The UK Government has proposed plans to send refugees to Rwanda to have asylum claims processed. Flying refugees 4500 miles away, when they have already made dangerous journeys fleeing from war and persecution, is inhumane. We do not need a “migration and economic development partnership”: we need compassion. This system, based on the Australian ‘offshoring’ model, will fix nothing but will cause more pain, and cost a lot of money.

For LGBTIQA+ refugees, Rwanda is not a safe place. Last year, Human Rights Watch reported that police or local security officers target LGBTIQA+ individuals, detain them, and in some cases beat them, after reports of homosexual activity or engaging in behaviour that doesn’t fit gender stereotypes. Many remain in the closet, due to fears of discrimination, and, in fact, some LGBTIQA+ Rwandans have applied for asylum in the UK on these grounds. 

Rwanda’s human rights record is poor on other fronts too. Last year, the UK delivered a statement on Rwanda, with recommendations to improve their human rights record. The Rwandan government persecutes those who speak out against it, as freedom of expression is limited. The detention and mistreatment of homeless children and sex workers also occur and there are off-the-record detention centres, where torture occurs. Previously, refugees were shot for protesting against poor conditions in refugee camps.

The continued lack of regard for refugees by Priti Patel, and the use of them as scapegoats is disgusting. The real issue is the lack of safety given to refugees: we need safer routes of passage to the UK. Vulnerable people deserve to be treated with respect.

We urge you to join us in standing in solidarity with people seeking asylum in the UK and in taking action against the Government’s inhumane ‘Rwanda refugee’ strategy.

Write to your MP using Rainbow Migration’s template, and ask that they vote against the Nationality and Borders bill when it returns to Commons next week.

Sign Detention Action’s petition.

Yours in solidarity,

LGBTIQA+ Greens

The post LGBTIQA+ Greens Rwanda Refugee Statement appeared first on LGBTIQA+ Greens.

On the day you are likely reading this (31st March 2022, on the trans day of visibility), you will see a celebration from a variety of people and groups about the importance of visibility, using the pictures of famous or notable trans public figures. With that, the affirmation of how you, the trans individual, are enough. There are comments about how visibility is important, how we are all valid, with such comments often being adorned with blue and pink flags. This is all fine, but…

What do we mean by visibility?

As a question, it seems simple: to highlight and endorse the presence of trans people in society, and to advocate for the end of othering. These are aims all of us can respect and admire. Yet, those reading this perhaps understand this already: can this be achieved under capitalism? I would argue that it can’t be.

And from that, calls for visibility must also be made while acknowledging how being trans and/or non-binary intersects with class. For to be trans and non-binary, is a unique revelation of what being working class is.

Transgender Day of Visibility was created in 2009 by trans activists. The aim was to raise awareness of trans people and of the issues we face in society, aside from those murdered or lost each year because they were trans.

The piece that follows is a critique of capitalist visibility, which is exploitation and a warning against the reducing of this day into something equivalent to modern Pride: just a celebration. Trans culture must be celebrated and promoted, and it must never become a cultural reinforcement of the society we live in.

Trans visibility under capitalism doesn’t reflect the experiences of most trans people.

As a trans person living (in the closet) in the countryside, the only visibility I have experienced is ridicule and the implication of threat. When the only trans people cis people know about are the caricatures presented in the Daily Mail and BBC articles on their Facebook feed, and the last non-binary person in town is a teenager bullied out of their home, the importance of positive visibility is clear. The issue is visibility co-opted by capitalism is at best defanged, at worse objectified.

A lot is made of the transgender ‘tipping point’ of around 2014-5. This was what seemed to be the point of mainstream acceptance with positive trans role models in the media, like Caitlyn Jenner, Kellie Maloney and Laverne Cox. For what it’s worth, Laverne Cox (who made her name on the prison drama-comedy Orange Is the New Black) was the first trans person I saw on TV, aged 14. To an extent, as it felt fleeting, I did see a bit of myself in the character she played in OistNB. I mention this because I do want to make it clear that visibility is important and crucial before critiquing it. As Cox is the exception that proves the rule somewhat: a lot of this visibility was of white, rather rich people who don’t really reflect the trans experience.

The best summary of that point would be Caitlyn Jenner, who, when asked what the hardest struggle of being a trans woman, said it was picking dresses. While her experience may have been easier and not hindered by lack of access to healthcare, that is quite the point. The visibility of being transgender was decoupled from the lived experience of the vast majority of trans people. Socio-economic status and identity were reduced to an ‘identity’. Most tellingly of all, Jenner has endorsed transphobic narratives around sports in her courting of the fundamentalist and capitalist Republican Party. In this sense, we can see what visibility has faulted on: literal and metaphorical flag-waving without anything more radical than ‘we exist’.

