Life at UCB through the eyes of our student bloggers

LGBT+ History Month

LGBT+ History Month

Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post by yours truly 😁.

This week I wanted to write something that is very exciting for me. In case you don’t know, it’s February which means it’s LGBT+ History Month, therefore today I’m going to talk about the importance of this month to the community, and if you are a part of the LGBT community, you’ll be delighted to know that we have our own society here at University College Birmingham!

A lot of people think “why is it important to have a whole LGBT+ History Month every year, if we are in the 21st century and the community has gained all these rights in the last few years?” Well I could compile a huge list with all the reasons for this… but I am just going to talk about the main reasons in my personal opinion:

  1. There are still 73 jurisdictions in the world where being LGBT is criminalised. We can be killed or go to jail for literally just being ourselves.
  2. Being homosexual was a criminal offence in the UK until 1967, so it’s still fresh in the head of many Britons…
  3. History books never contain any stories about the LGBT community, although there’s loads of inventions and achievements by members of the community that were just forgotten by many.
  4. Let LGBTQ+ children have role models and learn about their own history, make them feel proud about who they are, something many of us did not have during our childhood/teenage years.
  5. And most importantly in my opinion, learn how to change the world from our past mistakes.

It’s a month that means change and recognition for me! There’s still a lot that needs to be done but we are getting there each day that passes so do not lose hope 😁.

Furthermore, if you are a University College Birmingham student and part of the LGBT community, feel free to join our society!

See you next week!

Alex x