I had come out as a Transgender non-binary man. Not a single person at any event has been hateful in any way even though very it's very obvious I was born a woman. As hard as I have tried nothing stops society from viewing me as a woman as I have naturally very feminine features but the whole team at HB has been so supportive and even though many of them had not personally known a transgender person so open before they took the challenge of learning pronouns that don't match someone's external to the heart and have all done such a fantastic job!”

“Being transgender, I was worried I wouldn't be accepted or would find it difficult to make friends there. However, I was very quickly put at ease by seeing some openly trans people who took me in and helped me get more involved. I've found a whole group of friends who are accepting and supporting of each other. I always look forward to going to each event and seeing all the friends I've created through the group. It's opened me up to a whole community of people I would never have otherwise had.”