THE RAINBOW PROJECT

LGBTQIA+ communities in Northern Ireland don’t currently, and have never historically, had an easy time of it. From decriminalisation, through the various battles towards same-sex marriage, lifting the blood donation ban, and the fight to ban abusive conversion practices, LGBTQIA+ communities have battled through an overwhelmingly hostile political and media establishment in order to advocate for change and progress society.

While it may be difficult, it remains absolutely vital to continue this work, and to show solidarity with other marginalised communities facing a similar pushback, as those in the women’s, disability, migrant and refugee, and other communities and sectors continue to show solidarity with us.

As a young trans woman growing up in Northern Ireland, I, like so many other trans people out there, have had to advocate for myself and my rights in every institution and community I have ever been in. Attending single-sex schools with religious ethos’ throughout my childhood and being forced to advocate for my own basic human rights within those institutions taught me several valuable lessons.

One of these was a lesson in perseverance: knowing, despite feeling like I was banging my head off a brick wall, that eventually some of those bricks would fall loose. Another was that the view of societal issues as portrayed by established institutions like our schools, our politicians and media should not be taken unquestionably as the truth.

The third was the most important lesson: that we cannot wait for someone else to do something to fix what we see as the injustices in our region and in the world. We must take that mantle up ourselves and create the change we believe in. Without LGBTQIA+ communities taking the fight to those in power, none of the advances we have seen in recent decades would have occurred.

I say all of this because the reality is that for most people working to advocate for change or advance human rights for a specific community, and especially in the LGBTQIA+ sector, it is a personal fight as well as a professional one. We’re all either LGBTQIA+ people, their family members, or staunch allies and supporters of the community. This is deeply personal and emotive work to be doing, especially in a time where LGBTQIA+ and particularly trans communities are under such sustained attack from those in power.

As The Rainbow Project’s new Policy, Campaigns and Communications Manager, I believe firmly that we can harness the power of LGBTQIA+ communities and our allies to argue, lobby and campaign for positive change. We’ve done it before, mobilising thousands to come out on the streets in favour of marriage equality. We do it every day, working closely with our colleagues in the women’s sector to fight back against transphobic narratives in the media and in politics. And we will go on to do this across all of the areas that LGBTQIA+ communities in Northern Ireland tell us are impacting their lives.

There is a large job of work to be done. The past few years have been marked by rapid deterioration of public services – a deterioration that has specific impacts for LGBTQIA+ communities, in housing, in healthcare, in education. Progress that we were promised, including a hate crime bill and a legislative ban on conversion practices, have stalled due to the Assembly collapse. Work on the LGBTQIA+ social inclusion strategy has ground to a halt, and even when this work was ongoing, there was no timeline or ringfenced funding behind any of the recommendations.

Access to healthcare for trans individuals is an area where deterioration is starkly visible, and requires vital attention. I, myself, have been on the waiting list for Northern Ireland’s sole adult gender identity service, the Knockbracken Clinic, since January 2018.

Gender affirming healthcare - from hormonal interventions, hair removal, speech and language therapy, up to gender affirming surgery - has been almost completely inaccessible to trans adults coming out over the past 6 years. The situation is similar for trans children and young people, who are currently forced to languish for months in the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and don’t receive the care they need even when they eventually break through to the Knowing Our Identity service.

Trans people and their families shouldn’t have to be paying extortionate amounts of money to access private healthcare, or to source hormones online and selfmedicate. But that is the situation we have been forced into, not just here but across Ireland and in other parts of the UK, due to a complete failure of both the services and the decision-makers in charge of allocating funds and directing reform.

It’s an unacceptable state of affairs, and we must build momentum within our communities and our allies across sectors to deliver ground-up reform, moving away from a psycho-sexual model of care which treats trans identity as a mental health issue and places countless barriers in the way of accessing basic care, while also improving the funding and staffing behind services.

Violence and abuse experienced by trans people, and LGBTQIA+ communities more broadly, has also been on the rise. There is currently no hate crime legislation on the books, and while “stirring up hatred” offences exist and are currently used as a stand-in for hate crime offences, they are no replacement for properly defined and recognized hate crime legislation.

It’s vital that, unlike in existing legislation, transphobic hate crime is fully recognised and included in this new hate crime law, while also ensuring that the intersectional nature of violence and abuse can be fully accounted for when prosecuting hate crimes. Alongside this legislation, we are advocating for a well-resourced, comprehensive strategy to proactively address antiLGBTQIA+ attitudes, not just to prosecute hate crime after it occurs.

Banning conversion practices remains high on our agenda for campaigning and lobbying. Prior to the Assembly collapse, our Ban Conversion Therapy Campaign built a significant political consensus in favour of a comprehensive, inclusive ban on all conversion practices, with no loopholes or equivocations around the inclusion of trans and gender diverse people. While the political context has changed over the past few years, the lived reality of LGBTQIA+ people who are subject to attempted conversion has not: these practices are abusive, cause untold harm, and legislative action to ban them is long overdue.

These priorities sit alongside our existing work to improve the wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ young people, including through engagement within mental health and housing services as well as in schools. Educational institutions have the power to stifle and bring harm to queer youth within them, but also have the power to nurture and support them through their journey. We will continue our work with colleagues across the sector to advocate for robust anti-bullying strategies targeting homophobia and transphobia, as well as inclusive and comprehensive relationships and sexuality education. While we are unlikely to get everything we’re asking for, we will continue to engage and build a greater political consensus for supporting and affirming LGBTQIA+ young people in schools.

The political and media environment in the UK may not be the friendliest, or fill us with the most hope, but that simply isn’t reflective of the attitudes of wider society. Every year, every day, society is becoming more accepting, more inclusive and understanding of LGBTQIA+ experiences. Attempts by the media and politicians to sow division and stem the tide of progress will fail if we work together, if we show solidarity with other marginalized communities, and if we continue to do the ground work to build support for LGBTQIA+ communities in the grassroots. Here at Rainbow we remain committed to doing this work, and improving the lives of all LGBTQIA+ people in Northern Ireland.