Beyond the fear of holding hands with their partner in public, their main grievances tend to centre on the psychological scars left by the often suffocatingly homophobic environment of their school years. A white, middle-class, gay, cis man – that is, someone generally at one with their gender assigned at birth – in an urban area is likely to suffer far less meaningful oppression than other groups. The experiences of LGBTQ people are not the same. These statistics should not leave a false impression. There are no openly trans national politicians and the media is almost entirely hostile It compels many LGBTQ people to alter their behaviour in order to quietly blend in, or to pretend they are something they are not to relatives, friends and colleagues in order to avoid experiences ranging from the uncomfortable to the outright menacing. After all the undoubted progress, anti-LGBTQ bigotry remains a kind of secret authoritarian regime in this country. In all cases, there is often a visceral sense of humiliation linked to a sudden invasive reminder that your innate characteristics still drive a section of society to violent disgust. “According to our research, many experienced verbal harassment, physical abuse, threatening messages, and damage to property,” says Eloise Stonborough of the LGBTQ civil rights organisation Stonewall.
The incidents vary in nature and severity: from abuse hurled at someone identified as LGBTQ because of their appearance, or mannerisms, or a fleeting or profound show of affection towards a partner to gay men being beaten and robbed, as happened in a suspected homophobic attack on the streets of Edinburgh last month, or a trans man savagely attacked in Bournemouth earlier this year. What we do know that is that recorded homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have jumped every year since 2015, and yet with an estimated four in five still going unreported, the already grisly figures only hint at a far bleaker reality. I t is impossible to know how much of the surge in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ people is due to escalating harassment and violence, and how much is down to the increased willingness of victims to inform the authorities.