COVID-19: physically distant but still connected to my LGBT+ community
Coronavirus is having an impact on every facet of our lives. For those of us who sit under the LGBT+ [Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans] rainbow umbrella and who are working from home, we are suddenly inviting colleagues into our homes every time we go online for a meeting.
Even for those of us who are out and proud in the workplace, this can still have its challenges: it’s one thing for my colleagues to know I am a euphoric Eurovision fan — forever to ’til the end of time — but quite another for them to see the life-size TARDIS and assorted Sonic the Hedgehog memorabilia around my bedroom, and that’s before they spot the Pierre et Gilles photo book and homoerotic comics.
The division between work and home has definitely blurred and possibly will never be the same again.
I am writing this at home on Friday 3 April 2020 — the day I should have been representing Middlesex University at Stonewall’s annual Workplace Conference here in London, and the day the postponement of the 30th Brighton & Hove Pride has been announced.
I am more physically distant from my found community than I have been for a long time, and yet at the same time these past few weeks I have been in closer contact online with some of my closest gay friends, my family and my colleagues than I have been for ages.
I wrote the following blog post for our Middlesex University staff intranet back in October 2019. Certainly a lot has happened since then, but I thought I should share an updated version of it more widely. It’s more important than ever for us to come together, maybe not in person but certainly virtually, to support each other through the coming weeks and months. As I tweeted at the beginning of last week when Boris Johnson announced the nationwide lockdown:
We are all in collective shock. As a public health student, I always have to remind myself that behind every statistic are people who are loved — mothers, fathers, children, partners, friends, colleagues.
The worst is yet to come. But we will make it through this.
We are all our own intersections in the beautiful Venn diagram of life.
I am a cisgender gay man — my pronouns are he and him — and I came out in my first year at university more than 20 years ago.
But I bet you didn’t know these things about me: my Dad comes from Mauritius — I have South Asian heritage — and I am a fairly fluent German speaker. The first Pride parade I walked in was on my ERASMUS exchange in Cologne back in 1998. Notably the first Pride I participated in with my employer was with Middlesex in 2018.
Speaking out about LGBT+ health
At the end of September 2019, I was invited to speak at Stonewall’s Manchester Workplace Conference about LGBT health in the workplace, the first such session focussing on health at the campaign group’s conferences for employers.
LGBT+ people have to navigate all sorts of inequalities in their lives, and so it’s only right that employers take steps to ensure they are made to feel welcome and their views are taken into account. I talked about my own experiences of being diagnosed HIV positive in 2007 and how, with the support of friends, family and colleagues, I have found the confidence to do lots of media and advocacy work, including a video for BBC Three that has gained more than a million views on YouTube alone.
We achieve more as we can be ourselves
As I told the conference, I couldn’t ask for a more supportive employer than Middlesex. I feel our equality, diversity and inclusion [EDI] work isn’t just a tick-box or tokenistic exercise: we really go the extra mile to practise what we preach to help all of our students and staff to feel included and to thrive. These past few weeks I have been so heartened to see my colleagues working so hard to support others.
At an individual level, reasonable adjustments are made for me to attend my six-monthly clinic appointments — they help me to stay well. At the University level, as co-chair of our LGBT+ Everyone Else Forum, I have been encouraged to tell my story, to hold HIV awareness-raising events, to write about the changing nature of HIV, and to participate in the Positive Allies scheme for employers.
Over the past few years I have been studying for an MSc in Applied Public Health — yet another way in which Middlesex has supported me — and so I was able to use my knowledge of epidemiology to talk about where we are in the fight against HIV in this country and around the world.
Finding our new normal
Of course, when I was preparing my presentation back in the autumn, I had no idea that only a few months later all of us would face such an imminent threat to our physical health and mental wellbeing from COVID-19.
Suddenly the words on so many people’s lips are ‘flattening the (epidemiological) curve’, ‘exponential growth’ and ‘social distancing’. I think it’s fair to say all of us with at least some understanding of public health and epidemiology knew a global pandemic caused by a new zoonotic virus was possible at any time, but I am not sure many, if any, of us knew what would it feel like to live through one and to have to adapt to our new normality so quickly.
