LGBT Rights: Can London Really Be Proud?

London will be celebrating Pride until July 9 with loads of art, music and films about LGBT diversity and rights but do we really have much to be proud of? The reality is that LGBTs still suffer a considerable gap in health standards and quality of life compared to the rest of the community.

In one of the largest survey of homosexuals in England, the University of Cambridge found that LGBT people are two to three times more likely to have psychological health problems such as depression and anxiety. While 5% of heterosexual men reported those problems, the rates among homosexual and bisexual men were 11% and 15% respectively. A similar pattern was found among women, as 12% of lesbians and 19% of bisexual women suffered from enduring psychological illness, compared to only 6% of heterosexual women.

The same research demonstrated that 22% of gay men and 26% of bisexual men report poor general health, together with 25% of lesbians and 31% of bisexual women. “The survey shows that sexual minorities suffer both poorer health and have worse experiences when they see their GP,” says Professor Martin Roland, director of the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research.

Why is there still such a huge gap in health and happiness after the achievement of so many important rights? Why is being a LBGT person still dangerous? Epidemiologists and social scientists are finally coming together to answer these questions. “Minority stress” and “in-group discrimination” are some of the issues scientists are trying to tackle.

Minority stress and its risks

Minority stress is caused by the extra effort that members of a marginalised group need to make in order to be accepted. Many LGBTs spend their adolescence being more vigilant and overcompensating for their sense of isolation. In the UK the Public Health England (PHE) has found that 55% of young LGBT students experienced homophobic bullying and 36% of gay men hid their sexual identity. One in six lesbians, gay and bisexual people had been the victim of a homophobic hate crime or incident over the previous three years.

Marciel Santana, a 31-year-old Brazilian fashion designer who has been living in London for nine years, recalls trying to be interested in football even though he didn’t like it. “I didn’t understand it but that’s what straight boys do so you need to like it to feel part of the group. The effort is always there as you need to prove to everyone that you are doing well, that you can have a career and a family if you want to.”

A 2014  study from Columbia University compared cardiovascular risks of straight and gay teenagers. They concluded that gay kids didn’t have a greater number of “stressful life events” but the ones they experienced caused more harm to their nervous systems.  Public Health England (PHE) has shown that gay men are more likely to be dependent on alcohol and young LGBTs are almost twice as likely as heterosexuals to use drugs and alcohol.

William Elder, a sexual trauma researcher and psychologist, claims that “the trauma for gay men is the prolonged nature of it.” He explains that a person experiencing a traumatic event can develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD can be treated in a few months of therapy but when a person experiences many years of small stressors on a daily basis, the trauma can be more damaging and difficult to treat. While minority stress explains a lot, it is not the whole story. A first round of harm occurs before a gay person comes out of the closet but a second round, which is usually considered to worse, happens once he or she comes out.

LGBT “ in-group discrimination”

Over the last 10 years researchers have found that anxiety and depression are higher among men who came out recently than among those still hiding their sexuality. That challenges what psychologists believed for decades, that coming out was a relief that allowed gays to build a less stressful life within a community of people with the same experiences.

John E. Pachankis, a researcher from Yale University, claims that many bisexual and gay men regard the LGBT community itself as a significant source of stress in their lives. The main reason is the “in-group discrimination” they face within their own community due to their weight, income, race and specially their degree of masculinity.

Masculinity norms play an important role in this context. “The challenges of masculinity get magnified in a community of men,”  says Pachankis. “It has to be constantly enacted or defended or collected. We see this in studies: You can’t threaten masculinity among men […] they show more aggressive posturing, they start taking financial risks, they want to punch things.” Training hard or taking different sex roles are among ways that gay men pressure each other to obtain “sexual capital”.

This helps to explain the widespread stigma against feminine guys within the gay community. Most gay men are interested in dating someone masculine and they want to act more masculine themselves, says Dane Whicker, a clinical psychologist at Duke University. These masculinity norms have a high price as feminine gay men show a higher risk of loneliness, mental illness and suicide. Masculine gay men, on the other hand, are more anxious, use more drugs and have more risky sex, with the rise of chemsex parties in London a sad example.

In 2016, Matthew Todd, editor of the London-based magazine Attitude, the UK’s best-selling gay publication, published Straight Jacket, discussing his own life and issues around gay shame. “Gay people grow up hearing the same messages that straight people who end up being homophobic hear,” he says. “There aren’t magical ear plugs that gay kids are given to stop them absorbing society’s homophobia, so naturally they internalize it.”

Breaking that vicious bullying cycle would be one of the greatest advances for gay rights, and might help to give London more to be proud of when it celebrates Pride.

 

By Ana Luiza Magalhães

 

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