Social & Civil Issues – Page 56 – Enviroshop

New Survey of 50,000+ Young People Reveals Troubling Post-Election Spike in Bullying & Harassment

January 22, 2017 Allison Turner Human Rights Campaign, Social & Civil Issues

Today, HRC Foundation released the results of a groundbreaking post-election survey of more than 50,000 young people ages 13-18 revealing the deeply damaging fallout the November election has had on youth across the United States.

The online survey, believed to be the largest ever of its kind, found that 70 percent of respondents have witnessed bullying, hate messages or harassment since the election, with racial bias the most common motive cited. More than a quarter of LGBTQ youth said they have been personally bullied or harassed since Election Day — compared to 14 percent of non-LGBTQ youth — with transgender young people most frequently targeted. Additionally, Hispanic and Latinx respondents were 20 percent more likely than other youth to report having been personally bullied, with harassment targeting both immigrant and nonimmigrant communities.

“Whether the threats come in their schools or from those holding the country’s highest offices, no young person should be bullied or made to feel unsafe,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “The alarming results of this groundbreaking survey underscore our fears about the damaging effect the recent election is having on our nation’s youth, and serve as a call to action to all of us committed to helping our young people thrive in an inclusive and supportive society.”

Vast numbers of young people also reported feeling nervous and hopeless post-election, with almost half of LGBTQ youth saying they have taken steps to hide who they are by delaying coming out, dressing differently or questioning their plans for the future. Hispanic and African American young people also reported changing their appearances and routines out of fear of harassment, and Muslim, Jewish and Hindu youth all described concealing symbols of their faith to avoid being targeted.

In responses to open-ended questions on the survey, many young people shared heart-wrenching stories of how the vicious campaign rhetoric had encouraged harassment and bullying. Wrote one Hispanic 18-year-old from Illinois, “My family and I go shopping and wash clothes at 2 a.m. to avoid seeing and hearing people’s comments.” A transgender youth from Idaho wrote that they and a Latinx friend were confronted at school by a fellow student who said, “Donald Trump is gonna deport wastes of space like you, and hopefully he does something about freaks like you too.”

Findings include:

Seventy percent of respondents reported witnessing bullying, hate messages or harassment during or since the 2016 election. Of those, 79 percent said such behaviors have been occurring more frequently since the onset of the presidential campaign.
Among young people who reported seeing bullying and harassment, 70 percent had witnessed incidents motivated by race or ethnicity, 63 percent had seen incidents motivated by sexual orientation, 59 percent had seen incidents motivated by immigration status, and 55 percent had witnessed incidents motivated by gender.
Over the past 30 days, about half of transgender youth reported feeling hopeless and worthless most or all of the time, and 70 percent said that these and similar feelings have increased in the past 30 days. Thirty-six percent had been personally bullied or harassed, and 56 percent had changed their self-expression or future plans because of the election.
Before Election Day 2016, more than half of survey respondents reported thinking about the election every day, and a third thought about it several times each week.

In one encouraging finding, despite widespread post-election fear and anxiety, young people said they are more committed than ever to supporting others who are targeted for discrimination and harassment. Fifty-seven percent said that since Election Day, they more frequently feel motivated to help people in their community.

Wrote one 15-year-old from North Carolina: “The best way for adults to reassure youth, especially minorities, is to get involved in the community and take action to make the world a better place, whether it is through volunteering at a homeless shelter, working on a campaign, or something else. Actions speak louder than words.”

Respondents were solicited through HRC’s social media channels and those of partner organizations, including Mental Health America, the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, True Colors Fund and The Trevor Project.

To acknowledge the very real fears young people are experiencing, and help them cope with the fallout from the election, HRC is recommending five things you can do today to support LGBTQ youth. Find the list here. Read the full survey results here.

HRC Partners with Prevention Access Campaign to Correct Misinformation about HIV

January 17, 2017 Noël Gordon Human Rights Campaign, Social & Civil Issues

Today, HRC announced a partnership with the Prevention Access Campaign (PAC) to correct misinformation about HIV in the news media through a new joint initiative called the Accuracy Watchdog.

PAC is one of a growing number of organizations, including HRC, to champion the fact that people living with HIV cannot transmit the virus to a partner if they’ve consistently taken their medication and achieved an “undetectable viral load.” This means the amount of HIV in a person’s body is so low that it cannot be detected by a standard HIV test.

HRC recently sat down with PAC’s Bruce Richman and John Byrne to discuss the current realities of HIV and the importance of stigma-busting initiatives such as the Accuracy Watchdog.

What is the Prevention Access Campaign (PAC)? How did it get started?

