Find out more about the services we offer for you in Milton Keynes.

• Q:Training
• Q:Counselling
• HQMK
• Q:Membership

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25 or under?
Would you like your voice to be heard?
Would you be prepared to talk about the experiences you’ve had?

FILL IN AN ONLINE SURVEY FOR A CHANCE TO WIN £50!!!

Solutions are conducting some research in association with Q:alliance and could really do with your input. Results from this survey will help improve the services young LGBT people get from a variety of agencies and help us all to get a better understanding of what life is like for young LGBT people in the city.

Complete our short online survey to be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win £50 of CMK shopping vouchers.

http://www.survey.gabba.net/people_mk_survey
OR
http://tinyurl.com/YoungLGBT

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THIS POSTER AND DISPLAY IT IN APPROPRIATE PLACES TO HELP SPREAD THE WORD

On behalf of Q:alliance, Solutions Research will be at the HQMK Youth Group on the 24th & 31st March and the 7th of April, you can come and share your thoughts and feelings with us and help us make the services you’re offered better.

If you are interested in taking part and would like to book a time on either of these evenings, please contact Caroline via caroline {at} solutions-research.co(.)uk

We are able to offer a £20 voucher incentive for taking part in the research.
All interviews are completely confidential and your information would be stored securely and in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and not shared with any third parties.

Solutions are a member of the Market Research Society

(Image from MESMAC North)

Over the next few weeks theres a wide range of events, including social opportunities, walking groups, HIV Quicktesting, pub nights, counselling, meals out, the LGBT General Assembly (which is going to be HUGE – click here for details), International Day Against Homophobia in Football and a fantastic event looking at the life of Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in honour of LGBT History Month – check the calendar for details. If you have, or know of, an event that should be listed here, please email us at website {at} qalliance.org(.)uk.

Please note that try to provide accurate listings, but always get in contact with the event organiser to double check. Not all social groups are listed on the calendar, for a full list of groups that we know of in the area click here. Unless otherwise noted, the events are not run by Q:alliance.

In addition to the events listed, Pink Punters, the local LGBT club, is open Thurs-Sun from 9pm. For more details on Pink Punters visit www.pinkpunters.com.

• People at my sixth form are so opinionated about gays, they make me feel like an outsider

• Was once told…. By a guy who threatened me…. Apparently it’s different for a boy to hit a lesbian than it is for a boy to hit a straight girl

• Family Values – My stepdad finds its impossible to have a gay friend, also believes my sexuality is a phase. My mother accepts but he thinks it’s unnatural. Because of this I felt obligated to hide my sexuality and go out with boys when I was younger.

• When walking through the city holding my ex’s hand I was jeered at and followed by a group of younger lads. They shouted names and were actually really intimidating despite being a lot younger.

• Lesbians and gays do get picked on. Homophobes exist (I used to be one I should know).

• I get really fed up and angry when people take the mick out of me for being gay and wearing makeup.

• When I was attacked at school the school took it seriously, but the police would only take it as an offence if there was a physical reason (not homophobia) to prosecute. I was 15 at the time. I suffered a broken rib and a fractured skull. Once I took it to court I received £150 compensation and the attacked received 6 months supervision order and a record of GBH.

Continue Reading

• We’re all human, we all deserve our rights
  We all want to be happy, feel safe, and live in harmony
  Homophobia does happen and it needs to stop
  No life should be let down for who they love
  Everyone needs to live together

• Like paper you can rip me apart
  With words from a cruel heart
  Now my patience has worn thin
  So noose be my friend?
  Don’t deny my escape
  (homophobia, it exists)

• My sister hasn’t spoken to me for 2 years because I am gay. All I wanted was to love you.

• Someone said it was disgusting to like someone of the same gender.

• Being called greedy all the time by people I don’t know. Called a slag for 4 years in school. I was 15 when I decided I was bisexual but didn’t come out until I was 16 because I was scared of being bullied or teased about it. Being judged by my sexuality. I tried to kill myself when I was 15 because of the bullying.

• When I was in year 8 my best friend started to bully me. I left the school due to that and I wasn’t in the catchment area. I started speaking to her again 4 years later. I told her I was gay and she was fine with it. However, a few days later she kept ringing me and shouting homophobic abuse down the phone. I told her to grow up and to never talk to me again and I haven’t heard anything since, almost a year later.

• Bein called a tramp for wearin ripped jeans and dressing different, which is what homosexuals are, it’s a different community that discriminated for being different.

• There was a group of ‘chavs’ in my street. I wouldn’t leave or enter the garden without them shouting abuse.

• Cyber bullying and threat phone calls – My experience is having abuse and prank phone calls and threats hurled at me. Trying to turn people against me by making up rumours. Intimidating glances.

