Creating safety through tackling ‘hate crime’?

The ways in which normative heterosexuality is sustained through symbolic and physical violence has been extensively explored; within these debates, LGBT safety has become associated with questions of abuse, violence and discrimination (Corteen, Reference Corteen2002; Moran, Reference Moran2002; Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004). Academic and policy discussions of LGBT safety have frequently been shaped by a focus on how to respond to violence, harassment, verbal comments and other forms of ‘abuse’. Questions of safety, therefore, have thus been reduced to – and have often been framed in terms of – policing, criminality and, more recently, hate crime. The concept of ‘hate crime’ allows a specific claim for justice to be made (Mason, Reference Mason2007; Morgan, Reference Morgan2002) within the limits of what is knowable and reportable as ‘hate crime’. As Morgan (Reference Morgan2002) notes, for an incident to be recognised as a ‘hate crime’, there has to be an identification of hate motivation on the part of a perpetrator and an identification between the victim and any particular victimised group(s) appearing on a list of groups specified in hate crime statutes. In England and Wales, the Criminal Justice Act (2003) places ‘sexual orientation’ onto the list of hate crimes, and offenders can receive longer sentences if they demonstrate hostility towards ‘the victim’ on the basis of sexual orientation, or if the offence is itself motivated by such hostility. The validity of claims is dependent on whether the incident meets these formal definitional criteria. Moreover, meeting such criteria in turn depends upon the construction of notions of culpability and victimisation, which are themselves influenced by the social, cultural and interactional contexts in which violence occurs (Mason, Reference Mason2007; Richardson and May, Reference Richardson and May1999).

In the UK, safety initiatives for LGBT people have been introduced over the past decade or so in the context of legislative change and the recognition of ‘sexual orientation’ within equalities agendas (Moran, Reference Moran2002; McGhee, Reference McGhee2003). Such safety initiatives tend to focus on ‘hate crime’, defined through discourses of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia,Footnote ⁴ and to place the emphasis of redress with the state. This reflects, and is reflected in, moves beyond framing sexual minority citizenship in terms of ‘tolerance’ and ‘homosexual privacy’, and towards more inclusive policing; simultaneously, discriminatory laws have been ‘de-homosexualised’ (McGhee, Reference McGhee2004). Together with the introduction of hate crime legislation, these moves appear to have created a policing and criminal justice system that can include LGBT people's needs. However, it is not necessarily the case that policing and criminal justice measures are the most appropriate or only response to experiences of abuse. The emergence of participatory modes of government and multi-agency partnerships that take a ‘community safety’ approach (McGhee, Reference McGhee2003) means that criminal justice is losing its ‘monopoly over safety’ (Moran, Reference Moran2002: 9). In this context, dealing with questions of safety also involves the use of resources that are available to LGBT communities and individuals (see Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004; also Corteen, Reference Corteen2002; Mason, Reference Mason2001) such as homes and community spaces that offer the opportunity to create safe spaces that are not bound by heterosexual norms (Browne, Reference Browne2006; Gorman-Murray, Reference Gorman-Murray2008; Kentlyn, Reference Kentlyn2008; Nash and Bain, Reference Nash and Bain2007). Indeed, forging common spaces to deal with shared experiences of abuse can help to foster a sense of collectivity, common cause and solidarity among LGBT people. Not only might identity politics be a means through which LGBT people can make connections that help them to deal with abuse (Moran and Sharpe, Reference Moran and Sharp2004), but reparative practices can help to foster collective LGBT identities themselves.

