The legacy of Section 28 on International Non-Binary People’s Day

Dr TJ Bacon | xe/xem

My name is Dr TJ Bacon, but feel free to call me TJB. My pronouns are xe/xem and I am senior lecturer in performance art at Middlesex University and co-chair of our staff Gender Network [intranet link accessible only by Middlesex University colleagues].

I am non-binary and 14 July is International Non-Binary People’s Day, which is aimed at raising awareness and organising around the issues faced by non-binary people.

I am ashamed to say that only recently did I come to the realisation I was a victim of a UK government law that ended almost 20 years ago. I never really understood this as a child existing within the system that was being imposed upon me. The legacy of this through my formative years meant that I still hadn’t come to terms with who I was for almost another two decades.

I was born in 1980, and Section 28 ran from 1988 until it was repealed in 2003. My entire primary, secondary, college and undergraduate education was affected by this negligent law. State education taught me that anything outside of heteronormativity was unacceptable. In fact, anything other than cis male and female binary relationships didn’t even exist in my secondary school curriculum.

So, as a queer youth from a low-income, single parent family, there was no one in the school system to educate me that difference was acceptable and importantly my cis hetero peers didn’t learn acceptance either. Wider tolerance was being lobotomised from society, particularly impacting the gay community at the time by ignorantly correlating AIDS through the 80s exclusively with them.

Margaret Thatcher utilised this fear to pursue an ideology falsely founded on ‘good’ morality to attempt to eradicate a generation of LGBTQ+ youth. We were undeniably failed, but so were others, as uneducated schoolyard bullies found themselves on the pathway towards homophobia without intervention. Our teachers and our youth leaders were themselves in a catch-22 position; to challenge misbehaviour or advocate positivity could find them breaking the law.

Being ‘different’ and standing out

During my high school education, I was bullied for being ‘different’. I was interested in the arts and had moved from the private education system — where a scholarship for my primary education had come to an end — to then enter the state system for my secondary years. This alone was enough to make me stand out; I wasn’t up to speed on the correct use of slang, and I didn’t have the right haircut. I lacked the premature sexualisation of my peers and had no immediate interest in girls (or for that matter boys). I was actually more interested in science fiction than relationships and I certainly was not keen on competitive sports. All of which meant that I was quickly given the moniker of ‘gay’.

During the lad culture of the 1990s, ‘gay’ was used relentlessly as a derogatory term. Popular culture bombarded teenagers with over-sexualised heteronormativity in our print and screen media. The pressure to be either the most masculine male or the most feminine female was relentless. Though every generation’s teenagers encounter their own constantly shifting goal-posts of acceptance, during the 90s, Section 28 meant that a guiding hand from teachers could not challenge micro-aggressions such as the ignorant misuse of ‘gay’ for fear of endorsing any form of LGBTQ+ lifestyle. Young queers, such as I, would therefore suffer irrevocably because the system had been skewed in favour of only one way of existing.

The collective fears induced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative leadership stripped me of understanding my own identity. The system failed me and for four years of relentless assault in my high school education, I experienced traumas which began with a misappropriation of language to single me out as not being the same as others to becoming increasingly about my gender and sexuality.

The limits of tolerance

Today, it is too easy to consider our society as tolerant as 69 countries still criminalise being gay and in 11 of these it is punishable by death. Arrogance dismisses these statistics as only of concern to “other” countries as we are shockingly witnessing the repetition of history here in Europe as we see the rise of right-wing agendas, leadership and powerbrokers. Two recent examples include Poland’s President Andrzej Duda declaring in 2020 his desire to ban LGBTQ+ education, and this month (July 2021) Hungarian law has come into effect, enacting exactly the same form of discrimination as Section 28.

There are LGBTQ+ people who will be lost and in the worse incidents will die because of these policies. Some of them may be lucky enough to persevere or discover themselves anew in the future. Some will attempt to fight against the system and make positive change for others not yet born into this world, but there will also be those who are lost to hate, bigotry and bias. There will be victims on both sides from these events.

Here in the UK, my generation is now old enough to find itself in various positions including those of influence and power, and for some of them the polarising legacy of Section 28 continues to manifest across their lives today. This affects the way our CEOs run their companies or how politicians write the laws of the land. Today, my home country does not recognise I exist. Nor is it willing to let me be seen.

