Over recent years, there has been a drive from the Home Office to understand sexuality within asylum claims as a matter of identity, rather than conduct. This follows a decision of the European Court of Justice and is now reflected in Home Office asylum policy. This is a victory for the dignity of asylum seekers and has curtailed cases of asylum seekers being required to submit sexually explicit evidence.
But the focus on identity raises new concerns. For example, Abdullah* a 29-year-old Omani refugee told me that: I never really identified with my sexuality. I recognised my sexuality, I accepted it, I was okay with it. I even lived with it. But the thing is, here is where it gets more complicated, identity is a very difficult word to identify. In every culture there is a certain set of values that are associated with identity.
He went on to say that, in countries such as Oman, identity was associated only with one’s faith group, tribe or nationality. In other words, in countries where sexuality is not viewed in terms of identity, but in terms of attraction or behaviour, asylum seekers may not be able to understand or articulate their experiences in terms of identity. This can lead to claimants being disbelieved because their focus is not seen as “credible” in Western terms.
I can understand how here, or in places where you are protected, people might want to create an identity around what they do, but to assume that just because someone is fleeing a country due to their sexual interest this must be an identity that means all these different things is just wrong.
The problem these narratives demonstrate is striking. What exactly is sexual identity? In the UK context, sexual and gender minorities have come to be understood in terms of identity, with rights framed around stable ideas of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). But for people growing up in other contexts, identities are unlikely to be so stable.
www.city.ac.uk/news/2019/september/why-the-home-office-rejects-so-many-lgbtq-asylum-claims
For me this just illustrates how far from reality most of the trans identity movement language and objectives are. But also how blinkered and narrow minded they are that they dont even conceive that their desparate attempt to cast themselves as martyrs is in fact an expression of their privilege.