Russian Homophobia - Far worse than we imagined

As a slight deviation from my LGBT History Month Project I had to write about the situation in Russia today.

Last night I watched the Channel 4 documentary Hunted.  I say watched - I actually had to switch off eventually because I found the programme too disturbing. The programme is available on catch up on 4OD but be warned this is a very disturbing documentary as you will see from this short trailer.


   

If you have not heard about Hunted, it shows how, as a result of Russia's anti gay laws, gangs of vigilantes are now hunting gay men and subjecting them to humiliation, beatings and torture sometimes resulting severe injury or death. The police provide little or no protection to LGBT people and often add to the harassment. 

The vigilante group shown in the programme is a chapter of 'Occupy Paedophilia' who claim to be targeting paedophiles, yet all their targets are gay men.  Their strategy, called "a safari", is to connect online in gay chat room and dating sites and encourage a gay man to meet them at an apartment.  There the group waits to trap them. torture and humiliate them, and post a video of the event on the internet to "destroy their lives". This is exactly what happened in the documentary and I have to wonder what might have happened to the victim if the incident were not being filmed by journalists. 

Why would they let a journalist film them?  Simple - they have no fear of any repercussions for their acts. They do not try to hide their identities and vigilantes routinely get off even violent attacks with a caution. And it is easy to see why.  Most Russian citizens interviewed think that what they are doing is good and openly a tiny proportion admit to even knowing someone who is gay.  

Then I read an article in Pink News today  headlined  "Russian deputy Prime Minister: Gay athletes should ‘leave the kids alone’  The official line in Russia clearly is that all gay people are paedophiles. Russian President Vladamir Putin had made a similar comment a few weeks ago in arguing that gay athletes at the winter Olympics will be safe.  If I was a gay Olympic athlete, after watching last nights programme, I would be very concerned for my safety.

There is very clear evidence from research connecting homophobia with suppressed homosexuality. Religious organisations have for centuries been at the forefront of anti gay propaganda whilst refusing to address the huge issues of priests sexually abusing young boys.  The Russian Orthodox priest interviewed on Hunted was alarming in his views and I for one would not want to see children anywhere near him.

I know from conversations with counselors dealing with sexual abuse issues that most paedophiles are heterosexual men, often step parents or other members of their victim's family. Most homophobic men on Hunted last night seemed to want to engage in ritual abuse of their victims which, as we saw, often had an uncomfortably sexual slant.

If the Russian leadership continues to promote the view that all gay men are paedophiles it is hardly surprising that the people in Russia are becoming increasingly homophobic. The same messages are being promoted in Africa often heavily supported by American homophobic church missionaries. 

What is happening in Russia is not just a Russian problem. The recent debates in the Common and Lords around the Equal Marriage Bill highlighted that these extreme views still exist especially within religious organisations who managed to negotiate an opt out from the provisions of the Act. The Church of England is prevented by law from officiating in a same sex marriage, even if a particular vicar wanted to perform the ceremony.  

I think that it is time to get serious about exposing this hypocrisy and increasingly bring to public attention the abusive nature of these extreme religious and political fanatics. They seem to be targeting the gay community to hide the fact that often it is they themselves who are the worst paedophiles because they hide behind the cover or high profile respectability - just as Jimmy Saville  managed to do for decades.

Update

I have just come across this short video that shows graphically the kind of problems that are happening to gay people in Russia and wanted to share with you - it is disturbing but shows how fascist propaganda can move people. 88 % of Russians apparently support the change in law and it seems that this is because they have been convinced that Gay people can make their children gay with propaganda.  

  

The Homocaust – Nazi Persecution of LGBT People

Following on from my post yesterday, it seems that not all of Magnus Hirschfeld’s records were destroyed. The Nazi obsession with purity of the Aryan race fueled a obsession with the eradication of homosexuality. The fact that Hirschfeld was both a Jew and gay made him and his Institute for Sexual Science a prime target.

