Why do we feel unsafe in our communities?

My man has the unfortunate habit of reading The Argus and is consequently exposed to a constant litany of the aggressive violence that takes place on a daily basis in and around our beautiful city. He reads out to me the most horrific stories. Last Saturday at 2 am a couple of students were set about by a gang of 5 drug-crazed youths in the centre of Brighton. The attack involved broken bottles and resulted in facial disfigurement ‘beyond recognition’ for the two victims.

 With each story I am thankful that I’m not the victim! I try to remind myself that hearing stories reported in this way is likely to engender a disproportionate sense of danger. These events are relatively rare yet hearing reports one after the other from the various corners of Sussex makes it seem like I’m practically guaranteed a good beating every time I set foot on St James’ Street.

 Yesterday my man read out yet another story: ‘GAY MEN INVOLVED AS PERPETRATORS OF VIOLENT CRIME’. Two gay guys had attacked an elderly woman in Kemptown. One had held her down whilst the other did her hair and make-up! Hmmm! Funny!

 When I was younger I used to feel more vulnerable to homophobic violence. Now I’m older and spend less time out in the city at night I just feel vulnerable to gratuitous drug fuelled violence. The older and frailer I become, the more I feel like a potential target when in the proximity of  ‘merry’ youths. This growing sense of insecurity doesn’t really seem to be the fault of inadequate community policing. It’s more like it’s the consequence of failing to address the cultural, moral, and aspirational poverty of an ever-growing underclass of unfortunates who live in our midst.

Having said this a couple of months ago my young friend Carl was out in town with his partner. It was late and they were both a bit drunk. They were walking by the Theatre Royal towards the taxi rank. Just as they walked by Mrs Fitzherbert’s they were approached by a couple of well groomed, well spoken, ostensibly straight men who asked them where the nearest nightclubs were. Before they could answer, one of the guys, noticing my friends had their arms linked and sensing they were gay said: ‘Oh fuck-a couple of queers’ and slugged Carl in the mouth knocking one of his front teeth out and flooring him. A witness in the pub immediately called the police who were there so quickly that the assailant could be pointed out  just a hundred yards down the street. But bizarrely, the police refused to pursue the attacker without confirmation from the unconscious Carl that he wished to press charges! The next day when Carl reported the attack he was underwhelmed by the police response which seemed more like politically correct lip-service- making sure the paperwork had been completed and the statistics compiled rather than there being any intention to attempt to apprehend this malignant homophobe.

We hear from our gay community police liaison officer that we must come forward and report homophobic hate crime but really with stories like this it does make you wonder what’s the point!

For Queers-It’s a Mad World!

I sat across the room from my North London psychotherapist at my first appointment and bravely asked what was her position with regard to LGBT issues.

“Ah, you should have no worries on that account my dear, she said, I treat you all exactly the same way that I treat my normal clients”

It was only on the journey back to Brighton that I stopped feeling pathetically grateful about this ostensibly benevolent stance and saw it for the patronising insult that it was!

They say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Well, not necessarily.

Take an innocent LGBT soul. Plant it in a family ignorant about, or hostile towards, queer folk. Send it to a school where bullies can freely taunt and humiliate it. When its straight peers are taught spiritual values whilst being allowed to experiment sexually in adolescent relationships make sure that it feels excluded from access to a spiritual world and invalidated during it’s sexual awakening. When it finally makes its first faltering moves towards the stresses of adulthood and maybe requires some psychological help ensure that psychotherapists and mental health professionals have no diversity training and therefore no understanding of the lives and concerns of LGBT people. Where does a queer tortured soul turn?

Many would say that the adversity we have faced has given us the strength to exist as strange outsiders. That we have become capable of creating our own unique spiritual and therapeutic structures which contradict yet sustain and liberate mainstream culture. Maybe our own ‘woundedness’ fosters in us an ability to heal ourselves and our own kind.

But then again take a look at our communities. Give any other soul an emotionally abusive and invalidating life experience and you would fully expect an insecurely attached personality to emerge, either lacking in self esteem or with an overcompensated inflated ego, limping along in life with a clutch of co-dependent personal relationships and an unhealthy attitude to any or all of the following: food, body shape, exercise, sex drugs and alcohol. Ring any bells?

Is it any wonder that the recent ‘Count me in too’ Health Survey of LGBT folk in Brighton found that we’re all at a much higher risk than the general population for being hooked on drugs and booze!

What do we do about it? We need to take some responsibility for the formative experiences of our LGBT infants, children and adolescents. They are not in safe hands. Straight parents generally don’t know how to handle them, schools allow them to be bullied and churches torture their tiny minds encouraging them to be what they aren’t. We need to fight homophobic ignorance in families, schools and churches. We also need to insist that health workers and mental health workers in particular have undergone LGBT diversity training. Homophobia is alive and well outside of our cosy tolerant-ish gay ghettos and it is poisoning the healthy psychological development of future queer generations.

Maybe what doesn’t kill you can be so toxic that it messes with your head and makes you a lifelong psychological cripple. Maybe we just keep quiet about it and hope it will get better without too much fuss? It won't!

Email me:GaySocrates@gmail.com or google GaySocrates for my blog

[This is my column for the September 'Mental Health' edition of GScene Magazine]