As a member of the LGBT+ community, I firmly believe that an attack on one of us, is an attack on all of us. I believe that until we are all truly equal, none of us are at all.
History has taught us time and time again that initially localised anti-LGBT+ rhetoric can spread globally like wildfire. We saw this in the 1980’s at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, how once the term “gay cancer” emerged from the United States, gay men were stigmatised, discriminated against and mistreated across the world. And how, more recently, the transphobic narrative that has been building in some countries is beginning to reach shores that had previously been considered societally accepting of transgender people. Our shores included.
Attacks on the community in any country at all undoubtedly create a ripple effect, with each ripple reaching somewhere we might never have expected it to. Right now, I’m thinking of Poland. I’m thinking of the Polish LGBT+ community who have fallen victim to their President Andrzej Duda’s strong opposition to LGBT+ equality, actively removing the rights of people country wide. I’m thinking of my friends in Poland who are not only having to fight for the rights that they don’t have, but are also having to fight for the few rights that they do have not to be removed. Such as those whose home towns have now been deemed “LGBT Free Zones”, and those who are experiencing an increased level of violence and discrimination as a result of the far-right political powers that are actively encouraging it. As I only knew what I had read in the media, I wanted to speak to people on the ground, people living through this daily, for a clearer perspective.