From regarding people as criminals for their identity to legalising same-sex marriage and outlawing ‘gay-conversion therapy’, Victoria has come a long way since it decriminalised homosexuality in 1982.
Pride in our future: Victoria’s LGBTIQ+ strategy 2022-2032 – Victoria’s long-term plan to drive LGBTIQ+ equality and combat discrimination – was released in February this year, committing all parts of the Victorian government to make laws, policies and services safer and more inclusive for LGBTIQ+ Victorians.
While the state continues to take steps towards equality, the prevalence of systemic discrimination and marginalisation of the LGBTIQ+ community persists, especially in regional Victoria.
LGBTIQ+ Victorians face greater levels of discrimination, stigma and exclusion and even more so for Gippsland’s queer community, where significantly fewer inclusive supports are available.
Harming the health and wellbeing of those in the LGBTIQ+ community is a lack of education, representation, medical services and support services, accentuating feelings of being stigmatised and inequal.
Ash Goodsell is among those who consider a lack of education, representation and services as fundamental problems in regional Victoria, rendering a poorer environment for the local LGBTIQ+ community.
“I came out to my friends around 18, and I only came out to my parents when I was 24, nearly 18 months ago,” Ash said.
“I think that [not acknowledging my sexuality and coming out sooner] definitely had something to do with growing up regionally, especially in school; I got bullied all the way through high school pretty much.
“It’s pretty frickin traumatic, and of course, it puts a stop on it; you repress your feelings and decide that’s an area I’m not gonna play in or tell anybody about, because it’s just this deep-rooted shame.
“It takes you so long to get over that,” he said.
High school is hard enough at the best of times, but for Ash, questioning his sexuality in a community where he didn’t feel accepted or supported, added to his internal pubescent turmoil.
“Toxic masculinity is king here, especially when I was at school; it makes you feel like you don’t even belong, and it makes it so hard to figure it out for yourself and be okay with it to the point where you can tell people,” Ash said.
“Back then, even in the media, there wasn’t any queer representation or anything, whereas now there is, so there definitely has been change.
“But in my time, there was nothing, so you don’t deal with it, [or] pretend like it doesn’t exist, [or] pretend to be straight.”
As society began to change and LGBTIQ+ rights moved into the forefront of the media, Ash finished high school, and support services such as the Gippsland Pride Initiative in 2019 were launched.
But for Ash, accessing these services was out of the question, for fear of retribution.
“You now have groups like the Gippsland Pride Initiative, but I know for me you wouldn’t join those groups because you didn’t want to be found out as queer,” Ash said.
“No matter how secretive they are, you are still not going to go because what if you get caught? And that just leads to a whole lot of pain from everywhere around the town.
“I was out at the pub one night (in 2018), and a group of boys I went to school with were calling me a f****t, something got mentioned like ‘do you want to come home with me’, they were taking the piss.
“You never know when people start like that, when there is alcohol involved and with people who I know have been in physical altercations before, if they are going to rev up if you bite back, so you just don’t.”
Victorian government data reveals in the past 12 months, 58 per cent of LGBTIQ+ Victorians have faced unfair treatment based on sexual orientation and 77.7 per cent of trans- and gender-diverse Victorians have faced unfair treatment based on their gender identity.
More than 36.4 per cent of LGBTIQ+ Victorians faced social exclusion, which was greater for Victorians located in outer suburban, regional and rural areas.
And LGBTIQ+ people in rural and regional areas rate their health as ‘poor’ or ‘fair’ compared with outer- and inner-suburban communities.
The Victorian government acknowledges Victorians in outer suburban, regional and rural areas report greater psychological distress rates and are more likely to have attempted suicide than those living in inner-city areas.
Adding to these alarming statistics is the further recent understanding of ‘change and conversion practice trauma’.
This is the practise of attempting to alter human beings, suppressing someone from being gay or from living as a different gender to their recorded sex at birth, through techniques such as talking therapies and prayer, exorcism, physical violence and food deprivation.
