Understand the LGBTQIA+ news: Student Pride, UK Trans Teen attacked, Greece, Arts Council and more

As a once long-term volunteer and mentor for National Student Pride, an NUS LGBT+ activist and a queer thorn in the side of my old students’ union, I'm a big believer in the student movement.

What happens on campus in further and higher education is often a sign of what's to come in society.

That's usually a theory that I draw a great deal of hope from. But in the current climate, that mood music is more complex.

As Maisy Neale sets out in our main feature this week ahead of National Student Pride next weekend, the wider political clampdown on LGBTQIA+ people in the UK is impacting campus life.

Still, while a few academics with fringe anti-gender views try to push prejudiced views onto campus through the guise of 'academic freedom', students are pushing back.

This undervalued section of the UK voter base is politically aware and prepared to take action to secure their futures.

In one of my first jobs after graduating, my editor told me to stop pitching "gay stories" because there was no "money" or "audience” in them. Fresh from my time on campus, I continued my on campus energy into my career. 

Here we are, eight years later - thanks in part to support from National Student Pride, who funded the first four seasons of our podcast - not only with an international audience but also generating funds to change the media industry, so no editor has those torrid takes again.

We need your support to further our unique approach to queer journalism - telling stories because they count, not for clicks - while skilling up a new generation of queer creatives. 

Understand the LGBTQIA+ headlines and keep track of the latest queer content and perspectives.

This week, QueerAF is written by Jamie Wareham, National Student Pride's Maisy Neale and trans creative Sabah Choudrey.

💬 This week:

• Arts Council. A widely decried plan to pull funding from 'political' art points to a bigger picture of politics becoming a dirty word, and anti-LGBTQIA+ voices using this to censor the queer community.
• Walthamstow. Another transgender teen has been stabbed in a suspected transphobic hate crime - the victim is recovering, and we look at the court report.
• Ewan Forbes. This week's Queer Gaze, celebrating Trans+ history, looks at the local GP - and aristocrat - who announced his transition in a newspaper in the ‘50s and was a welcome and valued part of his community.

Skip the doomscrolling and support queer creatives instead. We are QueerAF – and so are you.

This little-known government act makes it harder to protect transgender students on campus

TL;DR: Being a queer student on campus is inherently political. But despite government policies and legislation limiting students’ unions from protecting students from anti-trans views, students are still leading the fight for safe spaces on campus to explore and express their identities.