Online Homophobia

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, and to respond to this debate on behalf of the Opposition. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for his thoughtful introduction to the debate, and I also thank the petitioner, Bobby Norris, for the petition. I first met Bobby on the dance floor in a club, over a glass of wine, and we had quite a good time. I remember somebody saying to me, “Do you know who he is?” I said, “No, but he’s a good dancer.” In a way, it is quite sad that an individual feels that online abuse has affected him so badly that he needs to share it with the world, but it is great that Bobby has organised this petition to stop that happening to anybody else and to bring this issue into the limelight.

How do we stop the rising hate crime against LGBTQI+ people? My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) clearly highlighted the increase in LGBT+ crime, which has more than doubled, going up 144% in some areas. Transphobic attacks have trebled from 550 to 1,650. The biggest increase in attacks has been in West Yorkshire, which has seen an increase of 376%. It is an astonishing amount of hate, and a lot of it is not only words, but physical and violent abuse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) highlighted, when race is added into the equation, the numbers go up further.

It is interesting that social media can be so antisocial. What is good about social media is also what is bad about social media. A lot of things have fuelled this hostile environment for the LGBT+ community. Many in the community have said to me, “It feels like we are going back to section 28 days, with all the stuff around the schools and the protests.” Brexit has fuelled hate in all areas, but particularly for LGBT+ people. The Government should take responsibility for the delay on the gender recognition Bill, which has left a huge void. That delay was fuelled by misconceptions, misinterpretations, lies and hate, and it has created a hostile environment that has meant that hate crime has gone up by almost 400% in some areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey made some excellent points, and I hope the Minister will address them almost as if they were a tick-list, because we will go through them and hold the Government to account. We need more than warm words from the Government. Too often we have a lot of warm words, but not a lot of action. I plead for the Minister not to announce any new consultations. I am up to my eyeballs in Government consultations. We have had 29,952 consultations since 2010. We need to start changing the law and changing legislation. We know that hate crime exists and that it is happening, so we need to change things.

The Home Affairs Committee report states:

“Most legal provisions in this field predate the era of mass social media use and some predate the internet itself. The Government should review the entire legislative framework governing online hate speech, harassment and extremism and ensure that the law is up to date.”

That is the Government’s responsibility, and it will make a huge difference to people’s lives.

There is a common understanding now that the old mantra, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, is not very helpful and is wrong, because words do hurt. That mantra is no longer valid. We should no longer accept bad language and bad words, because they do hurt and they are powerful. Wars are started by words. Words can be used for good and they can be used for evil.

Gandhi had a quote. He said:

“Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits”.

All throughout the excellent speeches today, we have heard that people are forming habits of being hateful and aggressive online when they would not do that face to face with someone. We have to ensure we say legislatively that that is wrong.

Labour has already committed to bringing the law on LGBT+ hate crimes in line with hate crimes based on race or faith, making them an aggravated offence. That is really important. If a person’s sexuality has been a factor in how they have been treated or in their being attacked, what has happened needs to be classified as an aggravated offence and have harsher sentencing. We need to ensure that we change discrimination laws so that things can be done on multiple grounds. Labour has already committed to that. We do not need an Olympics of oppression; we just have to understand the intersectionalities of hate and to ensure that equality is equality and applies to everyone, so that we all fight for each other’s equality.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge mentioned unmasking the bullies. It is important that we hold social media providers to account in unmasking the bullies, because it can be done—we can trace them back. Not only should they be unmasked, but we should be closing down all their social media platforms, whether that is Twitter, Facebook or Instagram—I am sure there are more I do not know of, because the platforms increase in number every day. Once someone is hateful or vindictive in any way online, that is it: the platform should be taken away from them. We could save someone’s mental health and save people’s lives. That is the difference we should be making in this House.

[Luke Pollard]

The list of social media platforms that my hon. Friend gave should also include online dating apps. The abuse that is sometimes given on apps such as Grindr, especially to those with disabilities, can be painful. In many cases, people have opened their hearts up to look for someone special, so the abuse can sting even more.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I absolutely agree. Sometimes people deliberately go on those platforms and pretend to be something else. I think they call it catfishing.

[Luke Pollard]

indicated assent.

[Dawn Butler]

I have to keep up. People deliberately go on those apps just to get people to open up, and then they bring them down and abuse them. Who wants to live in a world with that kind of cruelty, and where we are not actively doing something to close it down?

Many people in this arena have paved the way over the past 25 or 50 years to ensure that we are living in an inclusive society. I hate the terminology “tolerant”; I do not want to be “tolerated” as a black woman—I want to be accepted for who I am. I do not want us to “tolerate” people for their sexuality; I want us just to accept them. Many organisations are involved, including Stonewall, DIVA and LGBT+ Labour, as well as lots of people, including Lady Phyll. New York Pride was just this weekend. Ruth Hunt has just stepped down from Stonewall and has done amazing work, as have Linda Riley, Sarah Garrett, Pride and UK Black Pride. The Albert Kennedy Trust looks after people who have been kicked out of their homes and removed from their families just because of who they love. The trust gives them a safe place to be and live.

I will end on this point. If anyone is looking for something to do this weekend and they want an environment where they can surround themselves with happiness, love, diversity, smiles, a lot of dancing and a lot of drinking, if I can say that—there is a lot of drinking—they should join me, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey and all the others who will be on the Pride march in London. If anyone ever needs to understand why we should just let people be, Pride is one of those places where people can just live and understand what that means.