Despite gains made in many parts of the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people are, in some regions, increasingly persecuted and denied basic human rights. Because bigotry thrives where we are silenced by fear, we've created this space for people to share stories of discrimination and survival. Read these stories, share them, and contribute your own. Let the world know that we will not be silent.
“In the context of young unaccompanied refugees, whose asylum and integration processes are often characterised by uncertainty, misunderstanding and feeling lost, in fact Ali Nasari’s life also seems to be extraordinary, extraordinarily stable.”
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“Our lives are our own to live. The contentment we get from living life the way we want to is more important than how others view our way of living.”
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“To all my trans brothers, I would only urge you to be your true self and never give up on the hope of living your life to the fullest. You don’t need anyone else’s validation.”
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“Trans youth must believe that they have a better future — and that we will continue to strive for a fairer, more just society for the future generations.”
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“This is Mohammed B.’s story. A story of oppression, of suffering and desperation. But it’s also the story of Mohammed’s family, who could never understand him but who made him who he is today.”
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“I want to say thank you. It was a long, tiring and arduous journey, but now I am on a safe land.”
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“Being identified as a Gay Muslim Shiia follwer is more targeted and persecuted.”
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“Reach out, trust your talent, be open to learning, show your confidence – and you too will find places where you truly belong. Remember, talent has no gender!”
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“I knew that society would never acept me, no matter how much of a good person I was, so I decide that I don’t needed society approve to love myself and to be a good person. That’s what’s matter.”
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“I await the day when all people in our society see us as equals.”
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“Life is different when you are free to live your truth. For the first time in a long time, I am secure, self confident and hopeful for my future.”
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“‘Dancing is good. When I dance I laugh.’”
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“Being gay and growing up on a small island in the Caribbean wasn’t quite what i expected it to be”
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“‘In Africa they believe that homosexuals are the spirit of the past – they don’t believe that we are who we are.’”
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“I love China, but it’s hard to love when u feel unsecured, and weak.”
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I was born in Mexico to a Mormon family. When I was eight we moved to Utah. This was not an inclusive place.
I grew up around heavily enforced gender roles. By age twelve I knew that I had to eventually get married in the temple, have kids, and raise them in the church. Women were encouraged to go to college, but there was an expectation that one would leave their career to stay home with the kids. I dreaded that future but I knew there was no option if I wanted to go to heaven.
So I did not have many friends except through social media from other parts of the country and from different backgrounds and life experiences. It was thanks to these friends that I realized I was queer.
In my first year of high school, I was particularly close with one of them. In October she told me she had a crush on me. She was my best friend and I loved her and I didnÕt know how I felt. I spent that semester questioning my feelings and my sexuality. I discovered that I had feelings for her and we started dating.
[history of mental health issues]
. I didnÕt really feel like a cis woman but identified as non-binary and felt comfortable presenting as femme. I hope my identity and pronouns, [inaudible 00:04:59] them at the time, would be better understood and respected in New York.
[details problems in mental health treatment]
Especially growing up in the Mormon church, it really, really affected my mental health because I was all of these things that they didnÕt like. I mean, I was queer. I was trans. I didnÕt know it at the time, but I was. And I was, even being a feminist, I Know Mormons in Utah whoÕve been disowned by their families for being feminist, because theyÕre just that conservative. And so, all of these parts of myself that I knew that if I came out with them to my friends and the people that I knew, it would not be well received and that they would stop associating with me. So, I just had to deny all these parts of myself because they were, you know, I taught that they were inherently horrible and I couldnÕt get, they were parts of me, but I just had to deny them constantly.
The reason IÕm a homeless is because I, the reason IÕm homeless this because of the actions of institutionalized transphobia in the school that I was attending. And because I would rather stay here and transition than go home to Mexico where itÕs not really an option.
Even now with my gender marker changed and my name legally changed, I know IÕm not going to go in and theyÕre going to just misgender me and [inaudible 00:13:35] me. The fear is still there because it was so prevalent for most of my life that people would just dismiss me. Often on the basis of my queerness and itÕs hard to get a job and all these things just isolate people and make it so hard to survive the world.
So, the reason being deadnamed and misgendered hurts so much is because itÕs ultimately a denial of the person that you are. ItÕs just people refusing to see you as you are based on their social understanding. Often itÕs an act of direct violence if somebody knows your pronouns and chooses to use the wrong ones, itÕs an active attempt to deny your humanity. But other times when itÕs just strangers on the street who donÕt know better, itÕs like little pebbles that add up. And just one ends up despairing because for the longest time I thought, IÕm never going to be seen for who I am.
