4 minute read
CRAIG’S THOUGHTS
By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum
Not Better Together, or One of Us. ..
Advertisement
And so it continues, men who identify as gay or who are perceived to be so are viciously, violently attacked on the streets of the United Kingdom in the year of our Lord 2021.
Men in Edinburgh, men in Birmingham, men in Brighton and what are we doing about it? What are the national media saying about this crisis? This is an exponential rise in assaults on men, predominantly young and men who are or perceived to be homosexual. Is this horror on anybody’s radar? Is it even on the radar of the LGBTQIA+ community? Do you even give a rats ass?
I was recently invited on to a radio programme to discuss the growing crisis along with a victim of a recent assault in Liverpool. To say that I was disappointed by the experience on the programme would be an understatement. It was my belief we were there to discuss the growing rise in violence towards men who are or who are perceived to be gay in this country, only to discover that our presence was part of a phonein on the broader subject of hate crime.
I had thought this was an item about the rise in violence towards gay men in this country; it was not, we were all gathered together in the minority-tastic basket of diversity and addressed homogenously. Who can blame them?
Who should be surprised they were lumping us all together when we too are blending ourselves into a miserable melée of lumpy tepid chicken soup that resembles little more than regurgitated vomit where a visible identity used to be. A collection of communities that has no discernible identity of its own, just one swirling, tasteless broth of patheticism. The LGBTQIA+.
It has become a nonsense. Should a woman in the workplace wish to raise a matter pertaining to women and women alone, we would not replace the term woman with human in order to be inclusive. This would reduce the matter to the clear flowing juices after two hours too many in the oven when the goose is well and truly cooked. And yet we do this to our LGBTQIA selves all the time.
It is important that we talk about issues pertaining to sexual orientation and indeed gender identities, and it is essential to also separate out these identities under the one umbrella as we all stand together. Call out the issues for what they are, separate in order to establish both their strength and independent voices.
If we want and need to talk about life in the UK for trans people, which of course we do, that is what we should talk about. We should speak the word trans and we should outline the issue as a trans issue that we stand together to address and support. To remove the word trans and talk more broadly about the LGBTQIA+ is to dampen the matter and render it insipid.
If we are raising an awareness of a growth in violence towards young men who either are perceived to be gay or indeed are so, that is what we should be talking about. Gay men under attack. Men who are gay. If we push this under the polyester poncho of a rise in violence to the LGBTQIA+, we are not telling the truth. We are liars in our own midst and those who have suffered are neglected and we send more cannon fodder out into the line of fire.
And if we want to discuss lesbian issues that is what we must do. Not cower away under the guise of opposition to a few irritants now known as ‘terfs’. A lesbian is a lesbian and their voices should be heard. Not silenced with a metaphorical fist down their throat every time they step forward to clear it.
Equality, diversity and inclusion has become so damned inclusive we are inadvertently excluding ourselves and our cries for help.
In recent months, as with now many assaults, a man wearing a ‘Pride’ T-shirt was violently assaulted in a Brighton supermarket in the middle of the day. Young parents with toddlers in pushchairs stood by and jeered in encouragement to his attackers. The police are neither treating nor recording this as a ‘gay’ incident. Nor are they more widely saying it is an attack on LGBTQIA+ people. It is ‘just’ an assault. And why? Because the man in the T-shirt is straight. Just let that rest there for a moment.
In truth, his attackers thought he was gay. A gay man. He was after all, a gay man surely. Men who identify as gay or are perceived to do so by their potential attackers are not safe in this country. Say it like it is. We the LGBTQIA+ communities need to talk about this as an issue we are all concerned about. To smother it in a generalist assault on all of us, is to let the attackers off the hook.
I will stand with you trans person and hold your hand. I will stand with you lesbian sister and support your voice. I will sit beside you non-binary individual and listen to your stories. I will also not deny my separate gay and male identity. It matters.
I am not you, and you are not me. And it is absolutely present and correct to say so. Separation doesn’t mean I don’t love you.
