05/04/2024
Top LGBT+ Newswire Pink News reports that more than three thousand abusive tweets or emails are sent to British Members of Parliament every day. No surprises there, then, we know that the internet and Brexit has led to the far right, fundamentalists and feminist separatists becoming empowered to send abuse. But recent reports reveal that minority MPs are more likely to receive harassment. A study by the Fawcett Society showed that 84 per cent of women agree that “increased polarisation in politics has made it harder to be an MP, compared with 67 per cent of men. Pink News also reports " Meanwhile, Amnesty International revealed there was a disproportional difference in the level of abuse faced by MPs of colour and from minority ethnic backgrounds. Black women MPs get more abuse compared with their white colleagues. Analysis of the tweets of 177 women MPs active on X, then Twitter, in the run up to the 2017 general election, showed minority ethnic MPs received almost half of the abusive content found, despite there being almost eight times as many white MPs." In addition, more and more investigation by LGBTQIA+ media outlets reveals the shocking level of homophobic and transphobic abuse. An SNP Member of Parliament, Hanna Bardell, who is gay, said “It was still kind of relatively sane just ten years ago, if that’s an appropriate word to use ... now it feels “actually quite difficult” to have a “reasonable and reasoned debate”. But in spite of all the pressure, Bardell says that she needs to be in Parliament and that there also need to be more LGBTQIA+ voices. "I’m a queer woman from a working-class background and a single parent family – there are not that many people like me in parliament,” she points out. “I’m a disruptive force – I’m conscious of that – just by walking through the doors every day.”
