Laura Harmon | Contributing Writer
Pink for a girl and blue for a boy.
From the moment we are born, assumptions are made about us based on the gender we are assigned at birth. Certain expectations for how we will behave are set. We are labelled and stereotyped.
As we grow up, all of this continues throughout our lives. We are influenced by television and by what attributes the media portray as ‘normal’ for the gender you were assigned. We are influenced by our teachers, by the books we read, by the toys we play with, by the language used by others to describe things.
We internalise a lot of this. Sometimes we don’t even notice it happening. In many ways, we are imprisoned by it, afraid to step out of our assigned roles for fear of rejection or stigma.
It takes courage to truly be yourself. And the further away you are from the gender-norm or the hetero-norm, the harder it is likely to be.
Our society promotes heterosexuality and opposite sex relationships as normative. We’ll never have an end to discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans* or Queer (LGBTQ) persons unless we tackle gender inequalities, until we stop viewing gender identity and expression as something linked to the one we are assigned at birth.
True equality can only be achieved when society broadens its view of gender and sexuality.
Not only will this benefit LGBTQ persons – it will benefit all of society, irrespective of gender. The idea that men should be strong and not show too much emotion is discouraging for males who want to talk about a problem or difficulty they are facing– this is just one example of how gender stereotyping affects our lives.
I’ve often heard it said that LGBTQ people should be grateful for getting any legal recognition at all
I’ve often heard it said that LGBTQ people should be grateful for getting any legal recognition at all. Perhaps they feel we can just sit back and that in time equality will just come to us. We only have to look at other movements that created large shifts in how our world is constructed – the suffragette movement, the struggle for civil rights in the US – none of these fights for equality were achieved by sitting back; every step on the road to equality was hard won.
Yes, there have been significant advances. Homosexual acts between men were only decriminalised in Ireland in 1993. The Civil Partnership Act of 2011 affords many of the same rights as civil marriage but with some gaping omissions (like the complete lack of protection for children of same-sex couples).
Language is important too. If Civil Partnership had all of the same rights as civil marriage, it would still be lesser because society places a huge significance on ‘getting married’ and affords a high status to couples who are married for which there is no equivalent for civilly partnered couples.
A draft Gender Recognition Bill was published this year but it doesn’t go far enough, requiring couples who are married to divorce if one wants to have the gender they identify with legally recognised.
According to the proposed Bill, you also have to be 18 to have your gender recognised.
We still have the lifetime ban on donating blood for men who have sex with men, despite the advances in screening and the lesser deferral periods for those in other high risk categories.
We still have Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act which allows schools to discriminate because of religious ethos. This means that LGBTQ teachers are largely invisible in Ireland. In fact, 34% of LGBTQ respondents to a 2011 ‘Supporting LGBT Lives’ study reported experiencing homophobic comments by teachers
There are very few supports available to young people who are estranged from their families, which is not an uncommon occurrence for young LGBTQ people whose families cannot accept them when they come out.
Our social welfare system and many student supports often assume that students and young people receive support from their families.
The society we live in is not healthy for LGBTQ people and this has a knock-on effect on their wellbeing. We know from the ‘Supporting LGBT Lives Study’ that 80% of LGBT respondents had been verbally abused because of their LGBT identity. We know that 40% had been threatened with physical violence, 27% had self-harmed and one in five had attempted suicide.
True equality can only be achieved when society broadens its view of gender and sexuality
Over a third of those aged 25 years and under had thought seriously about ending their lives within the past year of completing the survey.
Mental wellbeing is a huge issue for LGBTQ young people and students yet our healthcare system still carries the presumption that people are heterosexual and identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. This makes disclosure and discussing health issues unnecessarily difficult for LGBTQ people.
In the Union of Students’ in Ireland’s 2013 ‘Say Something’ study on students’ experiences of violence, LGBT students account for 15% of respondents. The survey data suggests that LGBT students were more likely to have experienced the behaviours examined in the study than non-LGBT students with 22% of LGB students having experienced some form of physical violence compared to 14% of non-LGB students.
For Trans respondents, data suggests even more pronounced levels of students experiencing physical and sexual violence.
Students continue to lead the way on making Ireland a better place for LGBTQ people. College LGBTQ societies like Trinity’s QSoc are providing vital supports and social outlets for LGBTQ students on campus and it’s great to see these societies going from strength to strength every year. USI celebrates the 21st anniversary of Pink Training this month – the largest training event for students on LGBTQ issues in Europe.
Students are playing a large role in campaigning for gender recognition and they will be a vital force in the referendum campaign on marriage equality in 2015.
By being ourselves and embracing diversity and by standing in solidarity with those whose rights are being denied – we will eventually realise an Ireland that values all of its citizens equally, regardless of gender or orientation and allows them the freedom to be themselves without fear.
While we have made significant advances in recent years, it’s clear that some things have changed and some things have stayed the same. I’ll leave you with the following quote from a Ladies’ Home Journal article in 1918:
“The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”
