by Sarah Hansen and Rachel
A new anti-homophobia ad has come out in Australia and it made me tear up a little bit.
Here’s a tissue. Let’s talk about it.
No To Homophobia is a new campaign in Australia to educate the LGBTQ community and their allies about discrimination and harassment and the laws in place to prevent it. The ads include workplace, school, and sport harassment examples, but also extend to “employment and employment-related areas, education, where goods and services are provided, land sales and transfers, accommodation, clubs, sport and local government.”
The campaign focuses on harassment in Victoria, but No To Homophobia:
sends the message to all Australians that homophobic, transphobic and biphobic harassment are never acceptable, and that those who experience unlawful harassment have official avenues to respond to it, including the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and the police, which can result in consequences for perpetrators.
via { Wikipedia }
Victoria, and Melbourne in particular, is arguably the most gay-friendly area in Australia, though it remains surprising to see this type of ad on television. Australia is more open-minded with regard LGBTQ rights than America, with most states recognizing same-sex marriage at least at the de facto level.
I asked one of my friends in Australia if she had seen the ad in Queensland (one of the country’s more politically conservative states thanks to the recently elected LNP dickhead Campbell Newman — but that’s a whole other can of worms), and she said, “I saw the end of one the other day, but the whole lot makes much more sense. ADS LIKE THESE ARE IMPORTANT. People don’t know that they can shame the douchebags!! AND THEY SHOULD!” Well said, my dearest Delilah.
But these ads aren’t just suggesting we shame the people who harass us; they’re calling upon us to actually report that discrimination to the police as a crime, and implying that there will be consequences for the harasser if they do so. To American viewers, this idea may seem foreign; most Americans don’t report instances of homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia in part because they feel ashamed, but also because there would be no point. In many places in America, there’s no real legal recourse, because the law doesn’t recognize the discrimination that queer and trans people face. In a lot of ways, the law doesn’t recognize that queer and trans people exist. And the enforcers of the law haven’t necessarily proven to be allies either; Jene Newsome was discharged from the military (pre-DADT repeal) when local police officers outed her as a lesbian to her superiors, and when trans woman of color CeCe McDonald was assaulted by a group of people and defended herself, she was the only one from the scene arrested as her attackers went free.
Even aside from the code of law on a national level, many workplace discrimination policies don’t include sexual orientation or gender identity; far from being able to report it to the police, you can’t even report it to your boss. They don’t have an obligation to do anything about it, and sometimes, you can even be fired for it.  In 30 American states, it is still legal to fire someone for being LGBQ. In 39 states, you can be legally fired for being transgender. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which has been introduced in every Congress since 1994 except the 109th. George W. Bush even threatened to veto the bill if it should pass Congress.
There’s a reason that when Americans do see PSAs that deal with homophobia, they tend to be about anti-gay bullying in schools. Although there still isn’t nearly the level of response or responsibility that there should be to protect kids, that’s one of the only arenas in which there’s any level of accountability at all. Even if it took the senseless deaths of schoolchildren to do it, there now seems to be a national consensus that schools (and parents, and communities) have a responsibility to make sure kids are safe, even from other kids. But in the workplace, on the street, in the doctor’s office, in public spaces, or even in higher education, most LGBTQ people in America don’t have an authority they can turn to and expect them to affirm their right to live with dignity. In Michigan, there was also a new public awareness campaign launched in the last year, but its point wasn’t to remind gay, bi and trans people that they have the right to be treated with respect. It was to remind them that they can be fired for being gay at any time, and so their only recourse is to stay in the closet at work.
I am doubtful that anti-homophobia PSAs will become nationwide in America any time soon. I am doubtful because ENDA hasn’t been passed for 18 years. I am doubtful because policing my genitalia and the genitalia of my romantic partners still seems to be a political issue. We’re still not in a place as a nation where we can admit that homophobia exists; the time when we can tell people that they can rely upon law enforcement to help them with it and are comfortable doing so in a national broadcast seems even farther off. Â So, good on ya, Australia. We’re proud of you, and we hope that someday our rights start catching up.
