As in the feminist movement, this year there has been more than one dissension in the LGTBI collective, but all of them have been suddenly erased in recent weeks.
The reason is none other than the “fear of losing rights achieved with great effort and during decades of struggle and that they make us invisible, that they return us to the closet”, explains Rubén López, founder of the Observatory against LGTBIphobia . After the recent political events that took place and the deployment of a large canvas by the far-right formation Vox “in which it makes it very clear that the LGTBI movement is a political objective”, the organizers of the central demonstration of Madrid Pride on Saturday that ve have changed the motto, which has gone from focusing on diverse families (“Embracing family diversity: equal rights”) to the more direct and forceful: “For our lives, our rights. With Pride”.
Always frequented, Saturday’s demonstration is expected to be “massive and crowded”, say the organizers, the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans, Bisexuals, Intersexuals and more (FELGTBI) and the Madrid collective Cogam. “It always is, but this year is different because there is fear and dread in the air, but also a lot of indignation and a desire to fight against the revolutionist movement that is spreading across Spain”, they explain from Cogam. And they remember the words of the activist Pedro Zerolo: “Rights are conquered, enjoyed and defended”.
An evolutionist movement that they had been warning about for years and which results in an increase in hate crimes based on sexual and gender orientation. According to the latest report drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, these specific crimes against the LGTBI group have increased between 2020 and 2021 by 68.5%, reaching almost half a thousand (466 complaints and 530 victims). And this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the vast majority of taunts, threats and even physical attacks do not reach the police stations because “the stigma still weighs heavily”.
It is a clear example that, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, Madrid was the second community with the most hate crimes, after Catalonia (101), with 70 cases. However, according to the Observatory against LGTBIphobia, there were 191 different incidents in the Community of Madrid in 2021, which left at least 211 victims.
The vast majority of these crimes take place on public streets and, sometimes, in front of many people who decide not to intervene (for example, aggression in the Barcelona subway committed in mid-June by a man against a transgender woman and spread on social networks).
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 75% of the victims are men, while assaults on women are more common. “They are more afraid to show themselves in public because they are more afraid of rejection and aggression”, they explain from Cogam.
Of the total number of victims (530), there were 31 who were minors. Contrary to what happens in global data, in the age group of those who have not yet turned 18, the majority of victims are women (24).
Most of the victims are between 26 and 40 years old, followed by the 18 to 25 age group. The same goes for the perpetrators. There are 36 attackers who had not made the 18.
It is very worrying, not only the increase in assaults, but also that the perpetrators are young. In fact, the third community with the most hate crime cases, the Basque Country, published a survey a few weeks ago in which it indicated that in 2022 13.8% of people between 15 and 29 years of age indicated who had personally experienced a situation in which they had felt discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or sexual identity.
And they are also very concerned about hate crimes committed on social networks. According to the Ministry of the Interior, they have increased in one year by 87.5%.
In this line, the report Discourse of Hate and LGTBIQ Pride in the digital conversation, prepared by LLYC in the framework of Pride in 2023, points out that Spain is one of the countries with the highest percentage of promoting conversation on social networks about this col· school (60% on average over the last four years). However, hate messages are gaining ground. Its volume has increased by almost 132% between 2019 and 2022. In contrast, tweets of support have fallen by 15.85%. This means that the difference between the conversation promoting and detracting was reduced to a minimum last year, 53.5% against 43.5%.
