If I saw a transgender person, I’d kill them.
That happened. A young transgender person heard that fall casually from the lips of a classmate one day in class. The classmate didn’t know they were talking about someone not three feet away from them, but that’s not the point.
Even though my young acquaintance knew that they weren’t in the wrong, it was still a huge dent to their confidence. A blatant attack on your right to exist is never going to be easy to deal with. All school pupils, staff and parents should know that homophobic, transphobic or biphobic abuse will never be tolerated. That threat of physical harm in that example of hate speech was particularly appalling but those phrases like “You’re so gay” are just the stop of a slippery slope and need to be challenged by education from the earliest age.
It’s been good to see the Government, in a move personally championed by Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson, ensure that £2 million has been allocated specifically to combat this abuse. Jo said:
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