But that doesn’t mean it can’t have catastrophic consequences for straight men. A distinction should be made: homophobic bullying is an existential question for a queer person in a way it isn’t for a straight person, because being abused for your actual identity tends to inflict more psychological harm. Even if you showed any form of affection towards another man, it was ‘gay’.” Indeed, acts of kindness are frequently cited as provoking homophobic responses.Īsking “but what about the straights?” may rankle some LGBT people. “I used to dress in a somewhat gothic way: eyeliner, black nail varnish, and I was on the receiving end of homophobic insults quite a few times. “If anything was considered outside the ‘norm’, it was considered ‘gay’ when I was in secondary school in the noughties,” says another. “I had the shit beaten out of me at least once a week for being gay, or a ‘poof’, or ‘bent’,” says Matthew, a former choirboy. For some, it was simply for having long hair, or for their dress sense, or for a job – like being a primary school or drama teacher – or for extracurricular activities deemed to be “unmanly”. When I did a shout out for straight men to come forward with their own experiences of homophobia, I was inundated. Their experiences aren’t outliers: they are key to understanding what homophobia actually is. But there’s nothing invalidating about his story at all, because Callum was the victim of sustained homophobic bullying, and the same goes for countless other straight men, too. “But how can a straight cis man be a victim of homophobia?” Indeed, he fears “invalidating the experiences of those who are actually gay whenever I talk about this”. “I feel really conflicted about it now – even though I’m absolutely over the bullying, I always feel like I was the victim of homophobic bullying,” Callum tells me. Now, discussing homophobia in the context of straight men may seem like a distraction. That didn’t matter to his assailants – most of Callum’s friends were girls or those also treated as “outcasts”, some of whom were “exploring their sexuality” as teenagers he hated sport, and loved performing arts. But the thing is, Callum isn’t actually gay at all: he’s a straight man. “Gay”, “bender” and “faggot” were spat at him by classmates with abandon beaten up in the changing rooms before PE, he was forced to change in the cleaner’s cupboard instead.
Monkeypox often starts with flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle ache and swollen lymph nodes before causing a chickenpox-like rash on the face and body.H omophobia cast a long shadow over Callum’s childhood. The illness, from which most people recover within several weeks and has only been fatal in rare cases, has infected thousands of people in parts of Central and Western Africa in recent years, but is rare in Europe and North Africa.
"We are seeing transmission among men having sex with men," said WHO Assistant Director-General Dr Soce Fall. The World Health Organisation (WHO) earlier this week said that it was coordinating with UK and European health officials over the new outbreaks, and was also investigating that many cases reported were among people identifying themselves as gay and bisexual. The UK Health Security Agency also highlighted that the recent cases were predominantly among men who self-identified as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men. Many of the reported cases "are occurring within sexual networks", according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Britain has confirmed nine cases since May 6, while the United States confirmed its first yesterday. Canada today said that it was investigating more than a dozen suspected cases of monkeypox, after Spain and Portugal detected more than 40 possible and verified cases.