Today is World Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
On this occasion, the Ministry of the Interior published statistics on anti-LGBT+ attacks, and the SOS homophobia association published its annual report based on the testimonies received via its various listening devices. Two studies that show that discrimination and violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans… persist.
In five years, over the period 2016-2021, the number of anti-LGBT+ acts has doubled (+104%, or +15% on average per year), underlines in particular the Ministry of the Interior.
3790 reached in 2021
In total, 2170 crimes and misdemeanors against lesbians, gays, bi and trans were registered in 2021 by the police and the gendarmerie. If we add the 1620 fines drawn up, the police have identified a total of 3,790 attacks “committed because of sexual orientation or gender identity”.
Compared to 2020, the number of “anti-LGBT+” crimes and offenses recorded is up by 28%, and that of fines by 16% (the increase is respectively 12% and 32% compared to 2019, i.e. before the beginning of the health crisis).
What are these acts?
A large majority of these attacks concern the insults and defamation (59%), specifies the ministry.
In detail, in 2021, 34% of “anti-LGBT+” crimes and offenses are defamation or insults, 24% of physical harm non-sexual, 22% of threat. This is followed by attacks on property with or without violence, harassment and discrimination.
What is the profile of the victims?
The victims of “anti-LGBT+” crimes and offenses are mostly men (73%) and youth : 60% are under 35 years old.
Where do these attacks take place?
According to the Ministry of the Interior, nearly half of anti-LGBT+ crimes and offenses take place in public spaces.
“Sharp increase in harassment in private spheres”
“Victims file complaints especially for acts committed in public space, supports the president of SOS homophobia Lucile Jomat, because these are people they do not know. But there are also a lot of anti-LGBT+ acts in private circles, such as family, neighborhood, work, school. Our association has also observed a very strong increase in harassment in these environments. And in these more intimate settings, the victims dare less to denounce their attackers. »
Most of these attacks occur in an urban environmentto 53% in agglomerations of more than 200,000 inhabitants (the Paris agglomeration is particularly affected), even if “this proportion has decreased over the last two years”, underlines Beauvau.
Rural municipalities remain very under-represented among “anti-LGBT+” acts. Logic, explains according to the president of SOS homophobia, “we come back to the fact that when we live in a small town, we potentially know the person and therefore we have less desire to file a complaint because we are more afraid of reprisals”.
In addition, the proportion of victims of “anti-LGBT+” crimes or offenses committed via the internet or telephone networks is stable in 2021, compared to 2020 (9%).
Still too few complaints
The statistics taken from the recordings made by the national police and gendarmerie services only covera small part of the acts actually committed because the vast majority of victims of “anti-LGBT+” acts do not file a complaint.
Only 20% of LGBT+ people attacked or threatened reported the facts to the police on average over the period 2012-2018, according to the Security Living Environment survey. This rate drops to 5% for insults.
“There is a desire to say stop”
However, the president of SOS homophobia notes a positive development: “Victims increasingly denounce the attacks they suffer, perhaps because they are more and more violent, and even if by filing a complaint, they can also be victims of discrimination. There is a change of mentality, and a desire to say stop to all this discrimination. »
Two advances in 2021
Finally, the year 2021 was marked by two advances for more equal rights for LGBTI people, recalls SOS homophobia in its report: the adoption of the law which prohibits conversion therapy as well as the bioethics law, which opened access to medically assisted procreation (PMA) to female couples and single women. “The latter, expected for almost ten years, remains however still largely insufficient, in particular because it does not allow trans people to exercise their reproductive rights once their civil status has changed. »