Burning issues in 2016

Annasopra

The National LGBT Federation has published it's 2016 burning issues report

http://nxf.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Burning-Issue-2-Report-by-NXF.pdf

MAIN RECCOMENDATIONS

3.1 Findings requiring legislative, policy and public service reform

Equality
» Underpin all State policy relating to LGBT people with the core principle of promoting Sexuality and Gender Acceptance (SAGA).
» Amend the Gender Recognition Act so it covers transgender young people and provides for the legal recognition of non-binary and intersex people.
» Provide gender neutral bathrooms across the public sector, especially in education and health care settings, with a supporting policy enabling people to use the bathroom of their preferred gender.
» Campaign for marriage equality to be extended to Northern Ireland.

Criminal Justice
» Introduce best practice hate crimes legislation and mainstream LGBT equality in criminal justice and policing.

Rural policy
» Integrate LGBT inclusion within all rural policy as part of the ministerial brief of the Minister for Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Arts and the Gaeltacht to ensure that the needs of LGBT rural people are central to rural policy.
» Resource and sustain LGBT community centres in regional towns in Ireland outside the major cities.

Education
» Eliminate homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools.
» Develop a mandatory code of practice on gender transitioning and expression in school.
» Ensure that schools are fully LGBT inclusive and that no child can be discriminated in school based upon their sexuality, gender identity or religious / non-religious identity.

Parenting
» Mainstream LGBT inclusion within all maternity, fertility and parental support services.
» Legislate for altruistic and commercial surrogacy with strong legal protections to prevent the exploitation of the birth mother.

Health
» End the blood donation ban on men who have sex with men.
» Mainstream LGBT equality in all public service provision in mental health, sexual health, maternal health, transgender health and social and elderly care services.
» Resource the provision of mental health, sexual health and transgender health services outside of Dublin where centres of excellence allow this.

Public sector training
» Introduce mandatory, developmental LGBT equality and awareness training for all public service providers in education, health, social care, elderly care and parental services.

3.2 Findings requiring LGBT community action

Community development, regional support and alliances
» All community organisations and groups to be mindful that LGBT is the community identifying term which is most popular with the community, receiving more than 2.5 times the support of the second most popular term.
» Build LGBT community networks in regional towns and rural areas with an emphasis on supporting LGBT older people, LGBT younger people and mental health.
» Consider how technology like the ‘Meetup’ app can be used to provide peer support to LGBT people in isolated rural areas.
» Lobby the State for LGBT issues to be mainstreamed within the remit of the ministry of rural affairs.
» Forge partnerships with rural and age action NGOs to ensure that LGBT equality is mainstreamed within community sector service provision.
» Establish a national partnership project of all LGBT community organisations to consider the feasibility of setting up a national NGO for:
• LGBT older people
• LGBT parents
• Bisexuals
» Strengthen LGBT Pride celebrations which are of central importance to the LGBT community.
» Support the preservation and celebration of LGBT history.
» Mainstream migrants within LGBT community service provision with a targeted awareness campaign. Strengthen partnerships with migrant NGOs to ensure that LGBT migrants are integrated into their remit and service provision.
» Prioritise support for the marriage equality campaign in Northern Ireland.
» Deepen LGBT community involvement in the campaign to reform schooling in Ireland so that no child is isolated because of their sexuality, gender identity or religious/non-religious identity.
» Build alliances with other groups campaigning for a secular State.

Celebrating gender and sexuality diversity
» Incorporate support for gender and sexual diversity into the remit and activities of all LGBT community organisations and ensure that transgender people, non-binary people, bisexuals, pansexuals and queer people are represented in governance and decision making.
» Ensure that all LGBT community centres, bars, clubs and social venues have a transgender inclusive bathroom policy.
» Actively support bisexuals and tackle bisexual erasure through an awareness campaign to challenge stereotypes and promote bisexual visibility and build the capacity of the bisexual community.

Nokia6230i

Just dealing wi' the Criminal Justice issue for a bit.

Currently they're only GLEN & TENI recording incidents of all hues (verbal, physical, overt, subtle etc.) of homophobic & transphobic crimes against LGBTQI+ citizens.

ENAR Ireland (European Network Against Racism) cover that angle from any anti-immigrant sentiment p.o.v. & there's a crossover here.

The Afghani Man who was blind & attacked last week incident is an aggravated assault; it's not documented as a Race or Religious Hate Crime.