Another area of visibility of dubious assistance to liberation has been pornography, or more widely the fetishisation of trans (usually femme) bodies. This is not a denouement of sex work, which is work and needs to be decriminalised to remove exploitation, and making money from the oppressor is laudable. This is rather a criticism of the male gaze; of how our bodies are reduced to genre categories (usually with a slur) on cis male-centred porn websites. Nor is this an exclusive experience for trans women or trans people as a whole: cis women, queer people (especially lesbian and bisexual cis women) and People of Colour (and those who are all of the above) have experienced this.

Related experiences for communities marginalised while objectified can be seen in the 1990s, with ‘Lesbian Chic’, or even with the wider reception of Blaxploitation films of the 1970s. While cultural milestones can be achieved, and absolutely must be celebrated, we must never stop there.

The visibility of individuals is simply not enough.

Visibility must be about the promotion and recognition of trans/non-binary people and bringing to the fore the material and political issues we face as a class. With that too comes the sharing of resources, understanding and care. With this, we can not just survive under capitalism, but also start and continue the building of a trans liberated world where socialism is achieved. By seeing where we can improve it, we can make visibility once more a queer act of defiance. While existing is political, that is not by our choice: our communities have been policed and brutalised in the modern era for well over 100 years. We are the working class, as are the intersecting communities in need of liberation. Visibility Day must go back to its roots: a day to recognise both activists and historical figures and the issues we face.

Trans Liberation requires visibility, and equally, visibility requires liberation from capitalism. Only then will we achieve the ‘enough’ we aim for. Only then will be liberated from systemic and non-systemic transphobia and class.

The post Trans day of visibility 2022: What do we mean by visibility? appeared first on LGBTIQA+ Greens.

One of the many issues with the ‘trans debate’ has been its obsession with the existentialism of trans people’s bodies. For a debate that exists in a culture which has fetishised trans bodies, it seems odd that the debate is about if trans and non-binary people exist, and if so, if they’re a threat to cis (read: ‘not trans’) women.

These questions are often posed with an anti-trans bias. They are circular: the debate never ends or develops. The same slogans repeated, the same scaremongering articles (re)published, the same denouncements reiterated. All the while violence against trans people rises, and continuing crises in healthcare and employment continue. That’s the point of it: to obsess over a manufactured debate, obsessed with what ‘rights’ people have, rather than what’s happening to ordinary trans people. These debates in the mainstream media, which at best present trans people as engaging childishly in an equal debate with people who disagree with their existence and at worse as part of an agenda to prey on children and cis women, are ultimately detached from reality. They are debates for people for whom politics is simply a game to play, rather than something which is life or death. 

This article seeks to move beyond that. To talk not just about ‘trans rights being human rights’, sometimes said in mere validation, but to talk about liberation: political and economic progress for all who need it. Fighting the same struggles of precarious employment and healthcare as many people in this country are. Why trans liberation, rather than just trans rights, is critical for liberation of all.

Lilla is 23 years old and works in tech support. She has been out as trans for 8 years, starting her public transition 4 years ago. For her, the transphobia she encounters the most is less the ‘overt’- though that has happened- and more what she calls the ‘subtle’ kind. The kind which manifests itself as the disgusted looks from a stranger, the inappropriate comments colleagues say to you; the failed job interviews that you know you’re overqualified for. The latter, Lilla says, raises the question of if the interviewer had a small bias that is hard to prove for sure but, I’m sure for those from any marginalized group will get, you kind of know is the case. That’s the kicker: the reliance on having an interviewer who’s at the very least neutral makes the difference between being employed and living in a very precarious situation. The face of transphobia is not just elaborate, academic and obscene mean words, it’s banal: the interviewer with a prejudice deciding if you have a job or not. Her colleagues, aside from the occasional comment, are nice people and her experience in the workplace is fine, something that she worried about when leaving university. 

‘Healthcare is an absolute nightmare’. The summary Lilla gives is telling. The waiting lists are long, and that’s before the threat of being removed without warning after a year of waiting, because a clinician decides that it’s ‘not appropriate’. The waiting times in England between the 8 Gender Identity Clinics is horrendous: Sheffield is ‘booking appointments’ for those who applied in March 2018, meaning they had to wait for over 44 months. Tavistock in London is offering first appointments to those referred in November 2017. It’s not just the waiting list length. It’s the effects it has on other parts of healthcare, like accessing Hormone Replacement Therapy. Lilla mentions the blatant ‘textbook discrimination’ of her GP not prescribing her HRT, while a non-trans person can have it prescribed for other health issues. Clearly, it’s an inequality. While Scotland announced crisis funding for trans healthcare, England and Wales are still in this crisis, created by long term structural issues and the impact of austerity on real term NHS funding. While Lilla didn’t go private, these issues in the NHS have forced many trans people to do that. Not because it’s easy (private is expensive): something you can see a lot of among trans people in their 20s and 30s on social media is the sharing of fundraising links like ko-fi and JustGiving to raise the funds for transition. As well, medical transition, particularly for those who are transfeminine, is dependent on hormones and surgery, both of which can cost significantly and consistently. Quite, if you want to see what privatised healthcare in Britain would look like, ask a trans person. This is not sustainable, and reform and greater access must be achieved.