Before the rise of the Nazis, LGBT life in German was thriving and Berlin in particular was probably the most liberal city in Europe with a growing number of support organisations, bars, cafes, publications and cultural events taking place.

Paragraph 175 of the German Penal code, which criminalised homosexual acts, was being less rigorously applied and the lobbying work of Hirschfeld’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee was successfully gaining support in government for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. 

All those gains were abruptly halted when Hitler became chancellor.  On May 6th 1933 the Institute for Sexual Science was looted and closed.  Paragraph 175 was toughened and courts were encouraged to apply severe penalties.

Over the course of the next 12 years thousands of LGBT people fled from Germany including Hirschfeld himself. More than 100,000 gay men and trans women were arrested for the crime of homosexuality.  At least 50,000 received jail sentences, many in severe conditions. And estimated 15,000 were sent to concentration camps where they were required to wear a pink triangle to mark them as homosexual. 

There they were subjected to extensive medical experimentation and many were castrated or drugged and subjected to electric shock treatments ina search for a cure for homosexuality. Gay men were seen as disposable subjects for wide ranging medical experiments. In one camp SS troops used the pink triangle worn on their shirts as a target for shooting practice.

Near the end of the war, Hitler’s need for troops was so great that many of the surviving gay men were released into the army where they were mostly sent to the Russian front in Siberia.  There the conditions were very difficult and survival rates were even lower than in the prison and concentration camps.

In 1945 when liberation came, less than 4000 gay men and trans women had survived, but there was to be no reprieve. Homosexuality was illegal in both the UK and USA and the Allies and the new West German state made no efforts to change the Nazi anti-gay laws which remained on the statute books until 1968.  Many of the gay survivors were re-imprisoned to complete their sentences, they were shunned by families for shaming them, and were never acknowledged as victims of the holocaust so neither they nor their families were entitled to the compensation other victims were granted. 

It was not until 2002 that the German Government apologised for the crimes of the Nazis against LGBT People and erected a memorial in 2008. In the past decade have these victims have begun to be properly recognised.  You can find more information about the shameful way Gay and Trans people were treated by both the Nazis and the Allies at the HOMOCAUST site where I read this

In the 1945 Nuremberg war crime trials that followed the liberation no mention was ever made of crimes against homosexuals. No SS official was ever tried for specific atrocities against pink triangle prisoners. Many of the known SS Doctors, who had performed operations on homosexuals, were never brought to account for their actions. One of the most notorious SS doctors was Carl Peter Vaernet who performed numerous experiments on pink triangle inmates at the Buchenwald and Neuengamme camps. He was never tried for his crimes and escaped to South America where he died a free man in 1965.

Today the Pink Triangle, originally intended as a badge of shame has been reclaimed as an international symbol of Gay Pride and the Gay Rights Movement, a movement that owes a great deal to a Gay Jewish doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld.

January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day – this year 2014 being the 69th anniversary of the liberation and this year Tel Aviv joins Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sydney and San Francisco in publicly recognising Gay victims of the holocaust.

How Do You Deal With Hidden Prejudice?

“How do you cope with it?” said my colleague leaning forward so as keep his voice down. 

“Cope with what? I said.

“All the people staring at you, talking about you, sniggering... ?”

“Where?” I said, turning in my seat to survey the people sitting around in the hotel lounge, apparently getting on with their own meetings.

“Oh, they’ve stopped now you’ve looked,” replied my colleague.

“Who was making comments?” I asked, raising my voice a little.

“Leave it” he said quickly raising his hand a little, obviously mortified by the thought that I might make a scene and further embarrass him.

I relaxed.  “I cope with it because I don’t see it,” I said.  “People do it behind my back – they hide their prejudice.”

That was a real incident 10 years ago when I first changed my gender and started on my journey to change attitudes by delivering Transgender Awareness Training. Since then the law in the UK has changed beyond recognition and most public sector organisations have in place equality policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

People have learned over the past decade not to be seen to discriminate and rightly they will be disciplined if they behave inappropriately.  Unfortunately changing the law does not change attitudes and beliefs.  That is much more difficult and the challenge organisations face today is the unconscious and hidden bias and prejudice that is impacting the way people are treated every day.

