HOMOSEXUALSEXUAL TRANSPHOBIA, ARCIGAY'S WARNING: "A VIOLENT ATTACK EVERY TWO DAYS, FOUR DEATHS IN THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS"“
149 cases have been reported in the news in the last year, including three murders and one suicide. Alarm is raised over solicitations on dating apps for the purpose of beatings or extortion. Piazzoni: "Hatred has changed; in some cases, it's a standard formula.".
Bologna, May 17, 2024 – “Looking at the list of hate crimes against LGBTQI+ people that have occurred in the last twelve months, one has the clear sensation that homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, transphobia, in our country are systemic phenomena, which have developed real mechanisms, perfectly recognizable and sometimes replicated in such an identical way that they seem codified, or even organized”: this is the alarm from Gabriele Piazzoni, general secretary of Arcigay. As every year, the association has surveyed the news regarding crimes against LGBTQIA+ people and, on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, gives a comprehensive portrait of it. From May 17, 2023 to today, the media have reported 149 cases of violence or discrimination sparked by hatred against LGBTQ+ people. In three cases, the hatred escalated to murder; two victims were transgender people, and the third was a gay man. In one known case, the hatred resulted in suicide: in Palermo, the victim was a 13-year-old boy.. "Overall," Piazzoni continues, "the report paints a terrible picture of hatred in our country: in our families, our schools, our workplaces, in bars, restaurants, gyms, parks, the media, and institutions. With one peculiarity: just as with femicide, which is based on a pattern so deeply rooted in the dominant culture that it's passed down as if it were knowledge or tradition, hate crimes related to sexual orientation and gender identity are not, taken as a whole, a sum of episodes, all different and linked to specific circumstances. Quite the opposite: increasingly, these crimes are easily grouped into categories, sometimes into actual formats. And the word format isn't a stretch: we saw the luring on dating apps for the purpose of robbery, beatings, and extortion years ago on TikTok as macabre." challenge homophobic groups in Russia. In short, it's as if LGBTQ+ people have become the target of a great global hunt, in which schemes and strategies circulate from one continent to another.".
“We have attempted to recount these 12 months of reporting on homotransphobic hatred, grouping the stories according to the modality they respond to. Without neglecting the context in which these events occurred, namely, a blatant and persistent state homophobia, which in the space of a few months has cancelled the birth certificates of 33 boys and girls with two mothers; it has opened a sensational media trial against a group of gender-variant adolescents, cared for by the public Careggi hospital and exposed, along with their families, to a despicable pillory; it has launched an inquisition against all gay fathers, exposing them and their children to a persecutory criminalization, which is even referred to as a "universal crime." Furthermore, these are the times of truncheons, those against student groups but even before that, last May, those against Bruna, a trans woman beaten and then smeared with defamatory lies by some local police officers in Milan. Therefore, the context is that of a State that, rather than caring "The need to protect LGBTQI+ people, and caring for their safety, sometimes puts them on the list of executioners, even posing a danger to them. Finally, these are times when a general, dismissed from the army for expressing homophobic, misogynistic, racist views, unworthy of the uniform, finds himself leading the list of candidates for a governing majority party, running for a seat in the European Parliament. The hater is not only cleared, but he leads the pack," concludes Piazzoni.
On May 17th, Arcigay launched the social media campaign "Loving each other but struggling, let's make it simple." The materials are available on the website. www.arcigay.it
Vincenzo Branà's press office
Attached: the report of the 149 reports of homolesbobitransphobia recorded by Arcigay.
Appendix: Report 2024: A Qualitative Analysis
Appendix
Report 2024: a qualitative analysis
The gang and the solicitations on dating apps
One of the most alarming phenomena is the grooming of gay adults by malicious individuals, often groups of young men who replicate a typical approach used by neo-Nazi groups active in homophobic countries: a fake profile is created on Grindr, the most popular dating app among gay men, a gay adult is lured, and the man is arranged to meet at a certain location. Once there, the young man and his accomplices beat and rob the man. In some cases, this can even involve torture, blackmail, and extortion. Over the past twelve months, similar incidents have occurred in Treviso, Florence, Perugia, Trapani, L'Aquila, and Foggia. In other cases, the contact was always made via a dating app, but the deception was perpetrated by a single person. In still other cases, the dating app isn't used; the approach is made directly on the street, and the group of attackers can be very large. In one of the trials related to these incidents, the perpetrators—all subsequently convicted—defended themselves by arguing that the raids punished the men because they were "pedophiles." Although this argument has not led to parallel pedophilia proceedings and no evidence has emerged, most news articles have portrayed the incident as the act of "vigilantes" punishing "pedophiles," only in a few cases "alleged" ones. These crimes rarely come to light through victim reports; in fact, in the vast majority of cases, the victims choose to remain untraceable.
Teenagers in danger: a 13-year-old took his own life in Palermo.
Last November, the country was rocked by the news of a 13-year-old boy who took his own life in Palermo. The boy had been bullied because he was gay. Suicide in general, and particularly when committed by minors, remains invisible, locked away in the intimate grief of families. Only a few stories emerge, yet just a few days ago, a study conducted in the United States by The Trevor Project was made public, reporting that approximately 41% of LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 24 in that country had seriously considered suicide in the past year, while 14% had seriously attempted it.
Transgender people
Extreme alarm is raised regarding transgender people, the targets of ruthless violence. Two murders, in Cassino on May 27, 2023, and in Rome on June 18, 2023, a rape in Naples, a long list of assaults. And the beating of Bruna, a trans woman, in May 2023 in Milan by local police officers.
Family is not always a safe place
Parents who insult their children, humiliate them, threaten them, lock them in or kick them out, install cameras in their rooms, assault them, beat them. A few days ago, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights released the results of a study conducted on a sample of the LGBTQIA+ population in Italy: 18% reported having experienced attempts at "conversion" or "healing" from homosexuality. And the family is the primary place where this violence occurs, with an estimated frequency of nearly 1 in 5 cases according to the EU.
Bullying and censorship at school
Two tensions converge in schools: the first is generated by bullying, increasingly invisible to educators within the classroom, yet increasingly violent outside, in informal settings. The second stems from discrimination perpetrated by teachers or school administrators, even through the censorship of content—films, videos, photographs—that depict or discuss homosexuality.
Hand-to-hand combat in public space
Most of the episodes recorded in the 2024 report describe a violent hand-to-hand fight that LGBTQI+ people are often called upon to engage in when crossing public spaces.
Stories tell of gays, lesbians, and trans* people being kicked out of gyms, bars, and rental properties (but not to them), attacked and insulted by passersby in broad daylight at subway or train stations, while at a restaurant, or leaving a club. People have their homes damaged, cars defaced, and are publicly humiliated.
Symbols and association headquarters were vandalized, and violent incursions even occurred during Pride marches.
Over the past twelve months, incidents of vandalism against LGBTQI+ associations, monuments, plaques, flags, and poster campaigns have increased significantly. The enormity of these attacks was demonstrated by the news released at the end of last summer: in Turin, even a funeral poster was vandalized with homophobic insults.