The EHRC has dropped its support for Stonewall and withdrawn from the Diversity Champions scheme following an open letter challenging their track-record of support. Liz Truss, who ditched trans-inclusive reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, has also urged government departments to abandon support for Stonewall. This resulted in Amnesty International highlighting the severity of the situation in the UK for fostering transphobic fear-mongering. Truss is five years older than me and would have also been educated under Section 28. Truss, who is unlikely to acknowledge this position, is arguably a victim of that system as well. Populist leaderships in recent years both in the UK and USA have become entwined with a concerted effort to discriminate against trans and non-binary lives. As survivors of Section 28, Truss and I stand on separate sides of a border that manifested in our youth.

Thankfully our present education system is far better, in no small part to queer advocacy, leadership and champions of those, who like me, seek to support all marginalised voices, but we must remain vigilant to the changes in our society we are currently seeing elsewhere in the world as well as those at home enacted by Truss and her colleagues.

Stonewall was a riot

We must celebrate difference and continue to support organisations such as Stonewall and their Strategy 21–25. The hegemonic systems of oppressive control, that increasingly surround our societies today, would like to have absorbed and ultimately homogenise Stonewall as an impotent virtue signalling cause. And to be honest, it would be understandable how easily this could have happened with its largess and growth beyond its roots in the riots of 1969. So, not only is it refreshing that Stonewall continue to stand for radical change, but therefore unsurprising that an organisation that has pushed against oppressive tides of hate and exclusion, has found themselves in opposition to a TERF war spearheaded by “gender-critical feminists” as they wish to be known.

Sadly, due to the actions of our government, the voices that stand in opposition to Stonewall — whom were also highly likely to have been educated through Section 28 — find themselves growing in voice and worryingly at times, strength.

Our trans cousins are under constant attack in arguably a similar manner to the way gay rights were treated in the early 80s! Ignorant comparisons are being drawn between the predatory acts of cis-males (scarily echoing rhetoric that led to hate crimes against the gay community), that equate trans people with paedophilia, without considering that we have been here before and drawing battle lines over equal access to bathroom facilities for all!

The lived experience of all othered peoples should not be held in competitive comparison to one another; our own experiences are unique, and challenges sadly remain in all quarters at the intersections of race, gender, age and dis/ability among many others. Hate must be challenged, and micro-aggressions intervened upon. Section 28 ruined so many lives and sadly continues to do so today.

As a non-binary person, I may not currently exist in the UK but I deserve to be seen and so do my trans family. We cannot forget the errors of our past but as a society divided, it is important to remember that there is something that connects us on both sides, our miseducation through Section 28. On this international day of celebration, I call on everyone to step back and consider the importance of allowing non-binary people to exist.

Dr TJ Bacon is Senior Lecturer in Performance Art at Middlesex University

Ten ways to be an ally to non-binary people

Here are 10 ways Stonewall suggest you can step up and become an ally to me and everyone like me as we deserve to exist, be seen, and feel safe:

1. Introduce yourself with your name and pronoun. Stating your pronouns reminds people that it might not always be immediately obvious what pronoun someone uses. [Don’t use the term “preferred pronouns” as it implies a fiction rather than the reality of someone’s gender identity.]
2. Put your pronouns in your email signature and/or social media profile.
3. Instead of addressing groups of people with binary language such as ‘ladies and gentlemen’, try more inclusive alternatives such as ‘folks’, ‘pals’ or ‘everyone’.
4. Use words that define the relationship instead of the relationship and gender. For example, use ‘parents’, ‘partner’, ‘children’ or ‘siblings’.
5. Not everyone is comfortable with gendered titles such as ‘Ms’ or ‘Mr’. Titles are not always necessary, but if they must be used it’s good to provide alternative ones such as ‘Mx’ (pronounced mix or mux).
6. Use the singular ‘their’ instead of ‘his/her’ in letters and other forms of writing, ie: ‘when a colleague finishes their work’ as opposed to ‘when a colleague finishes his/her work’.
7. Not everyone necessarily uses ‘he’ or ‘she’ pronouns and it’s important to be respectful of people who use different pronouns. The most common gender-neutral pronoun is the singular ‘they’ (they/them/theirs). Using people’s correct pronouns shows that you respect them and who they are. [And if you get it wrong, simply acknowledge that with a quick apology and correction.]
8. Using the pronoun ‘they’ is very useful when someone’s gender or identity is unknown. You will often already be using it without realising, ie: ‘somebody left their hat, I wonder if they will come back to get it.’
9. Make sure that your workplace, school, college and university policies and documents use inclusive language, ie: using ‘they’ instead of ‘he/she’ and avoiding sentences that imply two genders. Where specifically talking about gender identity, make sure it is inclusive of non-binary gender identities and not just trans men and trans women.
10. When highlighting LGBT people in your events/teaching or as role models, make sure you include some non-binary role models too.