International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia Bad News List

It has been a long time since I last did a Bad News Round Up. They’re draining. Aside from the work of compiling, the litany is just damn depressing and I’m not always in the headspace to handle them

But, with today being the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, I am venturing back to them because I do think they’re important, for all the reasons I’ve said before. It’s important to link the hatred to the violence. It is important to realise these aren’t isolated incidents or that the bigotry is in the past.

In short, it is important to remember why we have to keep fighting.

"Choice" is not a simple answer

At some point among various members of various activist movements, choice became the last word, the finishing line, the end of any argument.

And you can see why. For so many marginalised people for so much of history the very concept of agency has been alien. Choosing a way to live, choosing what you do with their lives, choosing just about anything has been constantly denied both overtly and covertly. Choice was – and in many ways, still is a luxury that too many marginalised people can’t afford. Either there are people directly controlling what marginalised people can or cannot do, severe and even violent consequences to marginalised people exercising those choices. Even without overt prohibition, there are more hurdles and road blocks – discrimination, prejudice, sometimes even legally, that denies you access to what you want to do or just makes it that much harder or simply a system that is set up to benefit people that just aren’t you

Marginalised people also come under a lot of policing as well. Shame from the privileged society that expects marginalised people to fit various roles or harsh judgement when we do not reach often impossible standards. Shame from within the community for not being the model minority and “making us look bad.” Shame from within the community for not fitting some ideal of what we should be, not liking what we should like, not fighting how we should fight. Shame from within that we fear we may be “doing it wrong”, fear that we’re being too stereotypical or fear that we’re being (horror of horrors!) “assimilationist!”

So, it’s no surprise that agency is vital, that choice is vital, that being able to live our own lives is vital to the point of becoming an untouchable icon to many.


But that doesn’t make choices the last word. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t examine the reasons behind choices, the forces that affect choices and, ultimately, what those choices mean and how much “agency” is truly represented by these choices.

To take it to one of its bluntest, harshest extremes – a gay kid brought up in a homophobic household who kills themselves because they can’t stand to live with themselves is making a choice.

No way am I taking that choice as the last word, or dismissing criticism of this choice as simple an expression of his agency. The kid has been attacked by homophobia all his life, filled with shame and self-hatred and toxic bigotry and we must look at his tragic “choice” through that lens

This is an extreme, but the same applies to so many of our choices. How often do we write post after post about how media representations hurt marginalised people, how erasure hurts marginalised people, how hate speech is toxic to marginalised people, how casual dehumanising speech hurts marginalised people and erodes their self-worth? How many studies do we have to see about the damage of casual dehumanisation and the pushing of internalised prejudice? And then we suddenly decide that all of that no longer applies to our decision making.

Random Annoying Work Foolishness

I am tired and worn from the fallout of sheer bullshit that happened last week.

We had a case, it was long, it was complex and it was clearly going to be something that wasn’t going to get resolved for many many months. Fair enough and the customers were moderately decent people all things considered and only making it a little harder than it had to be. But they moved, to Birmingham, and since we’d only started what promised to be a long haul process all parties decided it would be better for them to find a firm in Brummie land.

Case leaves my hands and is passed on to Arsehole the paralegal to work with said Brummie firm, to transfer various things that need transferring, get any local documents or resources or information, ensure copies are certified et al.

And it’s out of my hands. Completely.

In fact more than completely because we need a little history for Paralegal Arsehole here

I’ve mentioned him in passing in the past, he’s the nephew of Senior Partner #2. We hired him because he had this very important qualification of being a relative of the boss; we certainly didn’t need another paralegal.

Paralegal Arsehole is a man of devout religious beliefs and oft-expressed Views about gay people. Sparky is a man of firm personal belief that he doesn’t have to tolerate that shit at work, especially not from a talentless new hire who’s only in the firm because Aunty Dearest threw him a pity job and is firmly of the opinion that This Will Stop. Not “or else” because there isn’t an or – this will not happen.

After much flapping and pleas for “understanding” and “different opinions” and “tolerant work place” (try to imagine my “you’re lawyers, you know what bullshit you’re saying, don’t make me spell it out” glare) SP#2 decided it would be great if we just AVOIDED each other.  Because we are 5 and on the playground it seems. I think she just didn’t want to tell her brother she sacked his son because he’s a bigoted little freak who wouldn’t know what professionalism was if it slapped him across the face and he needs his toys taking away because he doesn’t play well with others.

On the Nigel Evans arrest

Nigel Evans, MP, has been arrested for the alleged rape of 2 men.

