Tag Archives: United Kingdom

UK News: Five Lesbians Severely Beaten In Vile Homophobic Attack By 15 Men

A group of five lesbians were set upon by more than 15 men in a homophobic beating outside of a club this weekend.

According to a report from the Portsmouth News, the victims were set upon by seven men who shouted homophobic abuse before kicking and punching them.

One woman lost seven teeth when she was punched in the face.

The women, who wish to remain anonymous, said others in their group were punched, kicked and stamped during the assault on Kingston Road.

In a joint statement, they said:

This was a brutal homophobic attack on innocent women trying to get home after a night out.”

The group said they were singing “I’m in the mood for dancing” as they walked home from a karaoke night in the North End area of the city when a man ran towards one of them, a 25 year old, and punched her in the temple.

When her 23-year-old friend tried to come to her aid, she was hit in the face, knocking out seven of her teeth and breaking her jaw.

One woman said she feared she would die from the attack, another lost seven front teeth from a single punch and a third had a fit after she was left bleeding.

A 32-year-old woman “was quickly surrounded by seven men, she tried to cover her face while being hit and grabbed as another woman pleaded for them to stop,” the women said.

Once they had finished attacking [her], they threw her against the shutters on which she was previously beaten.”

She was left with extensive bruising to her breasts and upper body.

The victims said the men then attacked a 27-year-old woman who had tried to intervene.

She was kicked to the floor, following this her head was stamped on.”

Another woman, 21, was punched, leaving her with a black eye.

The 25-year-old victim also sustained a black eye, as well as bruised kidneys and liver and a dislocated knee and shoulder.

The group added:

All involved have been left with injuries and many left emotionally scared. We are angered but overall we are fiercely upset. Innocent women trying to get home to their families should not be disgustingly attacked due to being homosexual.”

A police spokesperson said that the “altercation between two groups” is under investigation and that four men were arrested but released.

Those men are still under investigation.

Less Than 1% People In British Advertisements Are LGBT

The world of advertisement (with all its elements that we may appreciate or criticize), is definitely a utopian one. Good or bad, our, your, or your mum’s utopia, it’s still a utopia. We might judge the role-models portrayed in, and goals promoted through advertising as harmful or problematic in terms of consumerist practices, beauty social standards and expectations, as well as lifestyle priorities but, before we go there – and rightfully we should – we need to agree on the purpose of advertising: to portray a perfect world, one we are supposed to want to be parts of. What is deemed to be a perfect world, a utopian goal, is in our society not only influenced, but constructed by the world of advertisement.

Our TV and pop-up windows all say: “This is what you should aim for, and for this reason I’m portraying someone who looks like you – is like you – already aiming for it, to make it clear that you should be already doing the same”.

Again, despite how problematic this mechanism is, I need to focus on the slight glitch I detect: the people in the advertisements aren’t actually like me. Not in the least. Sure, that one person I saw on my parents’ TV the other day did have purple hair – which makes my life slightly more convenient than it used to be when my parents did have the argument that no normal person (which means usual person, person on TV) looked like me and my freaky hair.

But all the chocolate advertisements I see depict romantic interludes only between men and women, address me and my priorities when they want to sell – heaven forfend – razors and fall to far more problematic circles when enforcing the stereotype that women’s destiny is motherhood and housekeeping, that she is the one who prepares the meal for the famished working man who returns home. The people in the advertisements aren’t like my partner either. And what do I mean by all that?

LGBTQ+ people still aren’t represented in the world of advertisement. A research conducted by Lloyds Banking Group has recently showed that less than 0.06 percent of people featured in British adverts are LGBTQ+. This lack of diversity in British TV is apparent not only concerning LGBTQ+ people, but also when it comes to other intersections of the population’s identities, such as disabled people and single parents.

More specifically, only 0.006 percent of advertisements in British TV show disabled people, while almost 18 percent of the British population has some form of disability. Also, less than one percent of advertisements show single parents, while about twenty five percent of adults in the UK are raising their children on their own.

When it came to whether people felt like diversity was missing from advertising, it turns out that 65 percent of the 2,200 people who were included in the Lloyds survey, say that they would “feel more favourable about a brand which reflected diversity in advertising”, while 67 percent of the ones who responded said that they expect diverse aspects of society to be represented in advertisements.

Why aren’t LGBTQ+ people represented in advertisements? It’s probably because we are not Western accomplished utopian material. Most of us aren’t able-bodied, white, cis, conventionally attractive, straight couples with enough income to wonder what to do with it. We don’t belong in a world scattered with stereotypes – and maybe that’s even a good thing. But representation is important in all aspects of human life, and even when we get it, we get it in mostly problematic forms.

We’ve all seen photos of women being together with all kinds of lustful, weird positions and looks. And while normalizing sex, instead of contributing in a society that deems it a taboo is important, white, tall, thin, feminine women being sexy with each other is not what we all look like.