Because of the failures and disdain for trans people in public healthcare, the private sector and its high costs are even more apparent. So we can see from both the realities of employment and healthcare how trans people are wanting the same things as the working-class: a fairer system where you have job security, decent pay and to be able to, without caveats, be yourself. If any word could describe this, it’s… normal.  

Categories do divide us, but not because what they refer to makes us weaker by acknowledgement, but because they’re used by the powerful to make us conflict with each other. By reclaiming these categories, we can unite and work together to resolve our shared struggle. 

Nor can we, via capitalism, reverse this. During the 90s for instance, a positive yet fetishised acceptance of gay and lesbian culture emerged, such as ‘Lesbian Chic’. Yet this didn’t help materially. What it did was make existence into a fashion, while murder and violence continued. Similarly today, in contrast to the transphobia and enforcing of gender conformity in the ‘trans debate’, there is culturally a certain popularity for shows like ‘Drag Race’ and gender nonconformity. Yet the hate-crime rate rises, and hearing about friends of friends ending their lives after being harassed by transphobes continues. A right to be commercialised is not liberation. 

Nor is it, going back to healthcare, liberation to be free to access gender reassignment treatment but not to be free from the financial and geographic hurdles that deny healthcare. A lot of women (and people who get pregnant) reading this will know of how access to abortion, especially in places like Eire historically and the US today, depended/depends on being able to afford to travel to a clinic. As well, post-2010 austerity, which hurt all working-class people, coincided with an extension of rights like for gay people to marry. Extending rights then does not mean ‘liberation’ if it’s within capitalism. We know that from experiences which are related that there’s an intersection here, like a crossroad. And at this crossroad, we have the choices to be divided by those who are responsible for the world we live in, a rights-obsessed culture where little material benefit is achieved, or a liberated world where we have social and economic justice.

For liberation for all, trans and cis alike and for everyone who needs liberation, we need the political change needed for an environmentally sustainable and economically transforming society, where the many are the winner and no one is thrown under a bus. We need to go beyond rights and representation, and go for liberation. 

Deeds, not words. Liberation, not just rights.

The post Why Trans Liberation Is Critical For All Liberation appeared first on LGBTIQA+ Greens.

They joined the many names, including Crispin Blunt and the All-Party Parliamentary Group, calling for Liz Truss to ban the dreadful practice of ‘conversion therapy’.

We are now re-stating this plea, calling upon Liz Truss to stay true to her word and ban the so-called ‘conversion therapy’. ‘Conversion therapy’ is a pseudo-therapy, aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity from undesired (LGBTIQA+) to desired (heterosexual, allosexual and cisgender). It lacks any scientific basis. This includes attempts to change a person’s asexuality, due to an assumption that everyone must desire sexual attraction and activity. It does not include practices that assist a person to express their gender identity.

This followed the publication of the 2018 LGBT Action Plan, in which the Conservative Government committed to banning the therapy and stated that they “will bring forward proposals to end the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ in the UK. These activities are wrong, and we are not willing to let them continue. Led by the Government Equalities Office, we will fully consider all legislative and non-legislative options to prohibit promoting, offering or conducting ‘conversion therapy’. Our intent is to protect people who are vulnerable to harm or violence, whether that occurs in a medical, commercial or faith-based context.”

Despite this two-year old commitment, and Truss responding to the All-Parliamentary Group expressing her disgust at the practice of ‘conversion therapy’, and her immediate plans to bring an end to it, almost three years later little has been said about these proposals since, and disappointingly the practice remains legal.

During this time of inaction, several countries, including Germany, have either outright banned, or made very meaningful steps towards enacting legislation banning ‘conversion therapy’. In Germany, you cannot advertise ‘conversion therapy’ and if this ‘therapy’ is forced upon someone under 18 you can face up to 1 year in prison and a fine of up to €30,000.

