I’m very much writing this post as an individual (Peter Matthews) and can’t pretend to be commenting on the part of the research team involved with this project. It’s taken me over 24 hours to process the decision of the UK’s Supreme Court yesterday that trans women are not women in law, for certain matters
Category: Uncategorized
In the UK February is LGBTQ+ history month. In our previous post for February 2023 we highlighted the historic injustices and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ+ people faced, and how we were interested in the long-term legacy this might have had on people. Of course, over time the welfare state, and social security within that, changes
After quite a long time, we’ve eventually reached the end of the substantive data collection and report period for this project! Thanks to everyone, and particularly our research participants, for all your support for the project. To launch the main findings report, we are running a launch webinar on MS Teams on 5 December at
We are now, after some delays, moving towards the end of this amazing project. For a project about sexual identity, we have not actually talked at all about sex at all. This is understandable from the perspective of the research design – we were interested in LGBT+ identities. Sex is only one tiny part of
This research project finds itself in another Pride Month. The project is now extended until December 2024 due to issues outside our control, but this is giving us more time to start thinking about how our findings might help improve the situation for LGBT+ people accessing social security and also accumulating assets over their lives.
17th May is International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). Last year I outlined some emerging analysis which highlighted experiences of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia within the social security system. A year on, with our analysis of the system complete, we can revisit this analysis and offer greater insights. Depressingly, at the time of
Apologies for the silence on the project blog – this is partly down to the busy-ness of team members, but also issues outwith our control that mean the project has been extended beyond the original deadline. However, we have been making progress with the analysis of our interview transcripts, and we have an abstract accepted
We have a lot of fun in the meetings for this project. Among the qualitative research work package, we all identify as LGBT+. El, who leads the work is a lesbian and Peter and Lee are gay men. We often laugh at how we reflect the stereotypes that we all share in the LGBT+ community.
As a non-heterosexual, or non-cisgender person you are endlessly “coming out” – making what would be invisible, visible by saying who you are. You are endlessly making the subtle judgment of “is this place ok?” or “are these people ok?”; “will they kill me?” It gets a bit tiring. It’s a tricky thing for this
Today is the last day of non-binary awareness week. In this project, one thing we’re very interested in is how the everyday categories of the welfare system that have been designed by heterosexuals align with queer lives. It probably will not surprise you to learn that UK welfare bureaucracy really does not seem to be