In contrast to this emphasis on collectivity, recent academic investigations have sought to examine the creation of specific norms of culturally acceptable homosexuality (Bell and Binnie, Reference Bell and Binnie2000). This research has examined how social and political hierarchies cut across sexual and gendered differences within LGBT collectives along the lines of privilege, including class, race and gender: the normative system associated with such hierarchies has been called ‘homonormativity’ (Bryant and Vidal-Ortiz, Reference Bryant and Vidal-Ortiz2008; Duggan, Reference Duggan, Castronovo and Nelson2002; Vidal-Ortiz, Reference Vidal-Ortiz2008; Nast, Reference Nast2002; Puar; Reference Puar2008; Taylor, Reference Taylor2007). ‘Homonormativity’ can be used to understand LGBT safety in at least three ways. Firstly, LGBT people themselves perpetrate abuse against each other – for example, biphobia and transphobia are reported in ‘gay spaces’ (see Browne and Bakshi, forthcoming, Doan, Reference Doan2007; Hines, Reference Hines2007). Secondly, research has shown that some lesbians and gay men experience less abuse on the basis of sexual or gender identity than other LGBT people and that this can be associated with particular forms of privilege, including race, gender and class (Grossman and D'Augelli, Reference Grossman and D'Augelli2006; Michaelson, Reference Michaelson2008; Ryan and Rivers, Reference Ryan and Rivers2003). Finally, Bryant (Reference Bryant2008: 456) has examined how discourses and practices that challenge homophobia can enact homonormative stigmatising of other forms of ‘queer expression’ by producing an ideal gay subject to be defended from ‘homophobia’. The concept of homophobia can thus be problematic in its deployment (O'Brien, Reference O'Brien2008).

It is important to question the social and political contexts in which normative sexual and/or gender identities are (re)produced, given that such identities are the basis for recognising ‘victims’ as ‘undeserving’ of ‘homophobic’ violence or abuse (Mason, Reference Mason2007; Morgan, Reference Morgan2002; Richardson and May, Reference Richardson and May1999), and for naming and recounting incidents as ‘undeserved homophobia’ (Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004). We propose that considerations of how discourses about homophobia can perpetuate marginalisation within LGBT groupings (Bryant and Vidal-Ortiz, Reference Bryant and Vidal-Ortiz2008: 391) and of how some within LGBT collectives are more vulnerable to the effects of discrimination and abuse must take place alongside an examination of how abuse that is related to sexual and/or gender identities can cross cut – and create – LGBT groupings and collectivities. This examination needs to include those who are presumed to be ‘privileged’ in relation to forms of social difference (such as whiteness, middle-class status, living in an urban area) that might be presumed to make them ‘less vulnerable’.

Context and methods

Locating this paper in the context of Brighton & Hove – the purported ‘gay capital of the UK’ (http://gay.brighton.co.uk/) with a reputation for ‘tolerance’ towards sexual and gender difference – enables a particular reading of safety. It enables us to address presumed forms of urban tolerance, which can be read as enabling specific forms of privilege for some LGBT people. In the context of both recent government initiatives and local advocacy, Sussex Police have established a civilian LGBT liaison officer within the Brighton & Hove Anti-Victimisation Unit, and the local Partnership Community Safety Team has a specific remit to improve community safety for ‘the LGBT community’. In recent years, a multi-agency approach to LGBT safety has been facilitated, in part, by Spectrum, the local LGBT forum, and there have been a number of safety campaigns targeting LGBT people.

The data from this paper arises from Count Me In Too (CMIT), a participatory project where lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people shared their views and experiences, and worked with service providers and others to gather and present evidence that would promote positive changes for LGBT people (see www.countmeintoo.co.uk for further details of how the project was undertaken, findings reports and summaries of findings). The initial research design and data analysis involved local LGBT individuals and voluntary and community groups and services, as well as statutory services. We have reanalysed the data for this paper. The data were collected between January and October 2006 using a questionnaire, completed by 819 respondents, which consisted of open-ended and closed questions. The sample consisted mainly of gay men (53 per cent) and gay women/lesbians (34 per cent), with 6 per cent identifying as bisexual. Five per cent of the sample identified as trans. Sixty per cent of the sample were aged between 26–45, 94 per cent identified as white and 10 per cent earned an income of under £10,000. An LGBT steering group recognised the sampling bias of most previous LGBT questionnaire research towards white, ‘affluent’, and lesbian and gay respondents, and so identified particular groups thought to be multiply marginalised and often overlooked in questionnaire data. Twenty focus groups were undertaken with these groups. The groups included older LGBT people, trans people, bi people, LGBT people who identified as disabled, and black and minority ethnic LGBT people. We also targeted people whose experiences of certain issues (such as mental health difficulties and hate crime) may have implications for their experiences of LGBT life. One focus group consisted of LGBT people who had experienced hate crime (this group was made up of people who had severe and prolonged experiences of hate crime). There were also two ‘general focus groups’ in which any LGBT person could take part. LGBT people could attend as many focus groups as they felt applied to them. In total, sixty-nine people participated in the focus groups. Each focus group was asked about experiences of abuse, discrimination, exclusion and ‘fitting in’.

