WHAT MAKES LIFE LIVEABLE FOR LGBTQI PEOPLE? I I LGBTQI PEOPL By Prof. Kath Brown
(In-Depth Interview – Kolkata, India) Ishika and Heidi show how the everyday realities of being ‘other’ and ‘not normal’, the effects of always being the butt of the joke. Things like this structure your daily life, such that you may not even notice. Indeed, you can presume them to indicate true ‘acceptance’. But being the butt of the joke can have damaging effects - the idea of a sexual or gender identity as part of a joke shows how these differences continue to be seen. In spaces where people are ostensibly ‘supportive’, there continue to be issues with who is ridiculed, and how. Yasmin demonstrated the problems with discussing oppression and the everyday nature of some forms of discrimination: Yasmin: It is a very subtle thing you see because discrimination is a word that sounds like something very active that somebody does to you and actually oppression, which I prefer to speak about is … like a soup that you are sitting in. It is in your eyes and you nose and it is everywhere so it isn’t something that you can say well that person did that thing to me. You can identify those events but they are like the carrots in the soup, they are like the big bits that you can grab hold of and say ‘well I was walking along the Level and somebody hit me over the head without provocation and then proceeded to racial abuse me’. So that to me is at the hunk of you know carrot or leek or whatever it is that’s in the soup but the rest of the soup is there all the time. And you know that’s life, that is actually what life is like when you are you know you are a woman, you are a Lesbian, you are Asian, you are Muslim, you are all of those things that I am … I think in Brighton there is a kind of naivety, ‘oh we are all very nice in Brighton and therefore we don’t discriminate against anybody’ and I think that’s a problem. There is a kind of naïve collusion
because being continually upset and offended is detrimental to your wellbeing, regardless of if these interactions are acceptable or legal. They challenge your liveability. So, even with equalities laws and cultural changes, life may not be liveable for LGBTIQ people. The presumption that lives are ‘sorted’ can lead people to being silenced and failing to acknowledge ongoing issues. The stigmatisation of LGBTQ people is a necessary counterpoint to the idea that there has been successful and irrevocable social, legal and political change to the benefit of all LGBTQI people. This insecurity in knowing that your rights will be protected makes lives less liveable. There is always a fear that things that are afforded to you now, may not always be so. Ongoing support also continues to be needed because of all the issues discussed above and many more! Liveable Politics Here and There The other side of this is the dismissal of these fears and experiences, because ‘you have gay marriage’, or that Pride is ‘isn’t needed anymore’. Dismissing LGBTIQ people’s experiences and worries because things are supposedly ‘fine’, and we are not being murdered or beaten up (enough?) can also take another form. This is usually done by pointing to ‘other places’ that are worse, so you shouldn’t complain, name discrimination or ask for more, because you have it ‘better’. This downplaying and dismissal of ongoing issues ‘here’ is also how LGBTQI people can speak about and make sense of their lives, in ways that don’t ask for more. Seeing somewhere as worse than where you are, and where you could be, can be empowering. Your life is apparently not as ‘bad’ as it might be:
For two decades now we can see a trajectory of progress in the creation of equalities for LGBTQI people, but as academics and activists have long noted, this is not enough. There have been massive shifts in the 21st century around sexual and gender rights. There can be little doubt that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans lives and activisms in places like Ireland, England and Canada have altered considerably throughout the first decade of the 21st Century. These include same sex marriage, gender recognition legislations, and banning sexualities discrimination in workplaces. This has been accompanied by cultural changes towards the acceptance and inclusion of some LGBTQI people. When properly operationalised anti-discrimination legislation and practices has been shown to improve society for example reducing strain on mental health and other health and wellbeing services. However, the reconfiguration of political, social and cultural landscapes that offers new possibilities, as many activists and academics have noted, are not experienced evenly between people or places. It matters who you are and where you are. Inclusions are imperfect, hierarchical and created through codes and norms that result in and from discrimination. There is always work to be done, and this is no less true in the areas of sexualities and genders. What work is to be done, goes beyond asking for the means to survive (legislation, absence of physical abuse), and instead should look towards what makes life liveable, what makes a good life and what makes life a life for LGBTQI people. This changes how we see politics here (and what we understand of countries that are often seen as ‘worse than’ here). Drawing on the ‘count me in too’ research (www.countmeintoo.co.uk) and the ‘liveable lives’ research (www.liveablelives.org), it is possible to see the ongoing issues of difference and marginalisation in the pursuit of what makes lives liveable in places that have good equality laws.
Even where acceptances are ostensibly in place, there continue to be issues with how people experience everyday spaces, and how we can be treated, including at work: Heidi: There’s homophobia in totally different ways. Like at work. I always feel the need now to go into work and like, ‘Hi. I’m a lesbian.’ It’s just out there then and then the banter can commence where I will happily join in, in taking the piss out of myself because it’s easier than being like, ‘Please don’t offend me because that’s really hurtful’. I had a manager refer to me always - never by my name, but always - as lezzer, and I laughed at that but then I look back at that and I’m like, ‘That’s not fine. That’s really not fine’, that type of homophobia absolutely exists. As one person you’re vulnerable. You go along with it because you’re like, ‘I don’t know how to challenge this in a way we don’t come across as an angry lesbian’. (Project Workshop 3 – Southampton, UK) Ishika: At my work space, my sexuality…because I have never been very shh shh about it… it has turned into kind of a private joke sometimes. Like, sometimes everybody is okay…you are like this, very good, we are like this supportive people, but suddenly…some below the belt jokes and you know they are about you. At that point you feel very hurt. it’s very insensitive, it’s uneducated and I absolutely get very furious about it.
Q: As an LGBT person, what makes your life not liveable?
Not much when I consider the hurt and pain that lgbts undergo on a daily basis in other countries (Online)
The hurt and pain of others seemingly dwarfs the hurt and pain that might otherwise be recognized and agitated around. This was the case even when people went on to speak to abuse, harassment and prejudice that they experienced. This was almost made acceptable because the base level of survival (i.e. not being murdered) was a possibility ‘in other places’. The discourse becomes comparative, ‘I am fine, because they are not’. This construction of ‘here’ as ‘fine’ and ‘there’ as ‘not fine’ is a key way in which Pride and other politics can be played out. Understanding here as better than other places, which should ‘learn from us’, rather than recognising the importance of solidarity, mutual learning and complicities is replicated where ‘other places’ become where the politics is located, and the local is neglected and ongoing problems negated or downplayed.
with institutional and other forms of what is soupy oppression, which people don’t really recognise.
(BME focus group 1) Yasmin points to the intersectional identities that create who she is- they cannot be disentangled. This soup of oppression is how our everyday
lives are created, how they interact with us affects us on a daily basis. The ways in which these interactions can be difficult vary, from presuming the gender of a partner, to assuming the gender of someone that you are speaking to.
These all create the soup in which you exist and some interactions can be the carrots that are grabbed hold of, others can be ignored, passed over, dismissed in part
Prof. Kath Browne and Dr. Niharika Banerjea are currently working on the book Liveable Lives, due to be completed in 2022.
www.corkpride.com
#CorkPride2021
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