Hey there everyone,
I hope you all had a merry christmas, a happy new year, enjoyed anything else you celebrate, and managed to get all of those essays finished that are due in in 10 days (unlike me).
This may seem like a post that is slightly outdated, as the vote has gone through parliament, but we still have the chance to change the governments’ minds on the tuition fees issue, and on the issue of all of the other cuts being put into place throughout society. This may seem like a random topic for me to be posting on my blog, after all, what do LGBTQ rights have to do with cuts? Heres what:
LGBTQ students are much more likely to be alienated from their families.
If you cannot ask your families for support because of your sexuality, you are obviously going to find it much more difficult to manage to deal with rent, bills, food, and expenses, WITHOUT fees being raised even more. LGBTQ students who are already struggling to cope will be disproportionately affected by raising tuition fees.
LGBTQ people are more likely to have problems at school, and therefore less likely to continue on to FE and HE.
72% of young lesbians and gay men have played truant to avoid homophobia, and only 6% of schools have a policy on homophobic bullying. With these odds stacked up against us, much as many LGBTQ people continue on to have a fantastic time at uni, a huge amount do not manage to make it here because of the bullying they experience earlier in life. Again, these increases in fees and cuts to departments will only discourage people who are worried about bullying continuing (2 in 5 who experience bullying are worried it will carry on in later education.)
I marched in London on December 9th not only because I believe that all of the cuts being pushed through parliament will be hugely dehabilitating for our society, but also because it is a part of my job to fight against those things that will damage the lives of current and future LGBTQ students here, and it is undoubtable that this will.
And after getting out of the kettle on Westmintminster Bridge after having been kept in parliament square for approximately 7 hours, and then on the Bridge, packed so tight I could have taken my feet off the floor and not fallen over, watching people pass out and not being let out, I know for certain that their tactics to make us all feel like shit and not come back didn’t work: I have never felt so proud as I did when I had to walk down a line of police about 50 yards long, 3 men thick, all alone because we were only being let out one by one.
