THEGAYUK

Tag: Homophobia

The latest news about homophobia across the UK and the globe.

  • COLUMN | Sticks And Stones

    I got called a faggot on the bus home last week. I was quite amused actually. It felt so retro and dated. I’ve almost grown to love some of these quaint old words for what I am. Maybe I’d have liked it less had I been alone at night somewhere less crowded.

    I was with my partner on the bus and a group of six teenage boys were misbehaving, shouting out remarks and jumping across the aisle punching each other. To summarise, I got a bit uppity when they started talking about girls they’d like to bang (their words) and how they’d go for the ones who couldn’t fight back and would just lie there and take it against their will.

    I have these moments when I see red (usually in cinemas, on public transport or when I get bad service) and struggle to hold my tongue. I contain my anger and am usually quite assertive and reasoned. I attack the issue like I’m a middle class woman in M and S complaining to a young whippersnapper of a boy about a bad lettuce, cold and aloof.

    Naturally they called me a faggot amongst other things. They would do. It’s the easiest target and requires no wit or thought and although I’m not over the top camp, I’m easily identifiable as gay. Had I been fat or old then that would have been mentioned as an insult. We’re allowed to call people fat or old too as well as shout homophobic remarks. The word itself didn’t offend me although the venom it was spat out with took me back slightly. They surmised that I took it up the arse (good guess boys!) and had a backside like a wizard’s sleeve (bad guess and unoriginal cliché). I generally just felt that they were making idiots of themselves and felt faintly amused but maybe I should have been more angry and affronted?

    I spent much of my teenage years having names shouted at me at school by other children and occasionally by teachers. It was the 1980s. Homophobia came as standard. I came out aged 15 at a comprehensive school in the Midlands. It was going to happen. Were you to ask me my nickname at school I would reply Poof or Gaylord. I always laugh it off (and tried to at the time) but it was actually not much fun at all and at times left me feeling vulnerable, despised and tearful. My parents also had a cache of anti-gay names they’d hurl at the TV when Boy George was on Top of the Pops or bandy about at the dinner table. That was never very comfortable either.

    Working in a shop in my teens, there was a regular customer who’d come in to try to shoplift. If I spotted him and got in his way he’d shout “Yo! Battyman!” I didn’t know the term and thought it was an affectionate nickname so would always wave back and smile.

    I still get a knee jerk reaction when I hear homophobic terms. They take me back and raise a tiny hackle or two. I’ve tried owning them and that works to an extent. Calling myself queer or poofter does have a strong disempowering effect on the words. My friends affectionately call me names too which is fine by me. Who can blame them if I call them myself or my friends too? I recently posted a photo of myself on a social networking site wearing a cravat (it was vintage chic, before you start getting funny about it). The comments generally followed the theme of “You are so GAY!” I’m not sure that’s an insult. Is there anything wrong with being gay? I am gay. It’s a fact. Maybe there’s something wrong with wearing a cravat, but it did match my blazer well and bought out my eyes.

    My pet hate currently is the use of the word “gay” to denote “crap”. It sends out a terrible message and is regressive in every way. I hate how people in the media have got away with using it too. I wince when I hear people on the bus calling things gay. I once asked an acquaintance who used the word in that context what she meant and she said by saying gay she meant “crap”. Goodness that made me feel warm inside. I avoid her now.

    Words do have a lot of power and the old saying is wrong. Names can hurt you just like sticks and stones but maybe in different ways. Look at the statistics of mental illness, suicide and drug and alcohol abuse in gay people and consider what it is makes us prone to these problems. It doesn’t take much thinking to see that the undercurrent of both explicit and implicit homophobia is a major culprit.

    I’m not 15 anymore. I can cope with name calling better than before. The thing is though, I’d really rather not cope with it at all.

    Chris Bridges is a regular writer for TheGayUK and also writes more of his observations on his blog: http://www.gayboyinterrupted.blogspot.co.uk/

  • This Church Had An Amazing Response To Homophobia Graffiti Sprayed On Its Doors

    A church has responded perfectly to homophobic graffiti sprayed on its doors, by painting a brightly coloured rainbow over it.

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  • Anti-Gay Leaflets Distributed To Households In Margate Before Kent Pride

    Leaflets which urge householders not to support gay pride in Margate have been distributed through the letterboxes of Kent homes just days before the annual pride.

    The homophobic leaflet, which was delivered through the letterboxes of hundreds of homes in Margate urges residents to stay away from the pride parade and that Margate will never be MarGAYte.

    Margate’s pride parade returns this year on the 29th August. The parade will start at 11am from the Lido car park.

