The Chris Pincher scandal is a reminder that gay men like me aren’t ‘asking for it’

Growing up as a gay man, I consider myself extremely lucky not to have had a difficult experience coming out. Unlike so many friends of mine – and unlike a large proportion of the wider world where LGBT+ rights simply don’t exist – I experienced nothing but love and acceptance from my friends and family, and it was a non-issue.

I didn’t realise the privilege this was until years later, when I experienced bullying and harassment in the street simply for being anything other than stereotypically “masculine”.

When I started going on nights out at university, I encountered a whole new and exciting world of LGBT+ spaces, where I learnt that these non-masc parts of me were acceptable and even desirable to other men. Being in these spaces was fun and liberating, but I quickly learnt that this didn’t mean they were safe. I didn’t know the rules of belonging, but I began to feel that fitting in somehow meant I had to go along with behaviours that didn’t sit easily with me, to say the least.

It was almost like there were some unspoken rules about being in these spaces, that were slowly revealed through each boundary pushed, each wandering hand that went without a chance to challenge it, each alcohol-breathed whisper: “Hey, it’s only a bit of fun.”

At its worst, I, like many other LGBT+ people, experienced serious sexual assault. The worst of these happened after I had tried to take all the protective measures I could think of – from not drinking at all for fear of having my drink spiked, to wearing multiple pairs of underwear on nights out to make it harder to be groped.

It would be easy to ask why people like me don’t just remove ourselves from these spaces, or call out bad behaviour more fiercely when it hits us in the face. But it’s not that simple when you are learning the rules of fitting in, are sent graphic messages from people in positions of power in your workplace, and when avoiding more inclusive spaces would lead to greater loneliness than that already experienced within the LGBT+ community. All of these challenges are far worse for minority groups who face many more additional barriers than I even will, for example on the basis of race or gender identity.

The Chris Pincher scandal reminds gay men like me who’ve experienced assault of the difficult reality of being a victim of sexual violence. But it has also shone a light on one of the underlying reasons why this behaviour keeps happening in the first place – the outdated and discriminatory attitudes society has about gay men, amongst other LGBT+ people.

On the one hand, there’s a narrative that suggests Chris Pincher allegedly assaulted men “because he is gay”, not because he is a predator – and that’s “just what gay men do”. On the other hand, those who alleged the assaults have been questioned about whether they are gay by the Tory whip Sarah Dines, because apparently, “that doesn’t make it straightforward”.

For victims of sexual assault, it can be a confusing, distressing, or difficult to remember experience. But from the outside, and often from the perspective of the person who experienced it, assault is straightforwardly assault. It is clearly about the violation of boundaries and sexual violence – no matter how much it is minimised, deliberately mixed up with problems around alcohol, or the blame shifted onto the victim because of outdated stereotypes about gay people.

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The attitudes and responses to the allegations have been deliberately non-straightforward, with Chris Pincher saying he “embarrassed” himself and others, or Boris Johnson framing the events entirely as a problem with alcohol.

The good news from this case is that people aren’t falling for tired cliches about those who don’t fit in to old fashioned stereotypes about sex and gender in Britain today. It’s not only those who have been marginalised – or been felt up – by the abusers in their communities who are standing up against unacceptable behaviour. There has been a more widespread recognition that the responses to these victims have rung hollow, and that the prejudice is plain to see.

Whilst it may be our work as an LGBT+ community to make sure our spaces are safer and more inclusive, it is the work of society more widely to keep on challenging stigma and discrimination when it rears its ugly head. That way nobody will uphold the idea that anyone has to expect or accept ill treatment, whichever sections of society they may belong to.