So similarly any gay bashing that occurs would come under a similar heading of assault or aggravated assault depending on severity.

Please report any incident to Gda. Siochana obviously but get it reported to GLEN/TENI as appropriate no matter how minor you feel it is ("even" if it's just some **** spraying the F word on your bike or locker in work etc.). All these reports need to be documented; they will still result in underreporting but we need to be pro-active here.

Eventually, via GLEN, TENI & ENAR Ireland, Min. Frances Fitzgerald might, just might bring in Hate Crime Legislation to cover Race/Religion/Homophobia/Transphobia etc.

J_E

» Actively support bisexuals and tackle bisexual erasure through an awareness campaign to challenge stereotypes and promote bisexual visibility and build the capacity of the bisexual community.

Is this frankly a burning issue?

I was hoping given the amount of questions they had asked about older LGBT people, there would have been more than a passing mention of them. There is now an older community who have come out later in life and not really sure where to go or who to socialise with, as a lot of sections of the older community can still be quite shy or paranoid about who they meet with.

baby and crumble

J_E wrote: »

» Actively support bisexuals and tackle bisexual erasure through an awareness campaign to challenge stereotypes and promote bisexual visibility and build the capacity of the bisexual community.

Is this frankly a burning issue?

Yes. Yes it is. Otherwise it wouldn't have come up in the research, would it?

Sonics2k

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

» Eliminate homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools.

I feel like this one is virtually impossible to ever fix or remove. Kids are jerks. They'll find a reason to bully, whether it's because the target is fat, ginger, LGBT, not religious, too religious (actually saw this happen in school myself), crap at sports

The best we can do is support young LGBT people and tell them a simple phrase which has always helped me in darker times. "Fúck 'em."

Annasopra

Nokia6230i wrote: »

Just dealing wi' the Criminal Justice issue for a bit.

Currently they're only GLEN & TENI recording incidents of all hues (verbal, physical, overt, subtle etc.) of homophobic & transphobic crimes against LGBTQI+ citizens.

ENAR Ireland (European Network Against Racism) cover that angle from any anti-immigrant sentiment p.o.v. & there's a crossover here.

The Afghani Man who was blind & attacked last week incident is an aggravated assault; it's not documented as a Race or Religious Hate Crime.

So similarly any gay bashing that occurs would come under a similar heading of assault or aggravated assault depending on severity.

Please report any incident to Gda. Siochana obviously but get it reported to GLEN/TENI as appropriate no matter how minor you feel it is ("even" if it's just some **** spraying the F word on your bike or locker in work etc.). All these reports need to be documented; they will still result in underreporting but we need to be pro-active here.

Eventually, via GLEN, TENI & ENAR Ireland, Min. Frances Fitzgerald might, just might bring in Hate Crime Legislation to cover Race/Religion/Homophobia/Transphobia etc.

Indeed and thankfully over 50 organisations are supporting hate crime legislation

http://enarireland.org/love-not-hate-campaign-endorsers/

The public can support it here too

https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/love-not-hate-unite-to-legislate-against-hate-crime

Annasopra

J_E wrote: »

» Actively support bisexuals and tackle bisexual erasure through an awareness campaign to challenge stereotypes and promote bisexual visibility and build the capacity of the bisexual community.

Is this frankly a burning issue?

I was hoping given the amount of questions they had asked about older LGBT people, there would have been more than a passing mention of them. There is now an older community who have come out later in life and not really sure where to go or who to socialise with, as a lot of sections of the older community can still be quite shy or paranoid about who they meet with.

Just over 2600 people responded which is quite sizable

About 20% of them identified as bi

The top five burning issues were

1) Ending sexuality and gender oppression (21%)
2) Promoting sexuality and gender acceptance (22%)
3) Community cohesion, development, solidarity and alliance building (17%)
4) Equality in health for LGBT people (14%)
5) Celebrating gender and sexuality diversity (8%)

Bisexual visibility is a central issue for this section of the LGBT community which is becoming more confident and is demanding the “validation of bisexuality as a sexuality. It IS real”.

As one non-binary queer respondent pinpoints the “general bi/pan erasure and trans erasure that was brought into strong focus during the marriage
referendum desperately needs to be addressed. The LG really have work to do to make the BT(AQI+) welcome and part of the community.”