    The leaflet also seemingly links homosexuality with paedophilia as it calls for residents to “save yourself and your children”

     

    The highly offensive note has been derided by the local community with volunteer pride co-ordinator Tony Butcher telling the KentOnline.co.uk,

    “This is a horrendous act and these people are inciting a riot.

    “The comments are absurd, we are people who like other people of the same sex and to suggest we are paedophiles is absolutely ridiculous.”

     

    This is not the first time a pride event has been targeted by a malicious maildrop in 2014 households in Brighton received an anti-gay flyer and in November 2014 residents in Ely, Cambridgeshire also received a homophobic note through the door.

     

     

  • Homophobe Calls Himself Batman After Exposing His Penis

    A man has been sentenced and fined after exposing himself and using a gay slur.

    Nathan McMahon, 27, told police he was Batman after being arrested for exposing himself in a pub in Somerset in April.

    The court heard that he drunkenly called the landlord a “gay git” before pulling out his penis and exposing himself in front a customer. He went on to cause damage to plants and a for sale sign, as well as urinating in the street.

    Prosecutor Lucy Coleman said,

    “They were both drunk and after being served with a second pint McMahon called the landlord a gay git and then took out his penis and testicles and put them on the bar in front of another customer,”

    “The landlord took their drinks away but they continued to swear at him so he pressed his panic button to alert the police and they left.”

     

    McMahon also pleaded guilty to using abusive words and behaviour.

    His defendant, Tom Briggs said it was “a drunken night that went terribly wrong”.

    “McMahon had a disagreement with the landlord while he was asking for some money for the jukebox and this ended in him being abusive and he left the pub,” he said.

    “Then, with aggression inside him, he went outside and he kicked some plants, punched the sign and damaged a gate.”

     

    Manchester based McMahon has been ordered to a 12-month community order with 120 hours of unpaid work as well as paying £235 in compensation.

  • New Report Released on Gay Hate Crime Challenges

    A new report has been released by Nottingham Trent University that has for the first time examined the perspectives of police officers and the issues they face preventing hate crime.

    Carried out by Nottingham Law School on behalf of the Hate Crime Steering Group, it involved in-depth interviews conducted with frontline officers from Nottinghamshire Police. The outcomes of this are to be shared among UK forces by the government.

    The reports author, Dr Loretta Trickett, has claimed: “many of the officers I interviewed were not fully engaged with the current format” and that while officers are clear on what hate crime is and know the procedures to follow, more training from external agencies on how to sufficiently deal with complicated cases is vital.

    Hate crime is currently an area of priority for the police, including five monitored areas, two of these being sexual orientation and gender identity. The crime itself makes up 1% of overall crime, with 44,480 incidents being recorded by police in 2013/14.

     

  • Passengers Overhear Homophobic Bus Driver Blaming “Bum Busters” For Traffic

    A petition is calling for the sacking of a bus driver in Northern Ireland after using a homophobic slur during Belfast Pride.

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  • 1000 Anti-Gay Marriage Billboards To Be Erected In The USA

    The God’s Original Design Ministry thinks God needs help with marriage and has ploughed money into a homophobic billboard campaign it wants to spread across America.
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  • Teenage Victim Of The Jerusalem Pride Stabber Dies

    A teenager who was one of the 6 victims of the Jerusalem Pride stabber has died from her injuries.

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  • EastEnders Newcomer Victim Of Online Homophobic Abuse

    EastEnders’ newcomer Jonny Labey has spoken out about the homophobic threats he’s received online.

    The star whose character, Paul Coker had an on-screen romp with Ben Micthell, which attracted 48 official complaints to OFCom has also been a target for abuse on social media.

    Speaking to GT in their new issue, Jonny said that feedback on the scene and his character was:

    “…all very positive, I thought, but it wasn’t until I got curious and started nosing around that I found the negative ones.

    “It doesn’t matter if it’s gay or not, there’s people that don’t agree or aren’t comfortable watching. It’s 2015, you need to move on from this stupid discrimination against gay men!

    “People would’ve been fine if it was a guy and a girl kissing.”

  • Gay Couple Sprayed With Pepper Spray In Violent Homophobic Attack In Kiev

    A violent gang in Kiev physically attacked a young gay couple after trying an experiment to see what social reactions they would get if they held hands or showed public affection.

    Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk from Bird In Flight TV repeated an experiment filmed by a Russian Vlog team, ChebuRussia TV, to see what would happen if two men showed affection in public in Kiev, unlike the Russian experience, Kis and Levchuck found themselves in the centre of a violent attack involving pepper spray and kicks to the head.

    The shocking video reveals the real danger posed to openly gay men in the city of Kiev.

    In the video, the two men start by holding hands around the city. Their actions weren’t met with anything more than stares. Kis said, “We never heard any insults and those people who did have a verbal reaction… we were like aliens to them.”

