Happy LGBTQ+ History Month!

Each February we remember the troubled and fraught history of sexually diverse people and the ongoing struggle for equality and justice worldwide for all those who are not exclusively attracted sexually to members of the opposite sex and/or who do not solely identify with their anatomical birth gender, or in the case of intersex individuals who were born with both male and female genitals, the sex that they were surgically assigned shortly after birth.

A history of ongoing and senseless oppression

Consenting lovemaking between same sex couples was criminalised for political reasons from the Victorian Era until as recently as 1963. Subsequent hate-inspired legislation, such as Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1993, which ordered all schools, public libraries and other publicly funded bodies to withhold all information about sexual and gender diversity except for material claiming it was a psychiatric problem – a controversial claim even at that time and one that has since been roundly and near universally rejected by medicine and psychology. Only very recently has the government posthumously pardoned codebreaker and mathematician Alan Turing and others unfairly persecuted under the law for their homosexuality.

A fear of difference has meant that progress towards equality has been slow. Gay and bi people are still campaigning for the same rights as heterosexuals, while nonbinary and trans people face an increasing stigma because their very existence has been taken up as a wedge issue designed to divide the opposition. Gender nonconformity challenges the peculiarly deeply rooted social idea that there are two genders, male and female, that are separate, distinct, and correspond with complete fidelity to the reproductive anatomy of each person. If you given to critical thinking, you might already be starting to feel an uncomfortable, creeping uncertainty that this teetering pile of assumptions is unlikely ever to have been tested, but rather assumed because it seemed to suit the purposes of those with power. Today, governments are strenuously trying to reinforce an increasingly challenged belief in a binary gender, violently oppressing anyone who attempts to live outside of traditional gendered norms, reinforcing ignorance of the rich diversity and complexity of what it is to be human in order to distract from global economic chaos and falling living standards.

People are too complicated to put into simple boxes

People defy categorisation. The sheer number of different pronouns and descriptions of gender identity, sexual orientation, romantic preferences, and what people want and expect from sex and relationships are myriad; separately and collectively so dizzyingly complex a matrix of possible combinations that it is unrealistic to expect social scientists will ever satisfactorily describe anything more than the broad sweep of the characteristics that combine to make up each person’s personal identity.

This plunges many people into near crisis when they reach puberty and begin to renegotiate their identity of increasing independence. Many LGBTQ+ youths end up killing themselves at this age and stage of development, unable to reconcile their emerging identity with their social conditioning and societal oppression. The famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung observed that truly getting to know oneself and what one truly wants from life is one of the most singularly challenging hurdles most people face. The prospect of admitting that the material possessions and relationships people have been brought up to believe would make them happy have failed to address their real needs is so terrifying that most people distract themselves with work, striving for greater success and kudos, competing with the neighbours, having a ‘mid-life crisis’ or throwing themselves headlong into a hobby or charitable works. Anything but face themselves in the mirror and ask what is wrong.

Imagine, then, how much worse this must be for anyone fundamentally confused about their gender, sexuality or other socially identified pillars of their identity. In light of this, it is perhaps small wonder that the masses are so frightened at the prospect of having the most fundamental parameters that they use to define themselves taken away.

Vox populai, vox dei?

Back in Antiquity, the historian Alcuin warned that the voice of the people should not be trusted, for the mob is forever on the brink of madness.  Populist politics is inherently dangerous because it fosters a mob mentality - the certainty that so many people believing the same simple story cannot be wrong.  Large groups are to be feared in every instance, for the crowd is a more violent beast than any of its constituent individuals, being possessed of the arrogance of a common collective direction that overrides the moral concerns or doubts of any member, everyone in the mob reassuring themselves that they are in the right and quelling their doubts by telling themselves that so many people of a singular opinion cannot all possibly be wrong. The alternative would be for everyone to look deeply inside themselves and observe the complexity, fluidity and uncertainty within.  As Jung wryly observed, that is something most people would rather die than attempt.  Yet it is trans people who are subject to far higher rates of personal and sexual violence than other groups, with trans youths are twice as likely to commit suicide than their cis-gendered peers, simply because so many people refuse to accept human diversity. Recent withdrawal of healthcare for trans people has reportedly made this situation even worse.

Something has to change. If we are not all to pay the horrible cost for tearing apart our society as a whole, people need to face up to the facts that the social norms of gender, relationships and family that we were brought up with were less noble truths and more convenient simplifications: such vast oversimplifications that they bordered on being outright lies. We still have to outlaw ineffective, traumatising so-called ‘conversion therapies’ – programmes of emotional abuse that attempt to change young people’s sexual identity. At the same time, suicide and assault rates are disproportionately higher and careers limited with a tell-tale consistency for most sexually and gender diverse minority groups and hate crime against LGBTQ+ people is on the rise as democracy and inclusion are globally threatened. Elsewhere in the world, being gay risks torture and death. If we are to create a world where everyone can thrive, we must recognise and meet our discomfort with self-compassion, so we can learn to move through it and embrace the near infinite diversity of humankind.

On a lighter note

Wow, that got heavy fast! For some (much) lighter reading, check out the Stonewall LGBTQ+ History Month webpages, where they have brief feature articles on topics from the origins of the word “bisexuality” to the history of the Stonewall uprising in New York that marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement and the slow battle for justice and equality.

Next week, we'll be posting links to resources for exploring LGBTQ+ history, queer perspectives, and more.