The European Conference of Bisexuals notes that bisexuals are the largest group of LGBT people who are the least visible (BiCon 2016). As one gay male insists “I would love to see the B in LGBT given more light and support. There is so much biphobia even within our community. Bi guys are constantly told that they are actually gay and bi folks in opposite sex relationships can often feel excluded from the community. We need to foster more widespread acceptance of bisexual individuals”.

Taken together, the breadth and depth of support for transgender and bisexual people shows the LGBT community wishes to move beyond rigid binaries to prioritise equality for the broad spectrum of LGBT people whose gender or sexuality is more variant.

There is quite a significant section in the report on older people

LGBT Older people

Health and social care services for LGBT older people
Over the past decade there has been a concerted effort in the LGBT community and in social service provision to consider the needs of LGBT younger people. However, scant research has been conducted on the needs of LGBT older people and the evidence base is severely lacking, other than the GLEN and Age and Opportunity research in 2011. This seminal scoping study revealed that “heterosexism and homophobia are widespread in nursing homes and are symptomatic of a larger reluctance among care providers to address the sexual concerns of older people” (Cahill and South, 2002: 52, in Higgins et al, 2011: 117).

These results are reflected in the main finding of the Burning Issues survey on ageing, which shows considerable action is required to improve health, social and care services for older LGBT people in Ireland.
Figure 19 indicates that overall 57% of respondents disagree with the statement that elderly social services are fully inclusive of LGBT people and respectful of their relationships. Furthermore, if older people in the 46+ age category are only examined, the belief that elderly services are not LGBT inclusive rises to over 72%.


A total of 1,203 participants offered a written response to the question, what central change is necessary – if any – for LGBT older people to be treated equally in Irish society? These answers were evaluated using qualitative content and discourse analysis and figure 20 shows the top six solutions proposed by the respondents to advance equality in this regard.

It is clear that the most popular solution (35%) is the provision of LGBT inclusive elderly services and training of the relevant professionals. One bisexual female sums it up as “services and supports that are both targeted at the LGBT community e.g. sheltered housing/nursing homes and greater upskilling of service providers to bring about more inclusive universal services”. Sexuality and Gender Acceptance (SAGA) emerges again as the second most popular solution (23%) to promote equality for LGBT older people. This policy response highlights value change, acceptance, visibility and inclusion. One gay man appeals for partners of elderly people to be “recognised whether married or not. Older gays should be portrayed more
in the media, especially gay media such as GCN”. The third most popular response (10%) is intergenerational acceptance and engendering a positive attitude to ageing, whereby youth is not the defining feature of LGBT culture. Another gay man proposes that “awareness must be raised. The LGBT+ community needs to be more proactive in looking after their older members. [It] should be more of a priority, especially for the young”.

Annasopra

Sonics2k wrote: »

I feel like this one is virtually impossible to ever fix or remove. Kids are jerks. They'll find a reason to bully, whether it's because the target is fat, ginger, LGBT, not religious, too religious (actually saw this happen in school myself), crap at sports

The best we can do is support young LGBT people and tell them a simple phrase which has always helped me in darker times. "Fúck 'em."

I don't feel it is at all impossible. Culture can be changed and has been changed vastly in schools in recent years through work done by Belong To and TENI and GLEN.

Sure I think it won't ever be fully removed but it is very possible to get to it rarely happening through education of young people and educating teachers.

J_E

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

I don't feel it is at all impossible. Culture can be changed and has been changed vastly in schools in recent years through work done by Belong To and TENI and GLEN.

Maybe in Dublin - I still feel it's lost in translation in many schools around the country or avoided entirely.

Annasopra

J_E wrote: »

Maybe in Dublin - I still feel it's lost in translation in many schools around the country or avoided entirely.

Oh I'm not saying we live in a utopia but from where we were 10/15 years ago there has been a big change.

Sonics2k

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

I don't feel it is at all impossible. Culture can be changed and has been changed vastly in schools in recent years through work done by Belong To and TENI and GLEN.

Sure I think it won't ever be fully removed but it is very possible to get to it rarely happening through education of young people and educating teachers.

I 100% agree with you on that. So far as I know and understand, for the most part things are better overall in schools, especially compared to when I was in school. It's not entirely uncommon in schools now for young LGBT teens to be "out" amongst their class, though not as often at home.

It reminds me of one guy in my class who I knew was gay since the day I met him in First Year, it was just painfully obvious. He never really came out until about 6 months after we finished school, and despite us not really being friends, I was always annoyed he was afraid of what would happen if he did come out earlier.