    The couple then decided to heat up the action a little by sitting on each other’s lap and giving flowers. It was then that they were approached by a group of 10- 15 reportedly neo-Nazis, with one of them saying:

    “It looks like they’re f**king mistaking this place for America.”

    Luckily for Kis and Levchuk the attack was quickly broken up when a man in blue stepped into to separate the group, but not before at least three of the gang had landed kicks to the faces and bodies of the gay couple.

    Neo-Nazi groups have been accused of violence and even the murder of several gay men in the last few years. In 2013 it was reported that neo-Nazis were posting fake personal ads in Russia in order to lure gay teens into an ambush.

    In June 2013 an 18-year-old French gay rights activist Clément Méric was left brain dead after a violent attack by a gang of neo-Nazis.

    The Uk’s Foreign Office warns gay travellers that, “Although homosexuality is not prohibited by law, public attitudes are less tolerant than in the UK and public displays of affection may attract negative attention. There is no provision under Ukrainian legislation guaranteeing freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and there has been an increase in intolerance towards the LGBT community.”

  • COMMENT I Wanna Hold My Boyfriend’s Hand (and other straight jealously)

    I wanna hold your hand (and other straight jealousy)

    As the title says, it’s a simple request; all I want to do is hold a hand, specifically my partner’s hand. We’ve been together for 8 years and I’ve never openly held his hand or been overly affectionate in public, and a video posted recently of two men in Russia just walking down the street holding hands painfully illustrates the kind of reactions that we would get. Obviously, the UK is far more liberal than Russia when it comes to gay rights, but I would still feel nervous about what could potentially happen.

    I consider myself a strong guy mentally, and if someone is openly homophobic I will stand up for myself, but it’s the subtle type of reactions that bother me more. The whispers and stares from people we would get for doing something so benign that straight people don’t even have to think about it. I do feel a pang of sadness and jealousy when I’m walking along with my partner and see couples holding hands or being affectionate, completely oblivious to the world around them, thinking of nothing more than their eventual destination or what’s for dinner that night.

    Straight people take for granted how easy it is for them to display affection towards their significant other, and while there may be a very small minority of people who might stare at a straight couple, if they are of, say different races or different physicality, it is nowhere near the level of hostility a gay couple would endure.

    I also very rarely visit “straight” nightclubs on a Friday or Saturday because it only takes one person saying something to ruin a night out. I feel constantly on edge, always wary of the kind of people who are about and how they might react to me, and obviously, with alcohol involved, this becomes more of a minefield. Most straight people can go into a nightclub and have a great night out without the fear of either having something said or worse, being attacked. Yes it can happen that anyone can get into an incident in a nightclub, but as a gay person, the odds are stacked far more against me.

    I’m lucky in the fact that I’ve only ever experienced a few incidences of outright homophobic verbal abuse, and I’ve never been physically attacked and I consider myself fortuitous that the most I’ll get from friends and work colleagues would be considered nothing more than friendly banter and natural curiosity to me. However, what is friendly banter to me, could be incredibly hurtful to someone else and in the younger LGBT population especially, who may still be struggling with their identity this can be potentially dangerous.

    To some straight people reading this, they may question why I would be jealous of them, and this is where the problem lies, they don’t see a problem. They don’t have the need to see an issue, something I and the LGBT community don’t have the luxury of.

    The reason we have Pride events is so that as a community we can feel safe enough to be ourselves, where the worst we’ll get is from a few sad people in anoraks quoting bible verses at us, who are easily ignored. I’ve had it asked to me and others many times “Why do you have pride marches?” And my usual reaction is “be thankful you don’t need one”. The fact we have had to fight to be given basic rights, and it took until the 21st century to even be allowed to have a civil partnership shows there it still a long way to go to change people’s attitudes. We simply haven’t come far enough to stop the fight for our right to exist and to be recognised.

    But what can be done, should all gay couples just hold hands and sod the reactions? Sadly this isn’t as easy as it sounds. In some places in the UK this could potentially result in a violent reaction. LGBT people have been attacked and or killed, and over 35,000 incidences of homophobic hate crimes go unreported every year. Does this illustrate that the LGBT community are so used to these kind of reactions that they consider it pointless to report it any more, or is there something of a more deeply disturbing trend when it comes to homophobic abuse, in that LGBT people don’t feel anything would be done even if it was reported and would that then result in worse treatment from the perpetrator after they got their slap on the wrist. Statistics show that fewer than 1 in 10 homophobic hate crimes that are actually reported lead to a conviction.

    Times they are a changing though, and the general overall attitude towards gay people is positive and accepting, and as people become more educated about the LGBT community the more people will not think twice about seeing two men holding hands.

    by Andy Elliot Griffiths / @AndyEG1982