LGBTQ people are still discriminated against both institutionally and in our day to day lives:

• Gay men in the UK remain unable to donate blood.
• 65% of young LGB school pupils experience homophobic bullying. 3 in 5 never report the abuse and when they do nothing is done about it 62% of the time .
• Many individuals continue to experience homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the workplace from both their colleagues and their employers.
• The austerity measures outlined by the current government will hit specialist services that LGBTQ people disproportionately rely upon for health and welfare provisions.
• Surveys have shown that as many as 1 in 5 LGBT people have experienced abuse ranging from verbal insults to physical assaults over the last three years.
• The number of physical assaults rises significantly in the case of LGBT people who are also from minority ethnic backgrounds.
• 1 in 8 LGB victims of physical assault in the last three years were sexually assaulted during the incident.
• Every year thousands of LGBT people across the world are imprisoned, tortured and executed by their own governments.
• 1 in 3 LGBT people will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. This is significantly higher than our heterosexual and cisgendered peers.

Whether it’s being bullied in the playground, beaten for who we date, denied access to critical services or experiencing insults as part of our everyday existence, the LGBTQ campaign seeks to educate and encourage LGBTQ people to raise our own voices, demand liberation for ourselves and for our brother and sister campaigns, recognising that we cannot achieve liberation in isolation from those who are oppressed on any grounds.

For this reason we must work more closely with the Women’s, BME and Disabled campaigns, who have been marginalised within our own community for too long. LGBTQ people are significantly more likely to experience mental health problems as a result of discrimination. Women are still under-represented in our student unions and our political campaigns. Dishearteningly little is done to educate BME students about LGBT issues, nor has the racism against and fetishization of BME people in our community been challenged effectively. Their struggle IS our struggle. Cross-liberation is the only reasonable method of attaining liberation.

Issues facing Asexual individuals

The biggest issue is the lack of awareness – most people have never heard of asexuality. Our community and most of our activism is online; there are very few ‘face-to-face’ support groups. This can leave many asexuals feeling isolated. Another big issue is erasure –when many people hear about asexuality, they dismiss it as non-existent or a problem that needs fixing, or they believe it’s too trivial to be discussed. There are also many misconceptions, e.g. that asexuality is characterised by hatred of sexual expression. Whilst not all asexuals are sex-positive, this is not the definition of asexuality.