And, yes, he’s openly gay.

And lo, the hot mess begins. And let there be a lot of “can you not…” right now.

Can we not have the simplistic assumptions we so often see that completely ignore the history of gay men being accused of sexual assault

At the same time, can we not have people who are usually so very sure that blaming the victim and assuming sexual assault victims are lying is deeply wrong suddenly deciding to throw that out the window when gay men may be the victims.

Can we not have any attempts to try and make sweeping statements about all of us on the basis of this. Another vomit-worthy repeat of the “gay men have a culture and tradition of preying on young men and boys” is really not needed. Especially if you’re not actually a gay or bisexual man in which case you don’t know nearly as much about our “culture” as you think you do and can take your nose out before deciding to paint us as sex offenders. Or making being a sex predator a “tradition” for gay men, because that was some evil messed up shit.

Can we not have people handwringing about how this is hurting all gay men. Because it isn’t – the thing hurting gay and bi men is the collective responsibility straight people – and others sometimes as was evident during the Clash scandal – like to dump on all of us. We are not responsible and only people who do not see us as fully people, as individuals or people who are looking for an excuse to attack us will attack all of us based on one man’s actions. That is what will hurt us. By saying this crime will hurt all of us is accepting that we hold collective responsibility rather than attacking the sweeping bigotries perpetuated against us.

Can we not have a full biography of how gay he is every time this is reported? Is it relevant when  he came out? Is there a reason to write articles that at least half about his sexuality? We don't do this with straight people.

I feel a headache coming on already.

And while we're at it - not he isn't a GBLT activist. The man was a closeted homophobe with a dire voting record against our rights who came out seconds before he was outed and then tried to spin it the other way.

Coming Out Matters

So another famous person comes out of the closet and there are many reactions. Some of which are great, some of which are awful for obvious reasons, some of which are awful for less obvious reasons – and there’s one that always annoys me: someone who wants to know what the fuss is about

This comes from two sources. Either the homophobe who finds all this GBLT stuff so very icky and would rather we hide it and not be so open and icky everywhere. Or the oh-so-progressive ally who wants to show just how NORMAL being GBLT is to them that they don’t understand why anyone cannot be so totally blasé about the whole GBLT thing, why they’re surrounded by GBLT people, have a full stable of GBLT friends and barely even notice sexuality or gender identity any more, they’re just so enlightened, precious.

I’m sure we’ve seen the lines:

 “Why is everyone making so much of a fuss?” “Why is it relevant?” “It shouldn’t matter whether people are GBLT or not”

No, it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be a big fuss. We should live in a world where a full range of sexualities and gender identities are fully accepted and integrated into our daily lives. We should live in a world where straightness and cisness isn’t assumed. We should live in a world where we could go into any industry, any element of the media, every place where human beings live anywhere on Earth and be confident in finding a full range of sexualities and gender identities happily part of society as full and equal participants.

We should also live in a world without people starving to death, people dying from diseases that can easily be cured and one without Tories, Tea Partiers and the alien creature on Donald Trump’s head that’s feeding on his brain. We should also live in a world where I didn’t see a picture yesterday of a gay teen who was starved, beaten, had his arms broken and was forced to eat faeces before he died.

We don’t live in this world, alas. We live in this world. The real world – yes it’s a very unpleasant place but it’s discouraged to take more than brief holidays away from it.


In the real world there are vast swathes of just about every aspects of life where we don’t exist at all. Entire media forms where we’re less common than an honest man in the Houses of Parliament or a decent man in the Vatican. And like seeing a penguin waddling through the Sahara, seeing a GBLT person in these places is noteworthy and unusual.

The Value of Silence

Today I’m going to talk about the value of silence

Yes, privileged folks, flock around, I be SILENCING YOU, oh how very mean! How very mean indeed! Please clutch your fee-fees and form an orderly queue to tell us how oppressed and persecuted you are.

Except not, of course, because minorities don’t really have the institutional power to actually silence people; so instead I’ll settle praising silence.

Because sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. It’s precious and it’s something we should value. And that’s hard to do – it’s even harder to say or advocate. That spectre of “silencing” will raise it’s ugly head. We live in a time in many places where “freedom of speech” is squealed so often (and so inaccurately) it no longer has meaning; “censorship” is howled whenever anyone refuses to offer a platform or dares to criticise what is said. With the internet, we have even more chances to speak  and be heard - in many ways and in many places we truly do have a thousand voices all speaking at once.

Such a shame that 950 of them are speaking such bullshit.