The questions on safety in the questionnaire began with:

The questionnaire was routed such that if a respondent ticked ‘yes’ to any of the experiences, they were taken to a section that asked about experiences, perpetrators, places where the incident(s) took place, and about reporting. Further questions were posed to the entire sample relating to the fear of crime and perceptions of the police (for further details regarding the methodology and findings see Browne and Lim, Reference Browne and Lim2008). The next section will begin the empirical analysis, offering insights into what safety is for LGBT people who live, work and/or socialise in Brighton & Hove.

Safety and abuse

In this research, the most common forms of hate crime – which the majority of respondents reported experiencing – were ‘negative comments’ (55 per cent, n = 452) and ‘verbal abuse’ (54 per cent, n = 445) (see Browne and Lim, Reference Browne and Lim2008), and the most common place for such experiences was in the street. These findings concur with previous research indicating that heterosexist hassles were most likely to be verbal comments (Swim et al., Reference Swim, Pearson and Johnston2007). Over half of Herek's (Reference Herek2009) 662 LGB respondents in a US-based survey said they had experienced verbal harassment on the basis of their sexual identities, while Herek et al.'s (Reference Herek, Cogan and Gillis2002) research established that most incidents of hate crimes on basis of sexual identity were perpetrated in public settings by one or more strangers. Moran (Reference Moran2007) argues that the ‘stranger danger’ model is used by various stakeholders to explain the distinctiveness of lesbian and gay experiences of violence. The CMIT data show that stranger danger had symbolic resonance, but also that this was not the whole story. Although the majority of people who reported hate crime said they had experienced verbal abuse and/or negative comments, only forty respondents out of the 596, who had experienced some form of hate crime, had only experienced verbal abuse and/or negative comments in the street from a stranger. This indicates that LGBT people's experience of hate crime cannot be pigeonholed as merely verbal abuse or negative comments from strangers in the street.Footnote ⁵

Respondents to CMIT made sense of incidents of verbal abuse, negative comments and other forms of discrimination and violence in diverse ways, and they did not necessarily position themselves as ‘victims’:

Corteen (Reference Corteen2002: 276) argues that in addition to the effects of physical violence, there is a need to recognise the importance of ontological security and the ‘interior harm that lesbians experience as a result of the everyday, localised management of their sexual identity and demeanour’. Respondent 83 constructs ‘real’ abuse as only that which surpasses a particular threshold: this highlights how what counts as a recognisable form of abuse or as an acceptable ‘part of life’ is open to cultural and individual contestation. For some LGBT people, leaving experiences of abuse unrecognised could be a way of preserving one's ability to get by on a day-to-day basis. For others, not recognising the harm done to them (and others) by experiences of abuse may involve the repetition of the kinds of invisibility, closeting and silence that make abuse and othering mundane. We discuss the normalisation of abuse in more detail in the next section. Here, however, it is important to note that victimisation paradigms may allow access to justice, but we should not generalise victimisation to all LGBT people. Respondent 83's comment constructs abuse (and whether or not it becomes recognised as such) in terms of its effects – a question of harm. Yet ‘harm’ is differentially experienced:

