Perception on homophobia and LGBTQ+ rights

These two months working as a volunteer in Romania, talking about bullying and discrimination with the students in the schools, it has caught my attention especially their reaction when we talk about homophobia and LGBTQ+ comunity, so I’ve decided to dedicate my first post in this blog to talk about this topic.

During the development of our workshops me and my collegues have noticed that many of our students don't feel confortable talking about homosexuality and have even shown some attitudes of intolerance towards the LGBTQ+ community. These attitudes have appeared mainly during our third workshop when we do an activity called Life cards. During this activity we give the student different ‘characters’ such as gay, lesbian, transgender, gypsy, jewish, muslim, refugee or blind among others, and they have to imagine that they are those people for a day and how their life would change. The main aim of this activity is to help understand diversity and to develope empathy by putting ourselves inthe place of others. Though most of the people in the classes perform this activity very well we have noticed that they have more trouble in putting themselves in the paper of lesbian, gay or transgender than in any of the others ‘characters’, even refusing to answer the questions about them out loud. 

But what impressed me the most was seeing in the questionaries we give them on the first workshop that almost all of them would feel unconfortble having a friend that is homosexual or transgender.

So homophobia can be described as “negative attitudes and feelings towards people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender”, and generates fear and prejudice towards these collectives that can manifest in legal restrictions, institutional discrimination, bullying or even violence againts them. 

In my own experience I think romanian society is still quite conservative in regard to the rights of gay, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people, and though the country has carried out many legal changes in the last tweenty years by descriminalising homosexuality and enforcing laws against homophobic hate crimes I think there’s still a lot to do in this field.

We as society and as individuals cannot forget that “every person regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression are entitled to their rights. LGBTQ+ rights are not special rights, but the same human rights that should be afforded to all individuals”, and I’m glad that me and my colleges are able to talk about this topic and hopefully also transmit this message to the youngsters.

- Lucía