So eager are people, especially the privileged who are so used to dominating discussions, to protect their right to speak that they often don’t question whether they actually have anything relevant to say – or the standing to speak in a discussion and rarely does this matter more than when we are talking about marginalised people where privileged people truly do need to learn the value of silence.

It should go without saying the most basic of silences – we don’t need you to speak for us and GBLT voices should be the ones raised to speak about GBLT people. That doesn’t mean never speak up, don’t oppose bigotry and don’t support us. But it means you aren’t the spokespeople, you aren’t the experts. You shouldn’t be the ones writing books on what slurs mean, or what it means to be GBLT, what it’s like to live as one of us or what it’s like to face homophobia or transphobia. You shouldn’t be the spokesperson at the conference or the convention, you shouldn’t be the “expert” called upon and straight people shouldn’t be the primary source when trying to learn about GBLT people. You certainly shouldn’t be posing as us and passing yourself off as “authentic”.

Some discussions do not need your opinions. If a group of GBLT people are discussing something – maybe their priorities, or focus of their attention, maybe their opinion on the actions of another GBLT person and their activism, maybe the use of various terminology or any number of discussions or arguments we could be having – then we don’t need your opinion or input. Really. You do not have the insight to enter the conversation, the lived experience to have and knowledgeable contribution. It would be like me running up to Steven Hawking and giving him my not-even-remotely-learned opinion on quantum physics (or, for that matter, any physics). Why should he listen to my ignorant drivel? Most sensible people would say he shouldn’t. So why should we listen to yours? Especially if you’re entering our ongoing discussion.

This is especially true of in-house discussions, every marginalised group has issues that they’re hashing out and debating, where there are strong differences of opinion and even internal strife. Why are you stepping into that? Why are you inserting yourself into a family discussion? What do you honestly think you can add here? It is the height of arrogance to insert yourself here! Some things don’t involve you, some things are too complex for an outsider’s opinion to have relevance .

Meningitis is not an STD

I’m far from a doctor or any kind of health expert, but there’s something I think we can all do with having confirmed now – meningitis is not an STD. This seems to be confusing some people.

Yes, several gay men have caught meningitis in New York. That doesn’t make it an STD. Bacteria that cause Meningitis can be spread through coughing, sneezing etc – amazingly enough, gay men can actually catch diseases doing things other than fucking. Amazingly enough, gay men do actually meet other gay men for reasons other than having sex. We have social spots, networks, sports teams, even games nights – yes the gaymers are out there.

Of course any community that meets together has a chance of spreading an illness that spreads through close proximity. This is one of the reasons why meningitis scares – in the UK at least – tend to arise in sixth forms and colleges and schools. But no-one instantly breaks out the safe sex messages then.

For that matter, no-one decides that a meningitis outbreak in a school in New York is connected to one in Los Angeles either. But through gay men in the mix and it must be connected. What, do all gay men in the US gather for a grand convention or something?

Let’s be clear – whether you are sexually active or not has NOTHING to do with whether you are going to catch the bacteria that cause meningitis. Whether you use Grindr or other hookup sites is irrelevant. You can potentially catch the bacteria that could lead to meningitis by being close to someone else with those bacteria. All those headlines about being careful if you’re “sexually active” or that anonymous sex is causing the disease are outright lying.

Under Siege!

Trying to get an even keel and settle I spend the whole day with Beloved trying to find some kind of balance in my brain. When there’s a knock at my door.

Now, controversial it may be, but I have absolutely no compunction about call screening or not answering my door when I’m not up to it. And after some Unfortunate Incidents, people don’t get keys to my house any more, no no they do not.

So I was quite content in ignoring this banging when we heard yelled:

“I know you’re in there.”

There was a pause while we both considered who this could be and how irritating the visit could be. When we heard:

“If you don’t answer I will lay siege to this place! I shall tumble the walls and salt the earth to the sound of gnashing teeth and the lamentations of your women!”

Ah F. Yes it could only be F. You can’t ignore F. F won’t be ignored. Ever.

Beloved:  F, I don’t think we have any women to do any lamenting.

F: What, Sparky wouldn’t be able to cook for me. That would make me lament!

Beloved: Does that make you our women?

F: I tend to think of myself more as a wench. Don’t you think I’m an excellent wench?

(someone outside answers)

Beloved: F… are you asking out neighbours to rate your wenchiness?

F: Your next door neighbour thinks I’m a Grade A wench I’ll have you know!

Sparky: ye gods, let her in before we have to move.

Alas, even the Awesome Wenchiness (her words) can't work miracle cures, but at least extreme emotions are not without basis with her around.