It’s a practice that has put a Sale church, which is also opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, at the forefront of the state’s media on several occasions.
Like many LGBTIQ+ Gippslanders, Ash believes education is the forerunner in combatting stigma and systemic discrimination, which in turn will create a better, safer, more inclusive environment for the regional queer community, alleviating psychological distress and improving mental health and wellbeing.
“I think it comes down to education from a young age that love is love, and you can already see that in some schools or how parents talk with their kids,” Ash said.
“There is so much deep-seated, inter-generational trauma in regional areas from people passing on these homophobic ideologies from generation to generation, without education to teach people that it is okay, it is just going to continue.
“The whole notion of having to come to terms with your sexuality and how as a society that’s where the change could start, comes back to education from a young age and would take such a pressure off the next generation in feeling safe and included,” he said.
“My experience makes me feel scared for the younger generations; it’s still very much like, if you don’t fit into the mould the regional area wants you to be, then you’re outcast, and so what do we do? Go to Melbourne to feel like we belong.
“Having moved to Melbourne now and being in a semi-long-term relationship, I can walk down the street and hold my partner’s hand and not have to worry about getting hate-crimed.
“If I were to do that here, I would be on edge 24/7, like ‘what’s that? Who’s behind me? Is someone going to throw something at me? Am I about to get stabbed?’
“Which is sad because I would love my kids to grow up here, but that’s never going to happen because how is this area going to take a kid with two queer dads? What if things are still the same as when I was at school.”
Equality Minster Harriet Shing says equality in Victoria is non-negotiable.
“We are working every day to make sure LGBTIQ+ Victorians feel safe, welcome and celebrated in every town, every hospital and every classroom across Victoria,” Ms Shing said.
“We have made the Safe Schools program available to every school in the state – equipping staff to support LGBTIQ+ students so they can be safe and welcome in and out of the classroom.”
The Labor government is delivering the Safe Schools program to all schools across Victoria with updated resources and materials, ensuring relationships, sexuality and consent education is LGBTIQ+ inclusive, including supporting resources.
Safe Schools is not a subject taught in the classroom, and it is not a part of the curriculum, but rather a program for principals, teachers and school communities.
Mayor of Wellington Shire, Councillor Ian Bye, contends that through the Council’s Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plan – Healthy Wellington 2021–2025 – the local government has made improving equity in the region a priority.
“Through Healthy Wellington, council strives to reduce barriers for people who are trying to access or feel included in community life and increase community activities that focus on celebrating diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality,” Councillor Bye said.
“Council will continue to create and maintain physical environments that are safe for the local community, achieved through the design of public spaces and measures such as CCTV (closed-circuit television) and adequate lighting.
“Council will continue to take a community leadership role to promote and develop the region as one which celebrates its diverse and inclusive communities,” he added.
The Wellington Shire Council and the state government have begun employing resources in regional LGBTIQ+ services, such as the Gippsland Pride Initiative, a fundamental stepping stone on the path to a better Gippsland for the queer community.
Less than five years ago, there were effectively no local LGBTIQ+ services available, and for many queer Gippslanders, the lack of support had a significant, adverse effect.
For another local queer, who wishes to go by the name Eliza, this couldn’t be more accurate.
“[Growing up in Sale, I felt] pretty unsure and pretty isolated,” Eliza said.
“Especially growing up with people using gay as a derogatory term definitely didn’t help people internalising.
“It would make you think, oop, push that down, don’t think about it because it’s not a good environment to explore it or even think about it.
“I think I would have known a lot sooner [that I was queer] if I lived in Melbourne or had been around other people; it took me a long time to be like, ‘oh hey, that’s what it is’.
“The resources have been pretty scarce, and there hasn’t really been an opportunity to build a community; I have been involved with the theatre, which helped, queer people tend to flock to the arts, but there really hasn’t been much of a support network at all.”