<3
*sniff*
I went to that school! More surprising than the anti-homophobia message is them letting the actress go on TV without her tie. Now that’s radical change.
i thought i was seeing things/delirious, but that is defs my school uniform (except for the skirt, right?). i’m also shocked that she isn’t wearing a school tie, with her top button done up (maybe it was because the people in TVland decided the tie is too ugly), in fact i’m pretty sure she’s wearing a polo shirt. DETENTION.
I had some stuff stolen in Sydney, and when I went to the police station to report it a whole wall was just covered in LGBT-positive posters. It was pretty shocking and awesome. :)
In Sydney there are GLBT Liaison police officers, which is pretty neat.
I am transgendered, and was treated like a freak by the NSW police. I was assaulted on a train and had my handbag stolen. They did not take my complaint seriously. I overhead some of the officers calling me a “ladyboy” behind my back as I was leaving, and laughing about it. This was the Newtown police station where reportedly, they are supposed to have a LGBT liaison officer.
I’m so sorry to hear about this! Every story I’ve heard of encounters between trans women and the criminal justice system seem to be invariably awful.
I was arrested 3 times for prostitution just walking home or to a bodega in female presentation in Jackson Heights in Queens while my parents were on vacation: once when I was 14 and twice when I was 16. I never wound up getting arraigned even once, but I was subjected to a now-ostensibly-illegal “gender check” each time and detained in men’s Central Booking holding areas for a combined total of something like 63 hours. This in the city with one of the most powerful and active local queer communities in the US. I have several other trans women friends with far worse stories than that (up to and including long stints in Rikers for sex work they never engaged in – though it would still be horrible to send anyone to Rikers for actual sex work, which shouldn’t be criminalized at all).
Not all cops are as aggressively oppressive as that, but I think I can say with a measure of certainty that cops are not there to protect and serve people like us. Even the “good cops” don’t seem to be much of a force in stopping their colleagues’ reign of terror.
I think I can also say with a measure of certainty that my experience would have been infinitely worse if I were a POC instead of white…
Posted too quickly: I was trying to align with your point that even in places with a more pleasant ostensible atmosphere for queer folks, the happenings at the ground level seem to reflect a continuing unspoken darkness everywhere in the world.
Ugh, I wish we had something like this in the States. USA, get your shit together.
Just an fyi, The two states that recognise gays as de factos and have no other recognition are not doing so through choice. The Federal government legislated that gay couples were covered by de facto couples across the country.
Oh Australia, I’m proud.
Also my home state of Tasmania has just recently passed a same-sex marriage bill in our lower house, which is mega exciting. (They ARE doing it mainly for the sweet, sweet tourist dollars, but any excuse is fine by me.) It might be close in the upper house but prospects are definitely looking good. We’re the first state to try and introduce the law independantly of the federal government so far I think, but it’s looking like others will follow…
perhaps another view of this.. http://justinbarbour.tumblr.com/post/30514256090/why-i-dont-support-the-same-sex-marriage-bill-tas
As a Canadian, I found these ads really surprising. Shocking, even. Sure, we’ve got gay marriage all sewn up, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should protect us, but at ground level you still have nobody but yourself to stand up for you if someone decides to be a homophobic douche.
Australians should be giving themselves a pat on the back right now. This kind of thing matters.
Nice and simply done, with a practical message. I’m trying to think whether we’ve had something similar on TV in the UK. I feel like we ought to have done, and that it’s a pretty well-understood message, yet I’m not immediately finding stuff except for this one that’s about football: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWo8ia0rbXE&feature=fvwrel
Among anti-homophobia ads, I’m still a big fan of Stonewall’s UK poster campaign: ‘SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY. GET OVER IT!’. Nothing like seeing that in huge letters on the side of a London bus to bring a smile to your face.
There’s also a nice little collection of TV ads from an Israeli project called ‘Cut Homophobia’ that you can watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cuthomophobia
As a Queenslander myself i haven’t seen any one of these ads.
It’s nice to see Victoria doing it’s part and representing our country for what ‘we say’ we really are, ACCEPTING of all races, gender’s, sexual orientations and so on!