My experience over the past decade has confirmed to me that the people hold prejudices mostly through ignorance. Many have never met and spoken to anyone who is trans or gay, and they have been hugely influenced by homophobic and transphobic comments from friends, family and the media.  They see and hear trans and gay people and their friends being humiliated and ridiculed, often behind their backs, and feel bullied into silence.

My voice is still very masculine so I always have challenges on the phone, but I also have problems day to day.  A few weeks ago I attended a workshop and had made a point of dressing in a way that was unmistakeably female.  Yet despite that the taxi driver referred to me as “sir”, as did the clerk at the rail information desk.

My partner also has a bad time. She sees people laughing behind my back; she sees staff in shops and offices making faces at each other when they hear my voice. A friend had to endure a transphobic rant from a cashier in a store who felt that I should not be allowed to use female changing cubicles and female toilets. She lost her job the following day.

Prejudice is often very subtle. I see people actively avoid me or not make eye contact, or make aside comments to a colleague and laugh. Often I find I am not given the same level of customer service, even refused service on the phone because my voice did not match the gender on my customer record.

And it’s not just me; often my friends and family find themselves being subtly treated with prejudice simply because they are with me.

I know some people talk about me behind my back, refer to me a “he” instead of “she”, point and snigger when I pass but I seldom see or hear any of it.  My friends, family and acquaintances do. Where people hide their deep prejudice from me, they openly show them to people who know me, even confronting them for being with me.

What they don’t understand is that my friends, family and acquaintances are just as hurt and upset by their behaviour and comments as I would be if they didn’t hide it from me.  And this could also be happening every day in your organisation.

Sometimes when people are the victims of this subtle discrimination and prejudice they complain – mostly we don’t.  We just don’t go back, and we tell our friends about it.

And remember that it is the organisation that gets a bad name for homophobic and transphobic behaviour, not the individual members of staff.

The solution is to make sure that everyone receives transgender awareness training – and as far as possible training delivered by people who have the protected characteristic being addressed. I have seen some amazingly entertaining trainers who are trans, gay, have cerebral palsy, are burns victims etc.

Just talking about prejudice is not enough – we have to confront our hidden prejudices in order to address them.

Unconscious and Hidden Bias and Prejudice

“How do you cope with it?” said my colleague leaning forward so as keep his voice down.

“Cope with what? I said.

“All the people staring at you, talking about you, sniggering... ?”

“Where?” I said, turning in my seat to survey the people sitting around in the hotel lounge, apparently getting on with their own meetings.

“Oh, they’ve stopped now you’ve looked,” replied my colleague.

“Who was making comments?” I asked, raising my voice a little.

“Leave it” he said quickly raising his hand a little, obviously mortified by the thought that I might make a scene and further embarrass him.

I relaxed.  “I cope with it because I don’t see it,” I said.  

“People do it behind my back – they hide their prejudice.” 

That was a real incident 10 years ago when I first changed my gender and started on my journey to change attitudes towards people who break the unwritten rules of gender. Since then the law has changed beyond recognition and most organisations now have in place equality policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

People have learnt over the past decade not to be seen to discriminate and rightly they will be disciplined if they behave inappropriately.  But changing the law does not change attitudes and beliefs.  That is much more difficult and the challenge organisations face today is the unconscious and hidden bias and prejudice that is impacting the way people are treated every day.

People still talk about me behind my back, refer to me a “he” instead of “she”, point and snigger when I pass and I still seldom see or hear any of it.  But my friends, family and acquaintances do. Where people hide their deep prejudice from me, they openly show it to people to know me, even confronting them for being with me. 

What they don’t understand is that my friends, family and acquaintances are just as hurt and upset by their behaviour and comments as I would be if they didn’t hide it from me.  And this is happening every day in most organisations.