• “I was fifteen years old, I was with my old best friend walking down a redway in Bradwell Common. Approximately twenty large females approached me. They started to shout at me for no apparent reason, I then said ‘sorry for anything I had done’ but they didn’t listen and told me that they were going to hit me and beat me up. I was very frightened and attempted to walk away but they wouldn’t let me. Eventually they told me to go away and I walked off with my best friend to her house. As soon as I entered the house I burst into tears as I didn’t understand why such a thing would happen. I wasn’t able to walk home after so I got a lift back and stayed away from Bradwell Common ever since. I sometimes have to walk through the estate but I make sure I am with people at all times to prevent the same from happening again.”

“I got a HIV related illness, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was incredibly ill for a year- stomach pains, diarrhoea, weight loss. I ended up in hospital. It wasn’t until I was in hospital that the doctor suggested an HIV test. As soon as the doctor came in, it dawned on me it was bad news. But to be honest by then it was almost a relief; it meant they could treat me. I wish I had been diagnosed earlier, I think I was partly in denial. If I’d had a test sooner I wouldn’t have been in hospital. Being that ill has taken a physical toll on my body. They caught it just in time, they told me I could have been blind by April and dead by June. If I could turn back the clock and have a test earlier I would.” – Gary

Next Tuesday (1st December) is World AIDS Day. The theme this year is HIV:reality. Some people with HIV suffer side-effects including nausea, diarrhoea and prolonged headaches. In some cases treatment causes changes in body shape, depression and mental health issues. Other people find they are able to lead a very healthy life with HIV and may not suffer the same side-effects.

To see a full range of  information, people’s HIV stories and HIV myths, visit the National AIDS Trust’s World AIDS Day Page. For details of sexual health services in Milton Keynes, including how to get a free, confidential HIV test, visit our information page. If you just want to talk to someone confidentially, you can get in contact with our counselling service by emailing counselling {at} qalliance.org(.)uk for a free initial appointment or visit the new NHS Choices Sexual Health Advice page to email in specific questions.

This week Richard Solly from Safer MK come to talk to HQMK, our weekly LGBT youth group, about their experiences of homophobia and transphobia. The discussion was productive and enlightening for all involved. The youth were really interested in what he had to say and shared their experiences of homophobia and transphobia in MK  (some of which we will publish on our site over the weekend).

As mentioned last week, Ask Jo is coming back! Our website advice column for LGBT, or questioning, people in MK is back after far too long an absence. If you have a problem or dilemma that you want advice on send an email to jo {at} qalliance.org(.)uk – In the past Jo has helped people with coming out, relationship issues, coping with bullies, how to date well, sex advice and a whole range of other issues. We’re also still looking for more of your coming out stories. Reading other people’s coming out stories is often an essential part of the coming out process; by sharing your experience – good, bad or boring – it can help people prepare to share themselves with the world as well as providing an interesting insight for yourself to see how far you’ve come.

This week was Domestic Abuse Awareness Week. 30% of LGBT people experience violence, abuse or harassment from a family member or someone close to them in their lifetimes. Domestic abuse is not always physical, and that means that the signs may not be obvious. It can involve controlling a person’s contact with their friends and family (isolating them), destroying property, verbal threats in private or public, etc.

Are you age 16 to 21 and want to do something against homophobic bullying? Then take part in Stonewall’s Film Clip Competition and get your message heard across the country! More info on their website.

Have you seen this boy?

Some other things we have linked to on our Facebook and Twitter accounts:

• Family appeals to gay community to find missing son
• Brussels says churches must lift ban on employing homosexuals
• Schoolboy thanks fellow pupils for pointing out his homosexuality
• Short video about new memorial for Freddy Mercury
• Marriage should move with the times
• Milton Keynes Laughter Club info
• Liverpool’s bishops defend gay rights

“Everything we fear in the world & want to change can be transformed through happiness, the simplest desire we have & also the most profound” – Deepak Chopra

Finally, don’t forget that Saturday (the 28th) is another of A Day in Hand’s wonderful Sshh! (Same Sex Hand Holding) days. More info at their site.

We get up to loads of stuff every week, including the odd trip! In early July we went to London Gay Pride with the team from Pink Punters nightclub. Picture the scene – 600,000 people, a double decker rainbow bus, drag queens and the biggest rainbow flag you’ve ever seen!

In September we’re joining in with Celebr8 – the big event on 21st Sept in CMK – it’s celebrating all the diverse communities that live in MK by having a parade from Campbell Park to the rail station. We’re sure the huge flag will come in handy!

It’s free to come along to the group, sometimes when we go on outings like the cinema or a restaurant, we charge a small amount to cover costs but try to keep them down as most young people are usually skint! Thanks to support from MK Council we have two youth workers at the drop-in.

So if you’re a LGBT or questioning teen in MK and you want to meet new friends and have a laugh, then come along! You can click here for further details or email Jen & John, our Youth Workers at HQMK {at} qalliance.org(.)uk.

Thanks again to Pink Punters who were just amazing!

We will be updating this information regularly, so check back here often or sign up here to be notified of updates to the site by email. We also have a very exciting RSS feed if you’re into that sort of thing.