These comments suggest that verbal attacks can have very different effects depending on the vulnerability of the person attacked, and can seriously affect a person's mental health and wellbeing (see also Herek et al., Reference Herek, Gillis, Cogan and Glunt1997; Clements-Nolle et al., Reference Clements-Nolle, Marx and Katz2006; Szymanski, Reference Szymanski2005). While respondent 83 suggests that some verbal abuse should be accepted, Jackie emphasises the unconscious effects of comments that respondent 83 might not think of as ‘really’ harmful. Thus, the concept of ‘homonormative privilege’ to imply differences in the likelihood of experiencing ‘homophobic’ abuse on the basis of ethnicity, class, etc., (O'Brien, Reference O'Brien2008) may also be applied to differences in the ways in which people are affected by such experiences. The effects of abuse may be ‘minor’ for some individuals and ‘severe’ for others; therefore, variations in individuals’ and groups’ resilience in the face of abuse need to be addressed and accounted for. Focusing on and dealing with the effects of abuse may also suggest that policy makers and service providers need to have a broader conceptualisation of abuse than those currently prevalent. The current drive to increase the reporting of hate crime, while important in itself, has concentrated attention upon operationalising, within criminal justice systems, a legal definition of what ‘abuse’ (including ‘violence’, ‘attacks’, ‘discrimination’ etc.) is. These definitions rest upon establishing the motivations of perpetrators and upon sexual and/or gender identities, both of which become determined by politicised communities, legal actors, assailants and the media, rather than by those who experience abuse (Moore and Rennie, Reference Moore and Rennie2006). Understanding how definitions of abuse are socially located (Reavey and Warner, Reference Reavey and Warner2003) allows an engagement with what abuse does within particular social and discursive contexts. Characterising abuse in terms of what it does – its effects – rather than only focusing upon what it is broadens the locus of concern regarding LGBT safety. LGBT safety not only involves improving the recognition of hate crime within the policing and criminal justice system, but also includes consideration of the broader provision of support for ‘victims’, how to address the effects of abuse, how to foster resilience, how LGBT people can stay safe and how to reduce the incidence of abuse. For the police and broader support services for ‘victims’, it also involves consideration of how people are treated:

For some, the traumatic experience of an LGBT hate crime is compounded by poor police services and other services for the victims of hate crime. Respondent 185's comment illustrates that that these services can perpetuate experiences of abuse, thus aggravating experiences such as rape. Dealing with LGBT people who experience such forms of violent crime requires more than physical care and criminal justice (see also the Stern review, Stern, Reference Stern2010). Engaging with what abuse does – rather than what it is – has personal as well as contextual importance. It has long been argued that abuse and the threat of abuse have the effect of creating and maintaining heteronormativity (see Browne, Reference Browne2006; Mason, Reference Mason2001; Valentine, Reference Valentine and Duncan1996). Addressing LGBT safety within a broader scope, beyond paradigms that seek to define what abuse is and how it can be punished (see also Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004), directs attention towards how service providers, communities and other stakeholders might work to create safety – especially by creating services, environments and contexts for care and caring. In turn, this requires an account of the differential effects of abuse and the ways in which abuse is ‘dealt’ with.

Dealing with (normalised) abuse

It has been noted that violence is a part of everyday life for lesbians and gay men (Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004). Moreover, in quantitative research that has addressed such questions, the majority of LGBT people surveyed have experienced abuse (Moran, Reference Moran2007). Whilst some individuals may benefit from the ‘homonormative’ privileges of greater recognition from the police and the possession of the cultural capital to be able to construct themselves as ‘undeserving victims’, should they be subject to abuse, the normalisation of abuse is a practice that cuts across all sections of LGBT populations.

Focusing on the reactions to abuse widens a concern for LGBT safety. Corteen (Reference Corteen2002), for instance, notes how groups of lesbians have collectively and individually developed ways of dealing with violence outside of policing and criminal justice systems. Evidence from CMIT demonstrates the diverse ways in which LGBT people deal with and normalise the abuse that they experience. This raises questions about a narrow policy focus upon improving policing and access to criminal justice: much of the abuse experienced by LGBT people will never enter the ambit of the police and criminal justice system. Efforts to encourage LGBT people to report every kind of incident of abuse may be harmful, given that ‘ignoring’ abuse can be an important self-preservation tactic for dealing with its persistent and everyday nature:

