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Twitter is a crucial safe space for many queer people like me, which makes the ‘anti-LGBT emoji’ even more painful

As an LGBT+ person, it’s easy to allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security. One of the advantages of platforms like Twitter is that you can largely control who and what you see. Of course, this can also lead to your online self inhabiting something of an echo chamber, where you are shielded from some of the less enlightened views that undoubtedly exist in the era of Brexit and Trump.

But this safety net has been disrupted today, with the emergence of an “anti-LGBT emoji”, which is in fact a glitch which causes the “prohibited” emoji to overlap the rainbow flag emoji if used together. Since its appearance, this image has been casually adopted by scores of Twitter users and is circulating freely on social media.

But more importantly, what does its creation tell us about the status quo for LGBT+ people? If nothing else, this incident provides further evidence that the battle for equality is not won. With every milestone passed on the journey, be it marriage equality or adoption rights, it would be easy for the LGBT+ community to lay down its weapons and begin to rest on its laurels, convinced that legal provisions equate to social acceptance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here in the western world we are faced with a tidal wave of right-wing populism with serious repercussions for queer people. Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in their country’s military, the huge rise in anti-LGBT+ hate crime since the UK’s Brexit referendum (an increase of 147 per cent in July-September 2016 alone) in 2016 and the rise of the far-right in Germany, Italy and Hungary – among others – all serve as reminders that our equality is founded on a base of quicksand.

Elsewhere, LGBT+ people face torture, imprisonment and death in scores of countries around the globe, including Chechnya, where the latest wave of anti-LGBT+ violence has claimed at least two lives, according to reports. Members of the queer community across the world use social media as an escape from the constraints of life in a country where they are unable to live freely. This includes Iraq, where LGBT+ people take to Facebook to anonymously post their queer artwork, for example. Social media, when properly regulated, can function as a virtual safe space.

The creation of this emoji and Twitter’s failure to remove the functionality from its platform sends an unequivocal message that LGBT+ equality is, in fact, not fully assured anywhere.

One can only imagine the rightful uproar that would have ensued had this particular emoji been replaced with a racist equivalent. Undoubtedly, the reaction of the majority of users would have been equally as vociferous. However, it seems highly unlikely that Twitter would have allowed it to be disseminated without hindrance, avoiding taking action to ban such usage from the platform. Just as racial equality should never be at the mercy of “debate”, queer people deserve the dignity of their equality being a given in 2019.

In this world of corporatised Pride, where companies like Starbucks and Barclays sponsor parades in London, and the ludicrous evolution of the white cisgender heterosexual male into the self-portrayed “forgotten minority” (Straight Pride, anyone?), it would be incredibly easy, understandable even, to dismiss the anti-LGBT emoji as a distraction from the real issues.

However, the righteous anger at its enthusiastic adoption by thousands of members of the anti-pride brigade should be interpreted as a token of the frustration of LGBT+ people that homophobic, biphobic and transphobic expression continues to be both freely voiced and seemingly tolerated by those who could stifle it.

This isn’t about a difference of opinion; it is a potent symbol of the kind of hate that sees LGBT+ people discriminated against across the globe. No emoji can put a positive spin on that.