You can be the gender that you identify with without necessarily having to give everything up from your old life. Because ultimately you havenÕt changed. YouÕve always been the same person.](https://whereloveisillegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MM8709_190131_00682.jpg)
“Manhattan College refused to refund one penny. I am now thousands of dollars in debt for credits I didn’t receive and housing I couldn’t access.”
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“Even if the authorities in Germany do not want to believe it: Coming out is not possible in Sierra Leone – you are rejected by your family, ostracized by society and hunted by extremists.”
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“The first time I bought ‘man shoes’ I was terrified to wear them, I think they’re the light blue bowling shoes I have; the first time someone asked me what my pronouns were, I think it might have been @ a BreakOUT! event.”
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“AS I ASKED MYSELF WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG; I FOUND RELIEF IN HITTING MY HEAD ON THE BATHROOM WALL EVERYDAY.”
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“In Uganda there is currently not a single Safe Housing project left…With five euros we could feed someone for three weeks, with ten euros we could buy a mattress. It doesn’t take countless donors, but just a few to rebuild a safe house.”
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“On a warm August day in 1960, at the age of five my Devout, Irish, Catholic Mother, while teaching me how to sew on a button, told me I was gay.”
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“was placed in the psychiatric ward at Florida Hospital in Orlando. I couldn’t stop crying. All those feelings that I had bottled up for tens of years came rushing out all at once.”
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“Years and years of pain, pressure of being the perfect Muslim child, anxiety and confusion, anger. All of it was calmed by one fateful night.”
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“The many attempts to socially and racially eradicate me and then liking men – They constantly told me I was a problem – and that it should have been straight.”
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“The primary driver of us changing countries is to get married and be legally acknowledged as who we are.”
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“Growing up I’ve always known I was very different and there were virtually no trans people in the media or in the fashion industry. This made it very difficult to discover my identity as there was no representation to relate to.”
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“I was proudly out to my friends and endorsed LGBTQ+ rights outside the four walls of my home. However, inside those four walls, I was completely the opposite. I would never talk about sexuality, about me or my identity. I was still in the closet for my father and mother.”
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“I am exactly who I was always meant to be: A queer, bi-racial, HIV+ human.”
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“Are we just here? sitting in the wind Do people see us? Do they even know we are here Screaming so loud.”
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“Being a loud educated transgender woman as a lecturer I am well prepared mentally and physically that this will be a bumpy road for me.”
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“I knew that I was on my 3rd strike with them. If I did anything else that they considered “gay,” I knew they’d kick me out.”
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“There is no one here to meet. At first, I thought there was, A name, a face, a tongue, a body”
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“In my life, I have had two rebirths – at age 21 when I came out of the closet and at age 29 when I was diagnosed with HIV.”
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“‘Gay’ did not exist in my small rural Michigan community. Only words like ‘queer’ or ‘faggot,’ with all their negative connotations.”
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“It hurt to come home and not feel home. In the United States I feel like a stranger, but here? I feel like I don’t belong at all.”
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“Sooner or later I’ll realize that I’m enough.
Sooner or later I’ll realize that the disrespect is too much.
Sooner or later I’ll say I’ve had enough.”
“I know i don’t have it even a fraction as bad as so many members of the lgbt+ community across the world, but it hurts just the same.”
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“No one tells you how complicated it is to go to a public bathroom, everyone looks at you, everyone talks about you, mocks you…”
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“After growing up in a rural conservative area where LGBT rights were seemingly nonexistent, I left and enlisted in the Army.”
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“im brown. im golden. im a child of the sun. a child of the rainbow.”
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“Being a gay Christian of a Pacific ethnicity was never easy. But in 2019, it got harder.”
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“Entering the dance world further amplified the racism, homophobia, transphobia, femmephobia, and body policing that I was already experiencing in the gay world. Who knew the dance world and Grindr would have so much in common?”
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“I clearly heard the manager tell the assistant manager that they would never promote a ‘fag’ in this department.”
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“Free. I’m finally free. I don’t have to walk around and pretend anymore. I’m free.”
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“I never really come out, because it’s too dangerous in my country. My country’s acceptance of homosexual is the lowest in the region.”
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“I tried my best to have a more accurate representation of myself in that country by wearing makeup and unisex clothing….but that had consequences.”
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“Her death is a wound that is gone unhealed and 2 years and 14 days later we still have no justice, only heartbreak and memories.”
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“I have had joy and pain in my life but the most painful thing was having to live a lie, to hide the fact that I was gay. I still hide it for the most part as I live in a homophobic part of the world.”
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“I’m on my own because I know what I do and don’t deserve. I deserve to be happy.”
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“I am the girl who likes boys. I am the girl who love girls as much as I can love a man.”
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