It is completely unacceptable for Liz Truss and the Government to continue to drag their feet and to let LGBT+ people continue to be subjected to, as the Human Rights Campaign states, the ‘dangerous and discredited practices’ of this ‘reparative’ therapy. The damages of ‘conversion therapy’ are severe. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture has said that, in some instances, ‘conversion therapy’ can “lead to severe and life-long physical and mental pain and suffering and can amount to torture and ill-treatment.” This is backed up by research. For example, American Psychological Association (APA, 2009), found that ‘conversion therapy’ leads to self-loathing, depression and suicidal urges. In addition, the APA state that ‘conversion therapy’ has been linked to cases of depression, anxiety and suicidality.

The United Nations Committee against Torture, Special Rapporteur on Torture, Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have all stated that conversion therapy contravenes the prohibition against torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The UK Government has an obligation to protect LGBTQ+ people from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and yet has still failed to act.

A failure to do this will lead all those calling on making the practice illegal to question whether Liz Truss is representing her role as Minister for Women and Equalities adequately and in good faith. As the LGBT Action Plan reports, the existence of ‘conversion therapy’ is a safety issue for LGBTQ+ communities and by delaying action against this practice, she is actively dismissing the very real safety concerns that face the LGBTQ+ community.

Please sign this petition, and write to your MP, asking them to push Liz Truss to ban this extremely harmful pseudo-therapy. We must ensure that ‘conversion therapy’ aiming to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity is banned.

In addition, it is imperative we go further than merely banning ‘conversion therapy’. We must ensure those harmed are cared for. This can be done by:

1. Empowering people to seek help through the creation of a specific contact point such as a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Ombudsman or Complaints Commissioner
2. Develop policies to inform and educate the public via school and social service programmes

We are calling upon Liz Truss to listen to LGBTIQA+ Greens, and the Government’s own commitment, by staying true to her word and without delay banning so-called ‘conversion therapy’ throughout the United Kingdom.

LGBTIQA+ Greens.

(Statement by LGBTIQA+ Greens. This isn’t formal Green Party policy but is a statement to raise awareness on this issue.)

The post LGBTIQA+ Greens Statement on Banning Conversion Therapy appeared first on LGBTIQA+ Greens.

Written by Ejel Khan

December the 10th has a very special significance for me, and others like me. It signifies our very existence and struggle for recognition as LGBTQ+ Muslims. Being born in the UK I was lucky to be afforded rights others who share my faith can only dream of. Many Muslim countries outlaw homosexuality and penalties can range from lengthy prison sentences to death. This prompted me to speak out against these injustices.

After hearing the harrowing testimonies of those who fled persecution and sought asylum in the UK; I decided to put my head above the parapet and form the Muslim LGBT Network. Campaigning became a mainstay of the organisation, which garnered global attention. Nonetheless, we did not negate our duty to provide advocacy and support to those who needed it. This came mainly in the form of assistance with the asylum process. All of the aforementioned developments were a world away from my humble beginnings, as a child of immigrant parents in Luton.

“I spoke of my work and lived experience as an openly gay Muslim.”

Recounting my formative years I couldn’t have comprehended that one day I would be celebrated as an icon for Black History Month. My journey in activism began more than a quarter of a century ago. Racism was the backdrop and prevailing narrative in those early days.

Today my work as a human rights activist is intersectional, and I had the honour to be a keynote speaker at the inaugural LGBTIQ – Intersectionality and Islam conference in Birmingham. I spoke of my work and lived experiences as an openly gay Muslim. At the event I met colleagues from all the UK. Many of whom I met for the first time, but engaged with on social media. All were aware of my work and the Muslim LGBT Network. This highlighted the positive aspects of social media for me, with its power to affect societal change. The growth of the Muslim LGBTQ+ movement has been aided by the internet and social media. As a network our membership is now a truly global one.

“I’ve spoken on multi-faith platforms and continue to spread the message of peace, love and respect for humankind.”

As a community we face challenges here in the UK. Incidents, such as the Birmingham LGBT school protests highlight this. We still have obstacles to social cohesion to overcome here, and the Muslim LGBT Network is pivotal in this discourse. I personally travel the length and breadth of this country engaging with Muslims and non-Muslims on issues pertaining to LGBTQ+ and faith. I’ve spoken on multi-faith platforms and continue to spread the message of peace, love and respect for humankind.

The Muslim LGBT Network’s mission statement refers to Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted on December 10, 1948. A photo of the original document is included in our mission statement, a timely reminder of why we commemorate this auspicious day. Article 1 of UDHR states: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

These sentiments are echoed by myself.

Like what you’ve read?

You can hear more from Ejel and the work he does with the Muslim LGBT Network here:

@ejel_khan

@MuslimLgbt

The post Human Rights Day: Ejel Khan’s Story appeared first on LGBTIQA+ Greens.