I mentioned the following statistic in my talk back in September 2019 as I found it so sad and shocking: in the United States, the country that spends the most on health, if you are a young gay Black man, you have a 1 in 2 chance of acquiring HIV in your lifetime.
In the coronavirus pandemic, socioeconomic and health inequity is likely to play out just as starkly as it has with HIV over the past three decades — with devastating results for many marginalised communities across the world.
In this country we have made amazing progress in tackling the HIV epidemic — it is arguably one of the most exciting areas of public health, in that we have achieved so much in recent times. Data from Public Health England (PHE) show new HIV diagnoses have been falling for more than three years in a row. Since 2015 there has been a staggering decline in new HIV diagnoses among gay and bi men.
While this is incredibly encouraging news, not all men who are gay or bi have been seeing these dramatic rates of decline, in particular gay and bi men of Black, Asian and Latino backgrounds. It is no surprise that those gay and bi men who are often the most marginalised from their own communities, as well as society as a whole, have to contend with health inequalities too.
Our own LGBT+ communities should be a welcoming haven of safety, but for many of us who are QTIPOC [Queer, Trans and Intersex People of Colour] we often don’t quite fit in in our newly found community as well as facing a lack of acceptance in the community we grew up in.
A Stonewall survey found that 51% of BAME [Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic] LGBT people reported having experienced racism in the LGBT+ community; this number rises to 61% for Black LGBT people. How can we make our communities more inclusive and welcoming — however they manifest themselves online or in person — so we can start to bridge the gap?
The next few weeks and months are going to be tough for all of us to get through. The evidence suggests it might be even harder for those of us who are LGBT+, especially if we don’t live in supportive homes. Stonewall found in their 2018 LGBT in Britain — Health survey that:
- Half of LGBT people (52%) had experienced depression in the past year
- One in six LGBT people (16%) said they had drunk alcohol almost every day over the past year
- One in eight LGBT people aged 18–24 (13%) said they had attempted to take their own life in the past year
In December 2019 I trained as a Mental Health First Aider, and I have a feeling that training is going to be invaluable over the coming weeks and months — not only for supporting others but for supporting my own mental health.
Taking us back to where we started, MHFA England’s latest campaign, My Whole Self, encourages us to bring our whole self to work — wherever that may be:
In 2020 we shouldn’t have to leave parts of our identity behind — be that our cultural or ethnic background, sexuality, or health — when we work. When we’re empowered to be our ‘whole self’ at work we can build deeper connections. This helps us to be more understanding of our colleagues, so we work better together, whether online or in person.
Staying in and staying connected
Even though we need to stay at home and stay apart, we can stay connected online.
As a community of LGBT+ staff, students, friends and allies, we’ll be continuing to post ideas of things to do, films and shows to watch, and books and articles to read at home on this blog, on Twitter and in our Facebook group.
If you are a Middlesex colleague, on our staff intranet, you will also find more details of how to get in touch with us for a chat and to join us for one of our virtual events.
Our team of Mental Health First Aiders can be contacted at mhfa@mdx.ac.uk, or search for “Mental Health First Aid” on the MDX staff intranet to read more about us and to find out how to get in touch with us individually.
If you are a Middlesex student, you can keep in touch with the Students’ Union liberation groups for support.
MDXSU have lots of ideas for things to keep yourself entertained as well as places where you can seek LGBT-friendly support online or over the phone.
Do check out the hashtag #StayInForLGBT on Twitter for online events to get involved in, such the weekly #EurovisionAgain watch parties that are raising money for LGBT+ charities while we’re having fun together.
If you are able to help other LGBT+ people — or you need help yourself — Stonewall have put together a list of LGBT-friendly support organisations. OutLife also have some ideas for how you can support other LGBT+ people, such as calling older people who might be isolated and lonely.
I know we’re not able to unfurl our rainbow umbrella at Pride this year, but whether it’s at home or on campus, we’ll be here for you.
Ant Babajee is Middlesex University’s CRM Manager and Co-Chair of our LGBT+ Network
