Name: Ian McKellen has an empowering message for the LGBTQ community: #NoFilter
Uploaded: 2016-06-16T13:51:19+00:00
Description: "The world needs us."

Ian McKellen has an empowering message for the LGBTQ community: #NoFilter

"The world needs us."

We're familiar with #NoFilter as a way to tag an epic selfie on Instagram. But this year's Pride Festival is exploring a different interpretation of the hashtag.

This year, Pride London wants everyone celebrating Pride to live life with #NoFilter, and a host of celebrities -- including Sir Ian McKellen and Graham Norton -- appear in a video about what that means to members of the LGBTQ community: Letting go of self-doubt and self-censorship, and allowing your private self to exist in public.

"The world needs us," McKellen says in the video. "Live every day like it was Pride in London."

London's Pride Festival takes place from June 10-26, with main events scheduled for June 25 and 26.

Topics LGBTQ

Rachel Thompson

Features Editor

Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.

A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.

Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.