Not defining or naming abuse can be used as a strategy for self-preservation in the face of daily experiences that negate your identity or overtly ridicule your sexual and/or gender identities. In the focus group, Natasha discussed how she is resigned to daily experiences of abuse and the deliberate mis-recognition of her gender identity. Both she and respondent 677 speak of the consequences of paying attention to discriminatory experiences. For Natasha, ‘casting it out from your mind’ is an important survival tactic that prevents her from going ‘mad’. Respondent 677 says that she experiences negative comments ‘all the time’, yet such comments may not fit within conventional definitions of homophobia, biphobia or transphobia (see Browne, Reference Browne2006). The question she then poses – ‘who are you to report it to?’ – may suggest a dissonance between what she as an individual might experience as abuse based on her gender identity and what is recognised as ‘abuse’ or as a ‘hate crime’ by the police or other safety services. As a frequent part of life, it seems she feels forced to accept that these experiences and her reactions to them have personal consequences (‘you end up with a chip on your shoulder’).

Browne (Reference Browne2006) discussed how particular relations can be taken for granted, such that they are not nameable or understood as exclusionary. During the CMIT focus groups, direct questions regarding discrimination did not necessarily result in the identification of instances of abuse. Yet, in some focus groups, incidents were later recounted that could be interpreted as ‘homophobic abuse’:

Tracey's account, alongside those of other respondents who did not recognise what had happened to them as ‘discriminatory’ or a ‘hate crime’, suggests that there may be methodological limits to direct (particularly quantitative) questions that seek to uncover instances and the prevalence of homophobic, biphobic and/or transphobic abuse. Accounts such as Tracey's problematise discourses, definitions and policies that rely on the social, emotional and cultural recognition of abuse (see Mason, Reference Mason2007). Given that tackling hate crime depends upon the recognition of incidents of abuse as hate crimes both within legislative definitions and on the part of those who experience it, and given that such recognition is problematic, it seems likely that many, if not most, incidents of abuse on the basis of sexual and/or gender identities will not end up being reported to the police, either directly or indirectly. Efforts to increase LGBT communities’ trust in police services within a broader framework of multi-agency approaches to community safety (McGhee, Reference McGhee2003) do not avoid these problems of recognition. In terms of broadening policies for addressing LGBT safety, these discussions raise further questions such as: Should interventions be focused on education to make abuse more easily recognisable and nameable? What effects would such increased recognition have for individuals and collectives when not naming or recognising abuse is asserted to help prevent individuals from ‘going mad’?

Similar to other research in the field (Herek et al., Reference Herek, Cogan and Gillis2002; Moran, Reference Moran2002), when asked why they did not report an incident, the main reason given by CMIT respondents (n = 122) was that the incident was not serious enough or that it was ‘minor’. A further forty-four respondents said that they ‘weren't bothered’ by the incident. In addition, understanding these incidents as ‘part of LGBT lives’ was reiterated twenty-nine times.

Respondent 724's comment again problematises the criminality paradigm when dealing with abuse on the basis of sexual and/or gender identity. If an incident is not considered ‘serious’ by those who experience it and is considered to be just part of the fabric of everyday life, reporting and recourse to legal intervention may be seen as not worth the effort (see also Perry, Reference Perry2001). Normalisation, then, might discourage tackling abuse through formal institutional means and instead prompt resignation and tolerance of abuse. Behind the belief that ‘there is no chance of the perpetrators being “caught”’ may also lie an unspoken calculation about whether it would be realistic (and perhaps even desirable) for police and criminal justice services to devote resources and time to incidents of harassment and verbal abuse. In this context, the strategies and resources of individuals and communities who have to deal with these incidents are important: respondent 724, for instance, says that they ‘challenge the taunt and leave it at that’.

LGBT respondents also spoke of dealing with questions of safety by avoiding situations where they may experience abuse. Where abuse occurs in the workplace, this can mean leaving a job. Avoidance of conflict through the self-policing of behaviours has been well documented in the sexualities literature and can be seen as assuming a personal responsibility for safety (Browne, Reference Browne2006; Moran, Reference Moran2002; Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004; Valentine, Reference Valentine and Duncan1996). However, leaving or avoiding abusive situations may not always be possible. In this context, dealing with abuse might require recourse to intervention by the state:

Ignoring the abuse from their neighbours was impossible for Dan and his partner because the abuse affected their daily lives, use of space, and health and wellbeing. Dan reported the incident in line with contemporary initiatives that encourage ‘victims’ to report, yet in response to his reporting it, the intimidation he has faced has escalated. His experience draws attention to the limited effectiveness of a ‘hate crime’ model that encourages the reporting of abuse (see Moran et al., Reference Moran, Skeggs, Tyrer and Corteen2004). It also suggests that deploying state interventions on a single incident basis does not address ongoing situations, relations and contexts of abuse.