We need representation; we need it to be broader than it is, to be natural, unbiased. We need a kind of representation that gets rid of its tokenistic or objectifying character. We aren’t here as instruments to fill a gap – even though it needs to be filled. We aren’t here to be aesthetically pleasing or occasions to party. We are here, we are queer, and we are different, multi-dimensional people: elders, youth, children, working people, parents and activists. LGBTQ+ people need to be represented and visible, and the industry still has a long way to go.

Number Of Britons Who Identify As Bisexual Has Soared By 45%

According to Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of people in Britain who describe themselves as bisexual has leaped by 45% since 2012.

The 2015 figures also show that London is the region with the highest proportion of people identifying themselves as Lesbian, gay or bi (2.6%).

The east of England has the lowest percentage (1.2%).

The figure for those aged 16-24 (3.3%) compares with just 0.6% of people aged 65 and over.
ONS statistician Pamela Cobb said:

In 2015, the majority (93.7%) of the UK population identified themselves as heterosexual or straight, with 1.7% identifying as LGB, the remainder either identifying as ‘other’, ‘don’t know’ or refusing to respond.”

The figures refer only to sexual identity and do not cover gender identity or necessarily reflect sexual behaviour.

Overall, more males (2%) identified as LGB than females (1.5%). Some 0.4% of the total identified as ‘other’ while a larger group of 4.1% either refused or did not know how to identify themselves.

More than two-thirds of the LGB population were ‘single, never married or hadn’t entered a civil partnership,’ the ONS said.

This is potentially due to the young age of LGB people compared with the population as a whole and the fact that same-sex legal unions are relatively new.

The figures were part of the ONS annual population survey and included respondents aged 16 and over.

The ONS suggested younger people could be more likely than previous generations to explore their sexuality and pointed out it was now more socially acceptable to express their sexual identity.

A spokeswoman for Stonewall, the charity which campaigns for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people; added

It’s great to see that more [people] are comfortable coming out or identifying as lesbian, gay or bi than ever before. The spike in individuals identifying as bi could be due to more exposure of bi role models in sports, culture and the public eye. We would hope that individuals who had previously felt pressured to conceal their bi identity now feel safer and more empowered to be open about how they identify.”

Margaret Thatcher Wanted Banning Sex Toys to Protect ‘Public Decency’

That’s correct, the late Margaret Thatcher wanted to banning sex toys when she was Prime Minster, to protect ‘public decency’.

According to documents from the National Archives released today, Thatcher met with anti-obscenity campaigner Mary Whitehouse, with the intention to use an anti-pornography law to ban the sex toys.

In a memo from then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, to Thatcher, he said there was a “strong case” to legislate to ban sex toys under the law.

“Some of the items in circulation are most objectionable, including some which can cause physical injury. 

There is a strong case for bringing sex aids fully within the scope of the ‘deprave and corrupt’ test in the 1959 [Obscene Publications] Act.

However, certain conceptual difficulties in extending an act designed only to deal with pornography would need to be overcome.”

The Anti-Pornography Act has been used in the past to ban Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960. It is also responsible for banning the DH Lawrence novel through defining “obscene” items as those which were “such as to tend to deprave and corrupt.”

Emily Brothers, The UK’s First Trans Parliamentary Candidate

Things have changed massively in the past 14 years for the United Kingdom’s LGBT citizens. For example, same gender marriage is now legal in both England and Scotland and there are several anti-discrimination acts in place to protect LGBT people, whilst people are now able to legally change their gender on official documents and sex reassignment surgery can now be done via the NHS.

Yet despite these big moves, there is still much work to be done, particularly in terms of trans rights. To get a Gender Recognition Certificate not only do you have to have transitioned two years before applying, but you also have provide ‘supporting evidence’ for you GRC case, essentially forcing people into convincing the government about their identity.

There are also a great deal of misconceptions and intolerant opinions surrounding trans people. Looking to change those and champion trans rights in the process is Emily Brothers, a parliamentary candidate for labour who has just come out as trans.

Coming out in an interview with PinkNews, Brothers told the publication that,

“I don’t want to be somebody who has notoriety as having a transgender background, but I also believe it’s an experience that has value to it, that I can be a positive role model. For a lot of people of a transgender experience that can be very challenging but for me, it was absolutely the right thing to do. I am happy and content as a woman, and also as a gay woman.

There is vast under-representation of disabled people and people with transgender experience in public life, and there is of course vast under-representation of women in parliament, and that needs to change.”

As a politician, trans rights, disability rights and the NHS will be three of her main focus areas as not only is she both trans and disabled but she spent many years in hospitals as a child because of her condition (she lost her sight to glaucoma as a child) and understands the important and the need for free public healthcare. 

With Brothers now standing for parliament in Sutton and Cheam, a successful campaign will undoubtedly bring much needed diversity and a fresh way of thinking to Westminster. And with Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeting his support, saying that he is both “proud” of Brothers and noting that she has an “important voice” in Labour’s movement, it seems that she could bring real, significant change to UK politics.