The Prevention Access Campaign is a health equity initiative to fundamentally dismantle HIV stigma and prevent new HIV transmissions by expanding access to and awareness of groundbreaking biomedical HIV prevention. We started PAC because we recognized the need for expanded access to PrEP to prevent acquiring HIV and a major gap in knowledge and lack of understanding that people living with HIV who are undetectable can’t transmit HIV to a partner. We’ve even come up with a simple slogan to help people remember: “Undetectable = Untransmittable” or “#UequalsU.”

What is PAC’s primary goal? What are some of the ways you’re working to achieve it?

This a game changing moment in the epidemic, but most people still don’t know it. With effective antiretroviral therapy, a person living with HIV is no longer capable of transmitting HIV. With PrEP, a daily pill can reduce an individual’s risk of acquiring HIV by more than 90 percent, and technologies continue to improve. PAC’s goal is to get the message out accurately and meaningfully about these life-changing, stigma-busting, and transmission stopping developments.

We’re working in cities like New York and Miami and through a network of organizations in the UK, France, Northern Ireland, The Netherlands, Canada, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand to co-produce and share open-source social marketing materials, research, and strategies related to HIV prevention and #UequalsU.

Tell us more about the Accuracy Watchdog you’re working on in partnership with HRC and what you’re hoping to accomplish with it.

We created the Accuracy Watchdog after finding major inaccuracies about PrEP and undetectability in news articles and on HIV information sites. After securing multiple corrections (e.g., last year, we corrected an inaccuracy about PrEP’s effectiveness in a widely shared Newsweek article), we found there weren’t any organizations consistently monitoring the media for mistakes such as the one we found in the Newsweek article. Nor were there any organizations consistently following up on these errors. This a problem because misinformation leaves people ill-equipped to protect themselves and their partners from the spread of HIV, and it can perpetuate harmful myths about people living with and affected by HIV.

Accuracy Watchdog fills that gap by monitoring the media for scientific inaccuracies and other types of misleading claims. A sister campaign called S4 assists with this effort and is driven by a growing network of people living with HIV. HRC does an incredible job sounding the alarm whenever bias or misinformation about the LGBTQ community appears, so it made total sense to partner with you all on this effort.

Why is important for people living with and affected by HIV to know about the benefits of being undetectable?

The information is life-changing. The majority of people living with HIV are still being led to believe that they will be infectious for the rest of their lives or until there is a cure. The message that we’re no longer capable of passing HIV onto others is the defining moment that many have been waiting for. It lifts the shame and the fear of transmitting the virus on to someone you love, someone you have sex with, or someone with whom you conceive a child.

We believe sharing this information will help dismantle HIV stigma, which is not only harmful to people living with HIV but is perhaps the greatest barrier to ending the epidemic. For some people living with HIV, staying undetectable and therefore uninfectious is a reason to start and stay on treatment.

Is there anything else you’d like HRC readers to know?

While we celebrate these biomedical breakthroughs, we need to address the social, structural, and legal barriers to accessing PrEP and stable treatment. We need to be careful about creating a divide between folks who use PrEP and those who don’t by choice or lack of access to it. And even more so, we must be vigilant to avoid alienating people with HIV who are not on effective treatment by choice or circumstances outside of their control. Given these two groundbreaking developments, there has never been a more hopeful time in the history of the epidemic. It’s time to ensure everyone has the opportunity to take part in this revolution.

HRC is committed to working with allied organizations such as the Prevention Access Campaign to end the dual epidemics of HIV and HIV-related stigma. Click here to learn more about HRC’s work.

Judge Puts Thousands at Risk by Halting Enforcement of Federal Transgender Healthcare Protections

January 8, 2017 Stephen Peters Human Rights Campaign, Social & Civil Issues

Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), responded to a federal judge’s decision yesterday to issue an injunction blocking enforcement of federal protections set to go into effect today barring discrimination in healthcare services based on an individual’s gender identity, as well as reproductive health services. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas and several other states, as well as religiously-affiliated medical groups, seeking to overturn a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulation implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which forbids discrimination in health insurance and by health providers accepting federal funds.

“Judge O’Connor’s decision to prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing crucial protections for transgender people seeking healthcare services puts thousands of people at risk of marginalization, harassment, and discrimination at a time they are most vulnerable and in need of inclusive, respectful care,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. “In addition, limiting access to reproductive healthcare harms millions of Americans including LGBTQ people who rely on reproductive healthcare for a broad range of reasons. While Judge O’Connor’s action is unconscionable, we believe that justice will prevail as courts continue to recognize that discrimination on the basis of sex is illegal, including discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”

O’Connor is the same judge who in August issued an injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Justice from enforcing guidance provided to school districts by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice clarifying that transgender students have a right to be treated with dignity and free from discrimination in schools. In March of 2015, he also sought to block Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) rights for legally married same-sex couples despite the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in United States v. Windsor (2013) recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples under federal law.

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