We need to kick homophobia and transphobia out of sport – so why aren’t we?

The Stonewall Awards celebrate the positive contribution people and groups make to the lives of LGBT people throughout the UK.

The winner of the 2011 ‘Sports Award of the Year’  was Anton Hysén, a 21-year-old Swedish footballer who is one of the only openly gay professional football players in the world.

But he wasn’t the first to come out.

I’d like to share with you the story of Justin Fashanu. The last name might sounds vaguely familiar to some – he was the brother of Wimbledon legend John Fashanu.

Justin’s not as well known as his brother is, but he should be.

You see, not only was he the first million-pound black player? He was the first – ever – openly gay professional football player.

He came out 1990 – managers refused to let him train with his teammates; fellow professionals told him gays had no place in sport. His brother? Disowned him.

And in 1998, he committed suicide.

Every year, I see the LGBT sections of political parties speak out loudly and proudly – and rightly so – when people are refused entry to pubs, or B&Bs, or narrow-minded MPs of public figures say marriage is not for the queer community.

But they never make a big deal of this.

And this saddens me.

Sport, in general, is a widely neglected area when it comes to gay rights. Having LGBT versions of events such as the World Cup & Olympics is all well and good, but why do we act as if this is simply enough?

Why are we more willing to ignore this divide in sport, when we campaign so vigorously in other arenas?

Simply signing the Sports Charter is not enough. We need to do more.

The most popular sport amongst the children of the UK is football. Globally, it’s a multi-billion pound industry.

And yet we seem quite content to ignore the issues of homophobia (and transphobia), allowing kids to grow up thinking that to be a professional footballer you have to be straight or closeted, indirectly implying the homophobic abuse is merely just part of the game.

Yes, it’s true that simply holding events on these days won’t do much to change things in the short-term, but people need to be more aware of it. And the more people who are aware, the more we are able to help educate and, eventually, break the pattern of behaviour.

When Feb 19th came round last year, I was genuinely saddened by the complete lack of coverage LGBT sites and groups gave to the Football v Homophobia campaign – an international effort to bring to the front the very real issues people are presented with.

Where were the events? The marches? The talks? The kick-a-bouts between local LGBT groups in parks?

I was hoping this year might be different – that, after the exposure given to the problem of racism in football, other groups would up their visibility and join the debate, pointing out there are many, many other problems we should address alongside those already mentioned.

But it looks like I’m going to be disappointed this year, too.

Memo to Labour: Less bitching, more listening

There are times when I question why I’m even in the Labour party*.

Not because of our leader, who I support, or based on policies which I broadly agree with (no person could or should ever support 100% of a manifesto, unless they are a party of one).

It is the sheer sense of entitlement that emanates from every faction within.

You only need to look at the reactionary comments to Ed Balls’ speech to the Fabians to see this in all it’s glory.

If we are a party of all – which I think we are – why are we incapable of having a grown-up discussion about anything? Why do we immediately go to the default bag of tricks, muttering “sell-out” or “Tory”; “sack the leader” or “___ for leader”? It isn’t a competition, to see which pseudo-intellectual bollocks wins the idealogical-battle-of-the-week award.

Because the world outside of the activist bubble? Where people don’t really give a toss about which little nook of the big red canvas you’ve carved for yourself? Want answers.

And here’s a little secret for you – they can deal with tough answers. They aren’t children, like us; they appreciate facts and figures and the truth.

So, if we say to them Osborne’s plans are so bad that the economy will be awful in 2015? They’ll get it.

And if we say we will spend the next three years doing our best to get them to change course so this damage is limited? They’ll get it.

And if, at the end of all this, they elect us? When we say “we can fix this, but not this”, they will get it.

In fact, the only people that don’t seem to get this pragmatic, realistic telling of what has to be is … well … the Labour party.

Being credible is about being honest and – sometimes – the truth hurts.

The truth is, we aren’t in Government – all we can do is keep telling the country and the Govt they are wrong. We don’t want to be proved right re: the state of the economy (nobody wants to gloat at people’s suffering), but we probably will be.

The truth is, there will be no surplus money (in any country, courtesy of the Eurozone) to magically erase the cuts.

And the truth is, right now, that there are those more concerned with battling for internal, ideological dominance than listening to what is being said.

Listening costs nothing, but it is the key to everything.

*I won’t leave and I’m not a Lib Dem, so hush with your comments before you start!

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them

When the clock strikes 11am on Remembrance Sunday and November 11th, I bow my head and think of the stories of my grandfather; a lorry driver turned bomb disposal expert who got blown up more times than people can remember, and survived; I think of my uncle who, after having a tank dropped on him, defied doctors and learned to walk again; I think of James, a friend and childhood sweetheart who died doing the job he loved above all else. He was just 17.

What I don’t do is spend it angered by the fact politicians wear poppies, or reject the tradition of remembering the trials and tribulations of war – the good and the bad aspects – because people who work for companies whose work I don’t support like to wear them also.

It’s not show-business in any sense of the word; what’s glitzy and appealing in watching hundreds of service personnel and family marching to remember their comrades? What’s uplifting and cheery about a religious service that carries the solemn tones of a mass funeral reading?

Each person has the right to remember the dead in the way they see fit – red poppy, white poppy or even no poppy – respect it, allow it, but never, ever play politics with it.

Remembrance Sunday has no link to the budget decisions of past and present governments, it’s a tradition that has and will continue to outlive many of those in power – and I, as a young, working-class person, object to the way in which Laurie Penny has chosen to use our name to enter the ‘show business’ world of crass political point scoring.

