By Sanjana Idnani … After almost two decades following the repeal of section 28, education about the issues faced by LGBTIQA+ individuals has massively progressed. In 2005, Schools Out UK initiated the very month that we are celebrating to educate young people about the issues that LGBT+ people faced and to make schools more inclusive […]
Category: Voices
Equality is Controversial, Apparently
Written by Lou Gibney Trigger Warning: mentions of transphobia, racism, homophobia … Bias. It’s something we all have – to varying degrees – based on our worldview. The BBC claims to be as objective as possible whilst producing TopGear, which, with Jeremy Clarkson behind the wheel, regularly causes controversies and problems of diplomacy. What else […]
LGBT+ Representation: It’s Not Forced Diversity, People Just Exist
Written by Lollie Melton Trigger Warning: discussions of homophobia, transphobia, brief mentions of death … The Baker Thief by Claudie Arsenault is the most brilliant book I have ever read. Well, actually, no it’s not…it’s just the first book with unquestioning aromantic representation that I’ve ever encountered. And it also happens to be gripping, seriously […]
Why Trans People are Joining the Greens
Written by Pandora Hughes Trigger Warning – mentions of transphobia … Although I had voted Green on occasions, I didn’t join the Party until December 2019, in the middle of the last General Election. Up to that point I had been a Labour member and supporter. I had been voting Labour and occasionally campaigning for […]
LGBT+ Rights and the Trade Union Movement: Building on a Historic Allyship
Written by Joe Lever (he/him) Trigger Warning: homophobia … It’s difficult to properly dissect modern UK LGBT+ history without at least acknowledging the impact of the Stonewall Riots, from across the pond. The fallout from ‘Stonewall’ resulted in the creation of the Gay Liberation Front in the US. Which in turn inspired the UK group […]
A Brief History of Transphobia
By Josh Farrell Trigger Warning – mentions of transphobia … Feminism has a long history, with the advent of Western Feminism being somewhere in the mid-1300s however it wasn’t until the 1960s that feminism as a topic was being analysed critically by feminists themselves. From this analysis came what we know as Radical Feminism which […]
Generation 28
Written by Hannah Graeber (she/they) Trigger Warning – homophobia, mentions of AIDS … It can be easy to slip into thinking of a “time when LGBT+ people didn’t have many rights” as solely being the domain of pre- and post-WWII born generations. Whilst this was certainly a hugely challenging time, and members of younger generations […]
The Institute of Sexology and the Erasure of Transgender History
Written by Pandora Hughes (she/her) Trigger Warning: Transphobia, mentions of violence, murder … If you’re nursing a prejudice against a persecuted minority and someone calls you on it, what do you do? Merely denying that you are a bigot leaves you under social suspicion, and wheeling out the ‘some of my best friends are…’ defence […]
South Asian Queer Representation; Where We Are and Where We Need to Go Next
Written by Sanjana Idnani (she/her) The last decade has been a momentous one for the advancement of queer rights and queer visibility in the UK. Amongst other landmark Acts, In 2010, the Equality Act allowed queer people to gain more robust protection against discrimination at work and in 2013, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act meant […]
Being an Aromantic Lesbian
Written by Lollie Melton Trigger Warning: mentions of sex, homophobic abuse … When I was 12 I thought I was Bi. I realised I was attracted to women reading a book on renaissance art of all things. At the time I didn’t question my attraction to men, or lack thereof, that was good old compulsory […]
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