LGBT attacks in the UK on the rise.

Latest study by Yougov and Stonewall makes for some pretty sickening reading. It's hardly surprising, during the current political climate, that hate crimes are on the rise, but the statistics are still deeply troubling.

According to the home office it's a 48% rise in hate crime in general, and a 70% rise in hate crime targeting victims explicitly due to their sexuality or gender identity. This is not a rise that can be explained entirely by the increase in reporting.

81% of LGBT respondents who experienced a hate crime didn't report it to police. Often this is due to fears of the police mishandling the case. In one cited incident, a respondent whose home was vandalised with homophobic slurs was accused by the police of doing it themselves in order to get the police to harass their neighbors.

29% of LGBT respondents reported avoiding certain areas for fear of attack and harassment. 44% for trans people.

8% do not feel safe in the area in which they live. 14% for trans people.

One in five LGBT people have experienced a hate crime or incident in the last 12 months. Two in five trans people.

Of these crimes:

26% involved unwanted sexual contact.
21% involved threats of violence
11% involved physical assault

There are quite a few other interesting facts that the report unearthed, but few are entirely surprising.
You can download a copy here:
LGBT in Britain - Hate Crime and Discrimination

It's a pretty sad indictment of our society and the entrenched homophobia that has recently been emboldened by perceived victories by the far right, in my opinion.

I'm sure in other people's opinions it's only more evidence that LGBT people are willing to lie and exaggerate for political reasons, and that it probably isn't all that bad and besides, they wouldn't end up in these situations if they weren't so in your face about it and also Jesus somehow.

I'd cordially invite these people to go and fuck themselves with something sharp.

 

Well, do I even have to mention immigration?

Any data available on the country of origin, immigration / citizenship status of most of these attackers? Of course not

 

You're always going to have these people babe. My opinion is, don't read this stuff you're just going to feed off it with negativity. This type of reporting instils fear, and the best way to negate this is to just keep up with your own life.

 

The report details discrimination in renting or buying homes, use of public services, access to public premises and treatment in businesses. Undocumented immigrants are extremely unlikely to be responsible in these instances, which have increased alongside street altercations. This would indicate a societal trend which can't simply be blamed on immigrants.

 

Says a lot about the attacker too. Many of those types struggle with their own gay feelings. Seeing another person so comfortable with it can upset them.

 

I appreciate the advice, the world is a very depressing place at the moment, and it's easy to lose yourself in negativity. Particularly if you're prone to that sort of thing (as I am).

But it is very hard to ignore this kind of study (although maybe better for the ol' noggin) It confirms what has been apparent for a long time- that I live in a country that is growing increasingly hostile to certain groups of people, and many of my friends are affected by this societal shift.

 

Aye, true that, studies have shown in the past that men who self-identify as homophobes are statistically more likely to be aroused by gay pornography. We hate as a means of reinforcing our identities.

 

Well, renting / buying homes first:

Some apartment blocks in Sydney you cant buy or rent into unless you are the same type of asian that reside in the rest of the block, usually chinese. The apartment is only advertized on a chinese language site, auction spoken in mandarin, not english. This has been going on for a decade or so.

If one was gay and not chinese, how would you distinguish between whether you were actually rejected based on you being gay or based on you not being chinese?

Use of public services: I'm not just talking about fresh of the boat immigrants, but even 2nd generation ones that still manly just mix with those of their own kind, in their Little India or Little Egypt part of London that still have the old school attitude and work in a government office, dont want to be seen getting friendly with gay people, maybe there is a cousin they work with or someone else from their community in the same office looking over their shoulder and they dont want them talking to their family. That kind of stuff makes me sound racist, but it does happen


Dont make the mistake of thinking it can only be about sexuality, waste of time getting angry if its not about that

Especially with the UK at the moment, economy not very healthy, everyone just feels more stress, gets taken out in various ways

You say its not about immigration, but I find it hard to believe you or any of your friends would experience negative things from white or european people mid 20s to mid 60s. Earlier than mid 20s there is always the angry young male thing, past mid 60s some old school stuff previals. I havent had any problems with that demographic in decades

 

YouGov | One fifth of LGBT people have experienced hate crime in the past year

Wonder how it compares against other statistics for other groups?
Wonder how may women were attacked by men for the same period?
Wonder how many children were eaten by parents?

Not being funny, but all the big major cities in the UK are very accepting of the LGBT community now..
Gay pride meetings are a great success!
Guy opposite me in the lane is a cop, said the biggest problem among LGBT communities , is their fighting .. with each other!
And I personally can believe it..

 

See this is the bit in referring to..

Quote"It aims to re-boost the fight for LGBT equality after YouGov data revealed that hate crime has risen notably in the past five years among the LGBT community."unquote

Among!

 

I could tell you that the demographic that you describe (white, older than 25) were responsible for the most vicious homophobic attacks that I have personally witnessed or that have happened to my friends, but if your narrative is impervious to statistical data I can hardly expect you to accept any of my own anecdotal evidence. Still, you did bring it up in those terms.

A lot of the rest of your argument seems a little desperate either to discredit those that took part in the survey or to lay the blame entirely on immigrants, and I would urge you to interrogate your own motives in doing so.

 

Nowhere in the study or related article does it say that the attacks featured are more important than attacks experienced by other people, or that it isn't part of a broader societal trend. No-one should feel that LGBT people describing their experiences are in any way attempting to diminish other people's experiences.

Not being funny, but I've literally just provided statistical evidence that attacks on LGBT people are on the rise, and that huge numbers of them do not feel safe and secure in their towns or even their own homes. there is a difference between feeling safe in a huge gay pride parade surrounded by people there to celebrate LGBT, and feeling safe walking home from the pub with your partner. You can't look at the size of a Pride parade and say 'well I guess that's all sorted now then.'