Creating safety and solidarity

There has been much important discussion of how differences of privilege and power create schisms among LGBT people. Indeed, CMIT was initially created to explore multiple marginalisations within LGBT communities. Yet, the process itself created spaces in which experiences could be shared and understandings of abuse explored in ways that enable ‘collective and social forms of recovery’ (Cvetkovich, Reference Cvetkovich2003: 31), similar to spaces created by other LGBT organisations in the city. CMIT focused on those who were identified in some way as multiply marginalised, addressing power relations in ‘gay Brighton’ (see for example Browne and Lim, Reference Browne and Lim2010). This included steering group meetings where LGBT people who identified as marginalised worked together to design the questionnaire and focus groups for the research, holding the power to make decisions. In this way, LGBT people from a wide range of backgrounds and identities came together to work collectively to create the research and to create safe space. During the themed analyses, LGBT people and organisations once again came together to work with service providers and academics to generate findings and recommendations for action (see www.countmeintoo.co.uk; Browne et al., forthcoming for further details on this process). Throughout the research process, participants noted that sharing experiences of hate crime (as well as other issues) can be an empowering and uplifting experience, particularly where voices are not usually heard:

Although this respondent seeks a place for women, a range of spaces with varying criteria for participation might offer the opportunity to discuss and share similar experiences (both within and outside of therapeutic settings), and, in doing so, could have a positive effect in bringing LGBT communities together. The sharing of similar experiences may also influence the reporting of and (perhaps more importantly) the dealing with experiences of abuse.

During a CMIT consultation event, ‘With Us, By Us, For Us’, LGBT people came together to share their experiences of CMIT at a ‘speakers’ corner’. Many spoke of discrimination and marginalisation, and the collective voice was powerful and moving. An ethos of mutual and collective listening to each other's experiences meant that participants in this open and ‘public’ space found comfort in recognising commonalities of experience with other people from different sections of the broader LGBT community. Many times, individuals found that their stories were reflected in those told by others; similar tales were repeated in different words, forming a collective voice. Creating spaces to collectively address the hurt, anger, injury, shame and so on of abuse may engender solidarities through producing common discourses and experiences of dealing with the effects of abuse. Additionally, rather than seeking individualised diagnosis or cure (Cvetkovich, Reference Cvetkovich2003), attention can be paid to social structures more broadly.

It is important to note that in dealing with issues of safety, LGBT communities and organisations may seek not only to ‘work in partnership’ with statutory bodies and state sponsored initiatives, but also to work with other LGBT people (in potentially transformative ways). There is a wealth of often untapped knowledge and resources within these communities on how to cope and deal with experiences of abuse. Often, such knowledge, resources and spaces for coming together are offered by LGBT organisations, some of which, such as the local LGBT mental health organisation Mind Out, were praised by CMIT participants for their work within LGBT communities. Community-driven frameworks for safety not only build on LGBT people's long experience of supporting each other through experiences of marginalisation and abuse, but are also important where there is a history of mistrust of the police, social services and other services because of the marginalisation and abuse experienced at their hands. By creating solidarities and working across schisms within LGBT communities, such frameworks also refute the potentially disempowering consequences of policies that solely frame support as being delivered from the outside. Of course, community-driven frameworks bring issues around who becomes advantaged and who becomes disadvantaged, who becomes excluded and who becomes othered – perhaps because of the effects of abuse (see Kapoor, Reference Kapoor2005) – which require caution. However, we follow those who argue that community participation can have empowering effects (see Kesby, Reference Kesby2007), not least in enabling communities to hold safety services to account and, indeed, to contest dominant social structures.