Currently, Gippsland’s LGBTIQ+ have access to support and services such as The Queers Are Here, Qspace, Gippsland Pride Initiative, Rural Rainbows, QLife, Rainbow Network and Youth Space.
The number of LGBTIQ+ services available today is exponentially higher than ever before; however, for Gippsland’s queer community east of Traralgon, support and services are seemingly entirely online.
“I know there are satellite hubs of the mental health services that do their best to be inclusive, but there is nothing that is really dedicated [to supporting the LGBTIQ+ community],” Eliza said.
“It seems like all of the resources for queer wellbeing are through mental health services, which is sort of good, but it would be nice to have a physical community hub that wasn’t specifically for mental health; a place that was more for like events and networking.
“Whilst it doesn’t affect me directly, there are people I really care about who are trans, and the only gender clinic around here is in Melbourne, so if they want to get any help in that regard, they have to go to Melbourne for regular appointments, so it would be nice to see more services like that available regionally.”
In 2017, Thorne Harbour Health, a Victorian LGBTI health organisation, updated medical guidelines for trans health, endorsing a model known as “informed consent”; a decision to start gender-affirming hormones can be made between a general practitioner and a client.
In 2019, the first state government-funded clinics outside the hospital system opened, centred on the new model to increase access to trans health care in Victoria and have since begun extending to regional communities with a clinic at Ballarat Community Health.
“Something like that would be lovely to see,” Eliza said.
“There are so many facets to what is needed; everyone needs different things.
“Having something like a pride/resource centre that encompasses all those different facets, whether it’s sexual and reproductive health, mental health support, community support and networking, would be fantastic for the local queer community.”
Ms Shing says, “we are investing record levels of funding into the health system to ensure all Victorians have access to inclusive and LGBTIQ+ tailored health care – including through the new 223-bed hospital we will build in West Gippsland.”
Kal, a young queer person from the Wellington Shire, says having a community, a place to go and meet like-minded people, is crucial for LGBTIQ+ people.
“A lot of the time, it’s hard to find other people, especially in a smaller town where many people fear judgement,” Kal said.
“There is not enough support; it is really terrible.“
While there have been no discussions to date about building a pride centre within the Wellington shire, Councillor Bye says, “council would be willing to consider any meaningful and sustainable initiative that provided the support required for the local community.
“Over the past five years, council has trialled a number of different initiatives to support LGBTIQ+ people in the community,” Councillor Bye said.
“Council is currently running Axios – an LGBTIQ+ social support group for youth aged 12-18 years. Wellington Shire Youth Councillors have also worked in collaboration with East Gippsland Shire Council’s Youth Ambassadors to run the Rainbow Ball, supporting local LGBTIQ+ youth,” he said.
“The Wellington Shire Council works closely with and supports a number of different agencies and groups; key to these is the Gippsland Pride Initiative and their work to collect information relating to the strengths and weaknesses of the support mechanisms available to the LGBTIQ+ community across Gippsland.
“We encourage any person in the community with suggestions or ideas to continue this work to contact council for a discussion,” Councillor Bye said.
Increasing LGBTIQ+ representation is another crucial element in developing a better Gippsland for our queer community.
Ash and Eliza are among those in the queer community that feel LGBTIQ+ representation is lacking in the region, and council agrees there should be more LGBTIQ+ representation in the Wellington shire.
“One of Council’s strategic directions is for Wellington to be a liveable, engaged, and supported community,” Councillor Bye said.
“To achieve this, council has committed to develop and implement a ‘Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan’ and to achieve the Rainbow Tick accreditation for council services. Both of these actions are to be delivered within the current council term.”
The State Government is committing $15 million to strengthen the health, wellbeing, and social and economic outcomes of LGBTIQ+ Victorians in the 2022/23 Budget, and the Wellington Shire is continuing to strive toward a more inclusive LGBTIQ+ community, so why is Gippsland’s queer community still facing adversities and marginalisation?
Gippsland’s LGBTIQ+ community have the solutions; is it time for the rest of society to listen?
