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LGBTQ+ Access and Inclusion at RASASH

As part of LGBT History Month in February, we are keen to highlight some of our engagement work with LGBTQ+ communities in Highland who have generously shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences with us to help ensure we are as inclusive a service as we can be.

Sexual violence is everywhere: often, it is hidden, but it is out there. Even in the smallest of villages and remotest of communities in Highland where people insist things ‘like that don’t happen here’. As the Highlands’ only specialist support service for survivors of sexual violence, at RASASH we know this mindset all too well: the denial that there is a problem in this area of Scotland with ‘that sort of thing’.

Such refusal, disbelief and silencing within smaller, rural communities will often add another layer of challenge for those who’ve experienced sexual violence: how to speak out and disclose what’s happened when you’re embedded within a culture that you fear will not stand by you and at worst, may well ostracize you? These fears are well-founded, with the end result being that many survivors opt never to disclose what’s happened to them, often holding trauma for years, and sometimes, decades.

The challenges for survivors in remote and/or rural communities who also belong to marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ+ survivors, are further compounded. As part of RASASH’s ongoing work to ensure our service is as accessible and inclusive as possible across the region, we have heard from a range of LGBTQ+ individuals who have generously and courageously voiced their experiences and views on what it is to navigate life as a member of the community in Highland and what it means for a service to be truly inclusive and accessible.

The learnings from this work are far-reaching and have read-across for services across the board, beyond the Third Sector. Recurring themes which have arisen throughout our engagement with the LGBTQ+ community include:

• The need to be explicit about a service’s inclusivity: when this comes to RASASH, this means emphasizing in our external communications and materials that we support anyone of any gender or sexuality age 13+: sexual violence can and does happen to anyone, but those in the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately affected.

In the current climate, services can and must do more in particular to promote trans inclusion.

• Gestures from organizations such as displaying Pride or Progress flags are good, but must not be tokenistic or just once a year; they must be backed up with concrete actions year-round. Specifically, rigorous staff training around diversity and inclusion was highlighted as an absolute baseline necessity for any service aiming to be welcoming to the LGBTQ+ population.
• Confidentiality: this is a concern for any sexual violence survivor when disclosing. For LGBTQ+ individuals it is especially important, particularly for those who are not ‘out’ in their communities. Services must be transparent and upfront about their privacy and confidentiality policies and under which circumstances information may need to be shared on to a third party. Being mindful of power dynamics at all times when working with survivors is of paramount importance: bearing in mind that sexual violence is an abuse of power, workers must endeavour to minimize replicating any imbalance of power in their relationships with service users, and this applies to holding information confidentially.

• There is no ‘universal’ experience of being an LBGTQ+ person. As one participant astutely highlighted, ‘if you’ve met one trans person, then you’ve met one trans person’. There can be a tendency for LGBTQ+ people to be viewed as a homogenous entity when it comes to service design, but as this participant emphasized, ‘one size fits none’. Instead, working from a truly person-centered standpoint entails meeting individuals exactly as that: individuals. This approach must be built into the ethos of the organization for it to not only meet users’ needs, but also for it to be truly equitable in its provision.

There is more work to be done to ensure that RASASH is working for all survivors, and we are have an ongoing commitment to this as an intersectional feminist organization. What we know is that there is always more to learn and reflect on: doing things better is never a tick-box exercise. We are incredibly grateful to the range of LGBTQ+ individuals we have spoken with in recent months whose openness and strength in sharing their experiences and thoughts has been not only hugely informative, but truly powerful to bear witness to. Thank you.