There are always many reasons to celebrate Pride Month and the achievements of our LGBTQ community. 

In the latest LGBTQ statistics from the Population Statistics Division of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Sophie Sanders reports that "People in their late teens and early twenties are more likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) than older age groups" (Office for National Statistics, 2020). This is a positive development, and certainly an outcome that Pride has been advocating for. 

However, this year feels different. As we celebrate Pride, the UK is beginning to ease off the lockdown measures that the Covid-19 pandemic has required. In the United States, mass protests have erupted following another brutal act of violence toward the black community by the police. We continue to live in a dangerous world, where hatred is alive and kicking and where the experiences of lockdown remind us of our vulnerabilities.  

The World Health Organisation has warned about Covid-19’s potentially enduring and widespread impacts on mental health and well-being. Adding to this the ongoing discrimination and marginalisation of LGBT people, who are already more likely to experience poor mental health, points to further suffering and isolation.

For me, as a sex and relationship therapist working with the LGBTQ community, this month has a unique personal meaning.  

I worked for some years at one of London's busiest LGBTQ mental health services, run by professionals who themselves identify as LGBTQ. For years I witnessed the pain, the hatred, and the hardships that LGBTQ people have to endure. Of all the difficulties my clients reported, hatred was the most painful to hear about – the hatred in many families of LGBTQ people, the hatred in the street where LGBTQ people are bashed, the hatred in the education system where it is challenging to teach about sexuality freely, the hatred in the religious community, in the healthcare system, in governments, and so on. 

The pandemic has meant LGBT-specific mental health support has not always been accessible. In fact, for LGBT people who are not out or who live in a family that does not accept them, even telephone and online support is no longer an option for fear of getting caught. 

Pandemic and its impact on LGBT people: Shedding light on domestic abuse

In May this year, the LGBT Foundation researched the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on LGBT communities in the United Kingdom. They uncovered a wide range of profound effects, most notably in areas such as mental health, eating disorders, substance abuse, homelessness, access to support, and unsafe living environments.

Since social distancing measures were introduced, there has been a shocking rise in domestic abuse in the UK. The lack of support for both trans women and men affected by domestic abuse was cited as one of the biggest struggles for LGBT victims. With no real recognition of the domestic abuse that occurs outside of opposite-sex relationships, and due to the lack of services on offer, trans women and men have been hindered in acknowledging themselves as victims and in getting the support they need.

Finding themselves living in LGBT-phobic households, people have chosen to go back into the closet or avoid coming out entirely to those with whom they live. The inability and freedom to express one’s identity only adds to the stress, anxiety, and the isolation they feel. In extreme circumstances, reports have found that some LGBT have been made homeless during the crisis after their families have found out that they are LGBT.

Hatred at home and in the street

While Covid-19 has certainly taken centre stage on every news report so far in 2020, it is not the only thing to affect Pride Month. George Floyd’s death has led to massive protests from the LGBT community over racism and police brutality.

The very existence of the LGBTQ+ and rights movement is thanks to riots that were led by people of colour, and so now, more than ever, we must honour that.

The continuing conversation about the LGBTQ+ community and its issues in America today is down to radical acts of change spurred by protests that were led by women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera – protests and riots, such as the one that took place on June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a meeting place for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. When they demanded to do sex verification checks on trans women, a spontaneous protest broke out.

Pride owes its very existence to these riots.

LGBTQ+ issues and racial issues are not mutually exclusive as LGBTQ+ people of colour find themselves navigating a complicated network of injustice and oppression from all sides. With intersectionality being at the core of activism, you cannot support one sector in one community but leave the other out.

I really recommend the Netflix documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which covers the revolutionary life of one of the women integral to Stonewall. It's an excellent starting point to understand more how hatred operates.

On Hatred and my work as a therapist

My colleague Kathy White, an experienced black psychoanalyst, has written extensively about hatred from personal experience and from her clinical work. In her paper Surviving Hate and being Hated (White 2009), she talks about three types of hate she has experienced herself and in her clients: Being Hated, Hating the Self, and Hating the Other. She says that from the experience of Being Hated, one develops a survival shell. This shell is also described in the first chapter of the book Black Skin White Mask (2009) by Franz Fanon, when he says that

"There is nothing more sensational than a black man speaking correctly ... he is appropriating the white world.”

“Speaking correctly” allows one to create a shell in which to hide from the hatred. I have seen this survival shell in operation in the LGBTQ community and with the clients I worked with. The survival shell can be the closet, or it can be the concept of masculinity or straight acting that some gay men want to claim, or it can be the notion that LGBTQ relationships have to be the same as for opposite-sex relationships 

Conclusion

Surviving hate is what many LGBTQ people and many Black people do on a daily basis. Hopefully, through the continuous support of Pride and Black Lives Matter movements, it will become less and less painful. We need to remember that hate is real, and we need to work with it – the origin of Pride month reminds us of this – and despite some progress, the pandemic reminds us there is still a lot of work to do, especially from a mental health perspective. 

If you feel have been affected by this article and you wish to talk to me you can contact me on fabio@workingthrough.co.uk.

References

Office for National Statistics. (2020, March 6). Sexual Orientation, UK:2018. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualidentityuk/2018

Kathleen Pogue White (2002) Surviving Hating and Being Hated, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38:3, 401-422, DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2002.10747173

Fanon, F., & Markmann, C. L. (1967). Black skin, white masks.

LGBT Foundation. (2020, May). Hidden Figures: The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on LGBT Communities. Retrieved from https://www.lgbt.foundation/coronavirus/hiddenfigures