Celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month

Tom Croghan, Senior Bid Writer

Why do you think it’s important that organisations support LGBT+ History Month?

Supporting LGBT+ History Month, as part of a wider inclusion strategy, helps all employees to feel seen, supported, and respected. Employers who take active steps towards establishing inclusive work policies, by showing visible commitment to LGBT equality and showcasing best practice equality policies, have a real impact on the lives of LGBT staff, helping to boost work morale and create a work environment that people are proud to work in.

Unfortunately, not all organisations have effective inclusion strategies. One in eight lesbian, gay and bi people (12 per cent) wouldn’t feel confident reporting homophobic or biphobic bullying to their employer. This number increases to 22 per cent among younger lesbian, gay and bi people aged 18 to 24. Meanwhile, fewer than half of LGBT staff (44 per cent) say that senior managers in their workplace demonstrate visible commitment to lesbian, gay and bi equality.

By having a strategy to support all people, organisations can promote a culture of tolerance and acceptance, where people are able to stay in work, happy and well. As a business based around keeping people in work, safe and well, it’s important that Medigold Health set a clear example of best practice in preventing anti-LGBT bullying at work. I firmly believe that supporting LGBT+ History Month is a great start.

Have you ever experienced any discrimination because of how you identify?

 I grew up in quite a rural part of the Midlands and words like ‘gay’ and ‘f*gg*t’ were frequently used as a casual insult. However, having someone in a car shout the F word at me and my partner as they drove past us was an experience I won’t forget, nor was the one where someone in a local pub told me to avoid the next stop on our crawl because the owner was a “b** boy”.

This led to my deciding to exclusively live in cities in the future, naively thinking that that would be the end of all discrimination. Little did I realise that I would continue to hear these words used casually. In an old job during an all-hands company Zoom call I was shocked to hear both the CEO and the Marketing Director calling someone the F word jokingly and laughing about it.

As you may be aware, the F word has quite an incendiary meaning in the LGBT+ community, with many believing it refers to a pile of sticks bound together to be placed underneath an LGBT person and set alight. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that I quickly resigned from that organisation!

 Do you think society is more accepting now of LGBT+ people? What are some of the challenges they still face?

I think that British society is now much more accepting of LGBT+ people than it was even 10 years ago. Sadly, the same is certainly not true for my trans brothers and sisters, who face a culture of mainstream vitriol led by major public figures and supported by the current government. Many current ministers in key positions, including those in charge of directing policy on women and equality, have a long history of opposing same-sex marriage and sex self-ID whilst seemingly supporting conversion therapy for LGBT people.

As discovered by a recent Stonewall report, trans people now face such a barrage of hatred that more than one in five trans people (21 per cent) wouldn’t report transphobic bullying in the workplace. Given the horrifyingly high rates of mental illness and suicide among trans people, there’s clearly still a long way to go.

What can organisations do to promote a more inclusive culture? Are there any shining examples you’ve encountered where employers have got it right?

Stonewall’s latest LGBT in Britain – Work Report has made a number of clear suggestions for organisations to promote a more inclusive culture, working with hundreds of organisations and thousands of LGBT people to formulate their recommendations. These are designed to be both effective and commercially viable, helping all employees to feel respected and to fully engage with their workplace. Some of the key recommendations include:

• Develop clear zero tolerance policies on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic discrimination and harassment, with clear sanctions for staff and customers.
• Implement all-staff diversity and inclusion training, which explains what anti-LGBT discrimination or abuse might look like, why it is bad for business and how to challenge anti-LGBT attitudes among colleagues. Training should also provide staff with an understanding of multiple identities and inequality (for example, the dual discrimination that an LGBT, disabled staff member might face).
• Ensure that line managers have the appropriate training and support to confidently take a zero-tolerance approach to all homophobic, biphobic and transphobic abuse in the workplace.
• Encourage and support the formation of an LGBT network group, so that LGBT employees have visible role models and peers. In smaller organisations employers should assist LGBT staff in joining an external network.
• Empower senior leaders to make visible commitments to LGBT equality through speaking at internal diversity events, authoring internal communications and meeting with the LGBT employee network group. This should also include senior sponsorship for the LGBT network.

Many organisations are on a transformative journey to improve their culture, and fortunately movement in the right direction is increasingly common.

Do you have any LGBT+ role models or people who have inspired you in your life?

I’m fortunate to have many LGBT friends in my life, and each one inspires me in a different way. I have always found more inspiration in people dealing with everyday situations than from celebrities, and to anyone without any LGBT friends – you’re missing out!

