Never Again.

27 Jan

January 27th holds a particular significance for the LGBTQ+ community as it marks Holocaust Day of Remembrance, the day when the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland was liberated in 1945.

On this day we reflect on the lives lost at the hands of one of the most evil regimes in the world at that time, and although those of the Jewish faith were the main victims of this genocide, many people often do not realise that many other groups and people who the Nazi’s deemed to be undesirable were also impacted.

In addition to the six million people Jewish people murdered at the hands of the Nazis, almost six million Soviet civilians, three million Soviet prisoners of war, almost two million Polish civilians and upwards of three hundred thousand Serbian civilians were also killed.

The genocide didn’t stop at national borders though. Around a quarter of a million disabled people, half a million Roma Gypsies, several thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses, seventy thousand ‘repeat criminal offenders & anti social elements’, an unknown number of political opponents and resistance activists and thousands of the LGBTQ+ community were also murdered.

All ordinary people like you and I.

The sheer scale of the Holocaust is almost unbelievable, as is the fact that many people have no idea how it came to happen in the first place. Such events don’t occur in isolation, but are rather the end product of a long series of much smaller actions and events that are often deemed at the time to be perfectly acceptable or reasonable.

Starting with the demonisation and dehumanisation of those deemed to be ‘undesirable’ in society.

For the LGBTQ+ community in Germany that started in 1933 with the banning of gay and lesbian groups, publications and venues, alongside articles in the German press attacking the LGBTQ+ community, starting a chain if events which came to a head on the 6th May that year with the destruction of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for the Science of Sexuality) in Berlin.

This institute was set up by Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew and gay man himself, in 1919. It was dedicated to furthering scientific research and understanding of the LGBTQ+ community in order to help the community as well as promote acceptance and LGBTQ+ rights. The institute pioneered many early gender confirmation surgeries for transgender people, employed many LGBTQ+ people and acted as a hub for the community at that time.

On that day, the German Student’s Union attacked and looted the institute, which was continued by the Sturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. Four days later, the contents of the research library was destroyed in one of the first ‘book burnings’, setting the scientific understanding of the LGBTQ+ community, and especially the trans community, back by more than seventy years. It’s also thought that Dora Richter, the first known trans woman to undergo complete gender confirmation surgery may have been killed in this or a subsequent attack on the institute.

The same tactics were used against other ‘unacceptable’ communities and groups, forming the beginning of the chain that ended with the genocide of seventeen million ordinary people.

Does that sound familiar, because it should?

Across the western world those same tactics are being used against the LGBTQ+ community again, in particular against the transgender community.

Here in the UK we are now approaching the seventh year of a manufactured moral panic about transgender people, and particularly transgender women. Originally started by the UK press spreading misinformation about Gender Recognition Reform, it has now extended into the public and political spheres.

Several highly prominent trans hostile activists have called for ‘a reduction in the number of people transitioning’ calling transgender people ‘a huge problem in a sane world’, and a celebrated author has called for an end to presumption of innocence (the principle of innocent until proven guilty) when it comes to transgender people existing society. Multiple faux ‘women’s groups’ whose sole purpose is to oppose transgender people and remove us from society have also appeared, trying to perpetuate the false idea that women’s rights are under threat by trans women simply existing.

Right wing political parties are using the bogus ‘threat’ of transgender people to distract from their own failings, blaming trans people for everything from climate change to the collapse of the NHS, and public bodies have been populated by those opposed to transgender people in a concerted attempt to remove existing rights for the transgender community, and an anti-trans group posing as an LGB rights group was granted ‘charity’ status - a group which has recently been found to be linked to a number of suspect and failed far right projects originating in Tufton St, London.

But because of this, hate crime against the transgender community has risen by 1291% since 2011/2012, and by 56% alone in the last year, and we are now also seeing the effects spill over into the rest of the LGBTQ+ community where hate crimes have been rapidly escalating over the last few years as those emboldened by their attacks on the trans community extend their reach

In the USA, this has led to a huge number of states passing anti-trans legislation, effectively removing rights and healthcare for transgender people, and a number of states have passed other anti-LGBT laws, including Florida.

Open attacks on LGBTQ+ venues such as Club Q in Colorado, or ‘Drag Queen Story Time’ events both in the USA and here in the UK are becoming commonplace.

Genocide doesn’t always mean events such as those that happened in the 1940’s, by physically rounding people up. The United Nations defines genocide as :

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

If we apply that definition to the actions being taken against the trans community in recent years, it’s pretty clear that all indications are pointing to an attempted genocide of transgender people is taking place, especially in the UK and USA.

Atrocities like the Holocaust start with accepting attacks against vulnerable communities, often the LGBTQ+ community, and it is because of this that we stand with the Jewish community every 27th January.

Because events like this must never be allowed to happen again. Ever.

Never Again.

Hate Crimes against Trans People in the UK