LGBT History Month: Hate Crime
Do you know what a hate crime is?
As defined by the Crown Prosecution Service:
Hate crimes are based on prejudice and discrimination. They are motivated by hostility toward a person's race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age.
For the LGBT community hate crime towards this community has a few names. These are:
Homophobia - is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards homosexuality and people who are identified as or perceived as being homosexual.
Biphobia - is a form of discrimination against bisexual people. It can take many of the same forms of abuse as homophobia but is different to it as it originates from people’s misunderstanding of the sexual orientation. It may include people calling you “greedy”, accusing you of not having a real sexuality or stating that it is just a phase and that you will eventually pick one sexuality or the other. It is a form of discrimination that is also present in the LGBT community where some people may see someone as being gay rather than bi and reiterates this if someone asks about your sexuality. Remember too, as with homophobia, find support and fight biphobia.
Transphobia - refers to discrimination against transsexuality and transsexual or transgender people based on the expression of their internal gender identity. Another definition argues that Transphobia is ‘treating a person who displays their gender in unconventional ways less favourably than those who may be more conventional’.
Even though we live in the 21st Century hate crime towards the LGBT community is still high and the number of reported incidents is rising each year. This could be because more of society recognises that this is a serious crime and needs address. If you lived in the 1970s or 1980s being gay was illegal and people had to be ‘cured’. This is still going on today around the world.
Being gay is not an illness or a choice!
If you even experience homophobic, transphobic or biphobic bullying in school or on the street there is a way you can report this anonymously. Safer Wales operate the Reporting Hate Crime Project where you can complete a form online. You also have a choice if you want this information passed onto the police. If it is an emergency then please call 999.
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