What do you think people can do during LGBT+ History Month to raise awareness of important issues that impact the global LGBT+ community?

In Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, gay sex is a capital punishment offence. As individuals, there’s little we can do to change this. All we can really do is put pressure on the government to not do dealings with these states until they make significant changes to their punishment of homosexuality.

Annabel Scriven, Marketing Assistant

Why do you think it’s important that organisations support LGBT+ History Month?

It’s so, so important. Obviously, the long-term goal of LGBT+ awareness is to show that your freedom to declare your sexuality and gender is just as normal as telling someone what flavour of crisps you like. If you’re from a family of avid cheese & onion flavour enjoyers, and your nephew realizes that he actually prefers salt & vinegar flavour, you would just make sure to stock up on his flavour as well as yours for the next family get-together!

We as humans have a long history of creating rules, norms, labels and stigmas where there were previously none, and we’re also especially good at accepting and enforcing them. Before we decided that “homosexuality is a sin” and “we must get 8 hours of sleep a night” (yes – turns out we used to sleep very differently too!), people were not afraid to explore and find out what worked for them, rather than accepting the norm right away.

Organizations have a unique power in our society to influence and dictate norms and behaviour, and they therefore have this incredible opportunity to help abolish these made-up stigmas and rules. Any organization that flies a rainbow flag and celebrates everything that makes humans so special and individual should receive a big pat on the back – you are a role model for the rest of the corporate world!

Have you ever experienced any discrimination because of how you identify?

Luckily, I haven’t. But that’s largely because I was already being bullied in school, so I kept my thoughts and feelings very close to my chest for a long time, knowing that being myself simply wasn’t worth the additional trauma in high school and college. When my family found out that I had a girlfriend, all they wanted to know was: “is she happy?”, and I felt that massive life-long weight lift off my chest. I was the first in my family to express myself in this way, and since then, it has encouraged a few other family members to show their true selves as well. It’s fantastic.

Do you think society is more accepting now of LGBT+ people? What are some of the challenges they still face?

I think that there are different responses depending on sexuality and gender identity. For the ‘LGB’ part, society has improved in leaps and bounds. There’s still a lot that can be done to change minds, but these things take time, especially for those who have walked on this earth longer than younger people, and that’s understandable; shaking off things you learnt as fact when growing up is not easy!

Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go for our fellow trans humans. Before society can understand and accept the idea of changing one’s gender, we have a much bigger hurdle of showing that binary gender itself is once again an invented concept. We’re not computers; we don’t identify as a 1 or a 0 (hence binary); we’re unpredictable, spontaneous, organic human beings. To be expected to know who you are from birth – gender, sexuality, career path, likes and dislikes – it doesn’t make sense. And once that clicks, it’ll be a much smoother ride.

But for now, we as a society are still in that transitioning phase ourselves. Trans people today are attacked from all angles and experiencing transphobia due to an extreme lack of understanding. It’s not a surprise that people are still reluctant to come out and express themselves. However, it seems that in Britain, we’ve reached a turning point – just check out this article from LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall.

What can organisations do to promote a more inclusive culture? Are there any shining examples you’ve encountered where employers have got it right?

It’s quite simple; treat everybody as equal because that’s what we are, whether we’re male, female, non-binary, trans, lesbian, gay, bi, black, white, brown, of mixed ethnic background, disabled, non-disabled, neurotypical, neurodivergent, or however else we identify. Show that you do not tolerate discrimination. Show that your organization does not have a gender pay gap. Celebrate your diversity, share your history, and show that you have moved beyond outdated norms and labels.

Do you have any LGBT+ role models or people who have inspired you in your life?

I’ve always been inspired by those celebrities who have the courage to show the world who they are despite what ridiculous media headlines may come out of it – some are not necessarily LGBT+ though! People like Miley Cyrus, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, and Lil Nas X are unapologetically themselves and I love them for it!

What do you think people can do during LGBT+ History Month to raise awareness of important issues that impact the global LGBT+ community?

It hurts to know that my experience is not the same as that of others across the world. Click here  to see where it is still illegal to be LGBT+. In Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia and the UAE, you can receive the death penalty, and in Qatar, Pakistan, Brunei, Mauritania and Nigeria, you would be sentenced to death by stoning.

So many people turn a blind eye to this when it is causing so much pain and grief across the world. It is our job to tell the world that this is wrong.