A Culture of Ignorance

While gay rights face slow progress in Northern Ireland, issues of transgender awareness and gender identity are often entirely forgotten. Better education is needed to foster awareness and tolerance.

In Northern Ireland, the LGBT community continues to face significant intolerance: this has been most recently illustrated by the proposed ‘ conscience clause’, which would effectively allow deeply religious people to discriminate against gay people. This is symptomatic of a wide culture of ignorance in Northern Ireland which is particularly relevant with regard to the issues of transgender and gender identity.

The failure to improve awareness and understanding of trans issues has in some cases had tragic consequences. Earlier this year, Jordan Howe, a young transgender woman from Northern Ireland, took her own life at 19 years old. Jordan was suffering from depression, and had been a victim of transphobic bullying.

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