Going where angels fear to tread
A dear friend and colleague Hansa Patel-Kanwal used to say often ‘if we want to build a better world we have to go where angels fear to tread’.
With her words in my ear I stepped into the role of Stonewall Chief Executive. Two years on it is the words of another colleague and friend Zarine Katrak I remember. When I left the sexual health charity FPA, she told me ‘a job – like a relationship – should be everything but boring’.
And I can hand on heart say being CEO of Stonewall is everything but boring. It is fun, it is sometimes tricky, it is rewarding, it has meaning, it is exciting, and most of all it is important.
Important because every day we are driving for social justice for all lesbian, gay, bi, trans+ and queer people. In other words, we are working to materially improve queer people’s lives – bringing about equality, safety, liberation and JOY.
We are rightly impatient for change and in parallel it is important to remember that the LGBTQ+ movement is a relatively young one. Homosexuality was partially decriminalised in 1967 – less than sixty years ago. In that short time we have endured the AIDS crisis and celebrated legislative changes that have freed us to have relationships, families and careers we didn’t dare to imagine. And yet there is still so much more to do both in the UK and around the globe to secure equality for every single person.
Right now we are in the midst of a culture war about trans+ people and a global rollback of LGBTQIA+ rights. Six decades is a single paragraph on one page of the long story of human existence.
Contrast that to the women’s movement, which began with the suffragists, eventually securing the vote in 1918 and still a century later having to campaign for true equality across pay, parenting and more as well as freedom from men’s violence which affects all women. Or the movement for racial justice, traced back to the darkest days of our history when enslaved people fought for the most basic of rights: to be free. Or the disability rights movement, more than a century old and still tackling the live issues of access, stigma and discrimination that impacts so many living with disabilities today.
To be clear I am absolutely not saying that we need to bide our time. It is right we are impatient for change. And we must acknowledge the resilience, fortitude and pain that is intrinsic to these other movements and remember that resistance is always part of progress. It cannot be avoided.
I am proud of and grateful for the energy, emotional labour, tenacity and determination of our movement. We are a resilient movement that is familiar with pushback and turbulence: a movement in motion with changing norms and expectations that is *definitely* not willing to stand still or accept ongoing inequality and prejudice.
In the 30+ years I have been out so much has changed: we have an equal age of consent, we have lifted the ban on LGBTQ+ people in the military, we have the right and means to form a family, and we have equal marriage. All of these seemed so out of reach when I came out. So too it seemed implausible a decade ago that life would be more, not less, difficult for trans+ people in the UK.
But what does forward momentum looks like for LGBTQ+ people across the UK, for Stonewall, for our sector and for the wider world?
In the UK there are now five generations of people in the LGBTQ+ community who, despite the current challenges, are for the most part living freely, openly... and legally. We are a movement continually learning about ourselves and understanding the similarities and differences between us. We are still generating the collective courage to show family, friends and our wider community who we really are and understanding what happens when we do – the good, the bad and the ugly.
That is an important backdrop against which we consciously and subconsciously measure ourselves and our community. It is also an important backdrop against which civil society seeks to work with government and other partners to improve social, economic and health outcomes for LGBTQ+ people.
And improving outcomes for our community is my north star.
In legislation and policy terms that means securing a ban on conversion practices. For eight years, successive governments promised to end abusive conversion practices and have largely failed to act. Publication of a draft bill in June was an important first step. But while survivors have told us, in painstaking detail, the grave toll of the practices they have experienced, remarkably some still believe it is ok for these practices to remain legal.
There may be different views and beliefs about the specifics of the draft Bill but I trust that most sensible people agree that deliberate attempts to change someone’s sexual or gender identity are abhorrent. Nobody should grow up believing they are inadequate or wrong and need changing. Coalescing agreement on the basis of these values is a vital focus of Stonewall’s work over the next period – until the Bill becomes law.
Alongside the specific work to secure a ban on conversion practices we are working collectively to address the untenable situation for trans+ people in the UK right now. Last year's Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act left many trans+ people (and those who love them) feeling frightened and, worse, erased from conversations about their own lives.
Whilst gender reassignment remains a protected characteristic in the Equality Act there is a wide consensus from parliamentarians, activists and civil society that the legal framework is incoherent for trans+ people and will need to change. Together with trans+-led, LGBTQ+ and Human Rights Organisations we have expressed this clearly to Parliamentarians, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Council of Europe.
And we will keep saying it. Trans+ people are an integral, valuable and now more marginalised and ultimately vulnerable part of our community. We stand together in solidarity as lesbian, gay, bi, trans+, non-binary and queer folk. Solidarity, unity, courage and hope bind us. Always.
Solidarity, unity and courage do not mean we are all the same or we think the same. We will not agree on everything neither should we need to. Not within Stonewall, not across the LGBTQ+ community, not with our allies. Often not even within our own friendship groups.
We all have different needs, different priorities and differences of opinion. Pretending or expecting otherwise will not build unity or help us win. Even with differences of opinion we can still stand united to secure rights and freedoms for everyone in our community. To make that a reality we will have to learn to hold differences gently and disagree well.
Disagreeing well is an important discipline especially in the face of a well organised attack on our rights. Disagreeing well calls on us to stay in the room, to assume good faith before bad, to have robust discussions about ideas without shouting at those who hold them. A movement that can only survive if there is complete consensus is not really a movement. Real change, real progress, brings people in with generosity and kindness, however hard that might be.
At Stonewall we cannot and should not do everything – there are so many groups doing brilliant work – but we should and care about every single person in the diverse and frankly brilliant LGBTQ+ community and we treat as equally important the need to tackle bullying in schools, support queer family formation, secure financial inclusion and support the needs of older people.
Together we have so much further to go, so much more to learn and so much opportunity and need for progress.
Two years into the job I love what we do, what we have achieved, what we can achieve that I am learning every single day.
The older I get the more I realise how much I don’t know but I do know with absolute confidence that change is not a single victory. It is years of conversation, persistence and tenacity to change hearts and minds.
And winning hearts and minds we must: to secure a ban on conversion practices, to make the case for trans+ equality in every walk of life, to secure a country where everyone in the rainbow community can live without fear of prejudice and hurt and most importantly with confidence and joy.
If my career in the social sector has taught me anything it is this: we only win when we stay true to our values and understand the different approaches groups take can be a strength rather than a dividing line.
We need all the tactics. We also need to avoid playing into the hands of those who fundamentally disagree with us by creating false dividing lines. We only win when we stand together and invite others in.
Two years done. Two years to be grateful for. Much more to be done. Many more years to go.
We thank everyone who has supported our work over the past two years, including our funders, ambassadors, advocates and associates, as well as our Board of Trustees and everyone engaged with our Proud Employers, Rainbow Laces and Diversity Role Models programmes.
