It’s an issue covered by the former Attitude editor Matthew Todd in his utterly brilliant – and disturbing – recent book Straight Jacket. He identifies a number of problems that most gay men, if they were honest, would at least recognise: “Disproportionately high levels of depression, self-harm and suicide; not uncommon problems with emotional intimacy … and now a small but significant subculture of men who are using, some injecting, seriously dangerous drugs, which despite accusations of hysteria from the gatekeepers of the gay PR machine, are killing too many people.” He lists a disturbing number of gay friends, acquaintances and people in the public eye who struggled with addictions and took their own lives.
The statistics are indeed alarming. According to Stonewall research in 2014, 52% of young LGBT people report they have, at some point, self-harmed; a staggering 44% have considered suicide; and 42% have sought medical help for mental distress. Alcohol and drug abuse are often damaging forms of self-medication to deal with this underlying distress. A recent study by the LGBT Foundation found that drug use among LGB people is seven times higher than the general population, binge drinking is twice as common among gay and bisexual men, and substance dependency is significantly higher.
Why? As Todd puts it: “It is a shame with which we were saddled as children, to which we continue to be culturally subjected.” The problem gay people have isn’t their sexuality, but rather society’s attitude to it. It is “our experience of growing up in a society that still does not fully accept that people can be anything other than heterosexual and cisgendered [born into the physical gender you feel you are]”. There’s the weight of centuries of hatred and bigotry, with legally enforced discrimination only dismantled in very recent times. All gay and bisexual men – as well as women and trans people – grow up hearing homophobic and transphobic abuse. “Gay” is a word used in the playground as the repository for all that is bad. Popular films and TV programmes have largely lacked sympathetic, well-rounded LGBT characters, often resorting to crude homophobic tropes. Even the inability to hold hands with someone you love in almost any public space is a reminder that a depressingly large chunk of the population still rejects you. Coming out – a process that isn’t a one-off, but a wearingly repetitive event in different contexts – involves constant stress. And for those who think it’s all inevitably getting better, since the EU referendum, there’s been a 147% rise in homophobic hate crimes.
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