It astonishes me how quick people are to diminish the experiences of people speaking out about this kind of abuse, deny that there is any problem at all or deflect attention onto their own personal pet issue. It's like they feel they have something to lose by allowing people to express or describe their experience.

 

Ok, when you say white over 25, who are you talking about, your friends parents, your parents, family members as opposed to complete stranger

Yeah sure as a teen I would get a lot of older white bi guys angry.....but since then, no havent had any trouble at all with that demographic


The parts about immigration, there are suburbs in Western Sydney, London, Paris and Northern France, Sweden that are no go zones for everyone else. No matter how rascist I am or am not, they exist, its still happening.

Everyone else hears things like mass sexual assaults in Germany commited by ........... and certain sections of the public want to pretend it has nothing to do with immigration

As Morrow pointed out, I noticed you cherry picked what you wanted from that statistical data. The rates of domestic violence amongst LGBT have always been, and will always be higher than the general population. Two guys having a domestic can just simply cause more damage to each other quicker


I'm sorry, but once into adult hood, I just havent had any problem with that white/european demographic, unless I was trying to fuck their sisters husband or something, why would they give a shit? Over the last 25 years any kind of bitchy attitude has always come from Indian/ Pakistani guys the most or secondly Lebanese / Middle eastern guys

How old are you and what is your sexuality? More importantly, what does everyone else think your sexuality is. Those older white guys that attacked your friends, what was their sexuality (If you cant tell already, I already know the answers to those questions)

 

I'm talking about strangers, since I assumed we were talking about street altercations? I do know someone who experienced some nastiness from their parents though. What difference does that make?

These fabled 'no-go' zones have always been touted by the press. I live in London, and I've lived all over it, in nice bits and in nasty bits.I know the city well. Can you give me the specific location of one of these no-go zones? Because I've lived here my entire life and have never heard of one.

Morrow didn't point out anything of the sort. She pointed out that hate crimes against LGBT people also exist in a world where domestic violence exists between LGBT people. Me presenting a report which is a statistical analysis of hate crimes committed against LGBT people in the last year is not me 'cherry picking' because I didn't also include information which doesn't fall under the purview of the report. Just as my not including statistics about LGBT people shoplifting is not me 'cherry-picking'.

This is essentially the same argument as the time-honoured 'yes, but what about black-on-black violence?' that you hear every time there's a police shooting. These are statistics that are only linked in as much as the person presenting the argument is implying that the former makes the victims in some way morally culpable or deserving of the latter.

Good for you, but your personal experience might not chime with everyone else's. I assume you don't apply this same logic to statistics that are in favour of your own narrative. Unless, on hearing a story about a woman being attacked by an immigrant, you also go 'but I've never been sexually assaulted by an immigrant therefore it never happens.'

I'm sure you can guess the answer to those questions. I fail to see what bearing those answers would have. Even if my experiences perfectly matched your own, and I had never witnessed white people doing anything naughty, only those pesky immigrants, that would still just be anecdotal evidence, not representative of the whole.

 

I don't believe that. I think those folks attack because their hate is genuine, and they are repulsed by the gay lifestyle. To say that homophobes are actually struggling with thier own desire to be gay, and are taking it out on gay people is a stretch.

 

Nanny state once again. Couple this with government austerity and everything is just falling into a shambolic mess.
As part of the cuts to UK police forces, the front-line staff at the call centers are no longer police officers and in order to meet their targets every report has to be filed into a neat folder and accounted for by staff who have little idea what is happening in the streets. A simple comment by a drunk on the other end of a phone line can determine how a reported crime is classified and that is how most of the data is collated. I can give some examples.

6 week old puppy chewed at child's hand without breaking the skin. Filed as dog attack.
Drunk called police because his takeaway had not arrived on time, but not knowing the name of the shop that he had ordered it from said, "That pakki place in the high street. Filed as racial hatred.
That stupid woman at the station would not let me through the barrier. Filed as gender discrimination.

In the past, their were far less boxes to tick, so no one would have even known the sexual orientation of a couple of lads fighting outside a bar. Add a box and you have a statistic. However their is no consistent instruction on how to tick the boxes, so if the lads fighting were simply arguing over who bought the last round of drinks and one of them happened to be gay, the LGBT box would end up ticked.

I wonder how many people who have posted on this thread are simply shocked by all these statistics, rather than basing their comments on first hand personal experience.

PS, Just making a point,no offense intended to any other members. LOL

 

Hell, I'm not offended

 

Ok

Well, the question still remains, why would they give a shit?

Your profile says you are 26

You as a 26 yr old male have been attacked in some way by white people in london based on your sexuality


Ok, maybe I live in la la land, but something isnt adding up here

( Winkey smile: I'm just playing with ya, I think I already know what it is)

 

I thought was female.

 

Thanks Eric, I did not want people who had taken the time to post, thinking that I was 'putting them down', but sadly we are all becoming brainwashed by statistics without any knowledge of how they are collated.
As you may already know from other comments that I have made, our daughter is a London police officer as is on the receiving end of all this rubbish. Computerization has made things far worse, since the program will not move on until a box is ticked. The problem is that their is no way of reporting whether half these facts are in any way related to the incident. The near coding rule is the worse, where you have to select the nearest match. It is like having the choice of ticking either the 'cat' or 'dog' box when you are standing there holding a hamster. LOL
People sitting at computers in their comfortable offices seem to be running the country lately. They seem to add more and more every day, simply to justify their miserable existence. It is not just the police who suffer, Doctors, Hospitals and countless other departments seem to be falling victim to this ridiculous society.