Is this what women really want?

This article was first published on LabourList on Monday September 12th

There was been much shouting and flailing across political cyberspace yesterday, based on the substance of an article in the Independent talking of a ‘women-only’ event at Labour conference.

Firstly, I think it is only fair to point out that the majority of people debating this – both male and female – have no objection to women-only events; you only have to look back throughout the last few years to see that other gatherings and conferences have gone without a hitch. What is different this time, however, can be captured in the following line:

“There will be formal resolutions based on suggestions from female members who are being invited to the platform to put their case on education, childcare, the economy and the NHS, as well as party rules.”

I don’t want to get into the debate of whether men should be allowed to attend women-only events – I think there is a need for individual minority groups to have their own space for debate, discussion and whatnot – but if decisions are to be made on key issues, should we not all have a say? Will these ‘formal resolutions’ have input from all other groups, or just this one?

People’s queries are valid, and it’s right we question what this means and ask for clarification (it is, after all, a newspaper article and should be treated with some scepticism) – but that doesn’t mean anyone annoyed is sexist or has a deep-seated urge to suppress women.

Indeed, the best summation of the situation has come not from a party stalwart, but a 13-year-old girl.

But, in all of the finger-pointing and voice raising, people seem to be over-looking a more worrying statement. Because, for me? This is the biggest problem with the article:

“One demand that is expected to be passed is the proposal by Ms Harman for there always to be a woman in Labour’s leadership, either as deputy or as leader”

In Defence of Refounding Labour

After having read several increasingly angry posts on Refounding Labour that curse the party and the people involved, I felt that there was something people seem to be casually glossing over in their rants and rebuttals that is actually really quite important – the boring, techie side of the whole affair.

How many of you have ever tried to undertake a task of this size? How many of you understand not just the theory, but the technicalities behind the entire process?

And when you have all of this information, how do you present it?

After nearly five years of working in a position where you have to be on the ball technically, legally, editorially and many other things beside, I can tell you even I forget the little things sometimes – so are we really surprised that, as a party who can’t claim to be anywhere near technologically advanced, that people maybe went about this whole process in the wrong way?

And so it’s easy to understand why Ed himself stated the submissions would be published; if that was the plan, you – rightly or wrongly – assume that those building and creating the site and structures involved in the consultation have put into place the correct mechanisms to make this easy.

But, for whatever reason, they didn’t. You may be annoyed, furious, confused or any of the many other adjectives found in the vocabularies of seasoned members of any party. But – and this is key point I think many people are casually ignoring in favour of their own conspiracy theories – procedure comes first.

The law comes first.

How many of you ignored the the check box on the online forms, saying you didn’t wish your comments to appear on the site, yet publishing them onto your own blog? How many CLPs explicitly stated they would be/would not be happy with their comments being published online for all to see in their written/email submissions? The truth is, we simply don’t know.

Data Protection is not something to take lightly and so, if it takes months to ensure all the permissions are in place? It takes months.

And we shouldn’t forget, this is the first exercise of this kind the party has undertaken, and there were obviously going to be unforeseen problems; nobody ever gets anything right first time round, and you can be absolutely certain that this particular mistake won’t be made again.

I’m normally not the most optimistic or forgiving person when it comes to things our own party gets wrong, but on this? Experience tells me they should be given time.

We are all accepting of mistakes, since we all make them, but we should wait to see how these problems are (or aren’t) resolved before we dole out the criticisms and declare the whole process a massive failure.

News of the World

Today, at 3:30pm, I put on my coat and left the office.

Over an hour later, I got a call from my boss: “Just a heads up,” he said, “but the News of the World is closing on Sunday.”

There aren’t really any words to describe the feeling I experienced at that moment – I don’t work for NotW, I’m not a journalist, but I do work for the company. And I know how much the majority of the people who work there – innocent, hard working people, getting all their information about the alleged past times of our predecessors from the TV along with the rest of the public – are hurting.

Hurting because they are as affected as the rest of us by these actions, but also because they are carrying the burden of accusation and guilt. They don’t deserve it, but they go on anyway – they have never condoned or defended the indefensible; they know the stigma that comes with being associated with a company that gains a reputation (for whatever reason) but, undeterred, they carry on with their jobs knowing they and the people around them are not responsible for the sins of the past.

So I can’t look at twitter, or Facebook, or the news, and see the joy and rapture of those who think that innocent people losing their jobs is a cause for celebration.

Those hurt today simply don’t deserve it.

The Blair Effect

If I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is turn up in Edinburgh in May, 1953 and quietly suggest to the Blairs that Marmite would be an appropriate name for the son they were about to have.

One mention of the dreaded ‘B’ word has people reaching for their statistical play-books, marching forth on twitter like political evangelists taking on the might of the non-believers.

I have the same feeling towards Blair as I do Marmite – indifferent. Although, I’m not sure I’d want to put Blair on my toast.

I neither love him for his supposed messianic qualities, nor loathe him for his apparent systematic destruction of the world via ‘illegal’ means. He’s just … OK.

I know, right? How could it be *possible* for a Labour Party member to hold no strong, polarising opinion on their most divisive figure? Maybe we’ll (yes, we, there are quite a few of us!) donate our bodies to medical science in years to come).

Perhaps I should start yet *another* faction within our ranks: The Blair Indifference Society.

Has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it? The BIS.