So how can the issue be addressed? 

Well my experience over the past decade has demonstrated to me to me that the most people hold prejudices through ignorance. Many have never met and spoken to anyone who is trans or gay, and they have been hugely influenced by homophobic and transphobic comments from friends, family and the media.  They see and hear trans and gay people and being humiliated and ridiculed, often behind their backs.  They see the friends of trans and gay people receiving the same treatment and fear that if they befriend or stand up for someone who is gay or trans they will get the same treatment and feel bullied into silence.

Feedback from my workshops indicates that participants are much more likely to challenge homophobic and transphobic comments, contribute to creating a more harmonious and supportive workplace and treat all service users more fairly and equally after attending an awareness workshop.

If organisations do not run regular awareness workshops on this topic the chances are that anyone who is or is perceived to be in anyway gender variant or is associated with someone who is gender variant in the organisation will be subject to unconscious or hidden bias or prejudice.  

I trans friend of mine Michelle was shopping in a large retail clothes shop some time ago and was standing in one queue for the tills while her female friend was being served in another queue. The check out clerk spotted Michelle and made some really offensive remarks about her. 

When she was told about the comments Michelle was upset and mentioned it to me so I suggested that she contact the store management and complain.  She did and all credit to the store, the staff member was sacked the following day. But when I told this story to a number of other trans people they all agreed that they would not have complained and some said that they would probably have used the store  again perceiving it to be transphobic. 

If you would like more information on Sex, Gender and Equality awareness training please check out my GenderNetwork web site  

As one of the UK’s leading motivational speakers and trainers, I have been delivering equality and diversity workshops and keynote presentations for nearly a decade and work with over 250 organisations, particularly local authorities, housing associations, educational, NHS and criminal justice organisations.

My workshops and presentations are always highly interactive and entertaining, exploring the impact of the Equality Act in regard to sex, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation and human rights, while demonstrating how the principles discussed apply equally across all protected characteristics.  I use a variety of presentation methods - video clips, music, lecture, discussion, groups exercises, questions and answer, case studies and where I use PowerPoint - it is a visual aid.  No death by slides presentations.

Most importantly my presentations are based on real life experience.  I take participants on a journey to help them to really understand what it’s like to grow up and cope with being trans or gay, and provide an open environment where they can ask any questions no matter how personal.

Empower LGBT Toolkit

In February in conjunction with LGBT History Month I had the pleasure of facilitating a training workshop in York for equality staff in Further Education for Pinnacle Training Solutions which went really well.

Colleges are presently at the forefront of tackling LGBT discrimination which it really important because so many LGBT people fall far short of their academic potential at school due to the relentless bullying and harassment they have to endure. 

All too many schools seem to have ignored the widespread introduction of “gay” slang to describe anything considered to be “gross”, “minging” or “bad”. Similar discriminatory words referring to race religion or disability have not been tolerated, whilst LGBT based slang has been allowed to become acceptable. Recent research has shown that negative associations with the word gay, does increase anti gay bias, 

The government is now beginning to tackle homophobia and transphobia with the publication of their Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality. action Plan and more recently the Trans Action Plan.

These two publications set out a clear strategy by this government to work with all sectors, especially education in tackling discrimination and bullying.

By far the best way to address the issue in education is to engage students in open discussion about LGBT issues and apply a zero tolerance policy to prejudicial language and behaviour. 

To help with this process Pinnacle training Solutions have produced an excellent online training too called the Empower LGBT Toolkit. All participants in my workshop were asked to complete this programme before attending which helped to encourage better discussion and debate.

Whilst this could work as a good standalone training tool, I feel it is better employed as a preparation tool prior to an interactive session where students and staff can then raise questions that have arisen from undertaking the online training.

The toolkit is available free to anyone – and is especially recommended for all FE colleges or Schools.

I know we are well past LGBT History Month but I still recommend that you forward this link to all staff and encourage them to use it in the new semester to work with students.

Empower LGBT Toolkit.