Fiona Sharpe is a rare breed among us; a Brighton native. Born, bred and now living among us all who have adopted this fair city as our own: “I did move away for 17 years but I came back,” she tells me when we chat about her inclusion in this magazine because, not only a native, Fiona is also an LGBTQ ally.
Is Fiona pleased to be back in Brighton where it all began? “Of cours.! Brighton and Hove does a really GREAT job of trying to bring communities together and to stand up for one another. It is a great place to be – to live and to work”. Fiona is a Community Consultant working abreast a wide range of minority communities across the city. An active member of the Jewish community in Brighton, Hove and Sussex, her allied approach takes her work across a range of communities and organisations to include “anyone who wants advocacy. I work with a lot of women from minority groups, particularly migrant and refugee women but I work across a wide range of causes that I believe in”.
While away from Brighton, Fiona worked in Israel and New York in a range of roles, from VIP guest relations to a Jewish umbrella organisation, representing Jewish communities from the United States and all over the world. Both in the US congress and the White House. It is this eclectic work background that she describes as ‘all kinds of everything’ which is standing her in such good stead today. She has now worked in the hate crime arena for over a year across all factions of the challenge whether, race, gender, sexual orientation or migration driven.
I ask why allies from outside a particular community are important to our stories and struggles: “No one minority community can fight against the hate themselves – nor should they try to. If we can’t stand up for one another then we have no right to expect others to stand up for us”. She tells me that she genuinely finds it difficult when people don’t work together: “Sometimes in minority communities we try to suggest there is a hierarchy of hate: is racism worse that homophobia. Is Islamophobia more damaging than anti-Semitism is one somehow more objectionable than the other. There is no hierarchy of hate. All hate and discrimination has to be challenged in whatever form it takes and however it starts.”
Hate is a strong descriptor for the ‘anti’ and may manifest itself in aggression or violence. In some ways isn’t hate easier to spot because it is a sizeable and identifiable issue that we can begin to address? I ask Fiona if the greater challenge is the smaller behaviours that are endemic towards some other communities, perhaps a quieter every-day, less obvious form of discrimination:
“Yes. Although they are all part of a similar and bigger picture. There are micro aggressions which are regrettably commonplace. I work with hijab-wearing women who tell me that people choose not to sit next to them on the bus. In same sex relationships there are small reactions to walking into a pub holding hands that we know are there. Micro-aggressions eat away at our individual sense of self and self-worth and in turn these affect our society at large. In many ways these behaviours are more corrosive and much harder to do something about. The attack we know what to do about it. We tell someone, we call the police. What do you tell someone if you feel have been looked at in a strange way?
There are known differences within the LGBTQ+ communities and increasingly there are concerning reports about how differences become divisions and in turn our own communities a microcosm of some of the socially damaging behaviours Fiona has outlined. I ask what advice, as an ally, she has for her LGBTQ neighbours:
“I am an ally and a proud one, but I am not LGBTQ, I am not part of that community. I am an ally who is constantly learning and listening. In a more general way, we are always scared by what appears to us that is outside our comfort zone. We have a tendency to want to ‘other’ people and what happens within all communities and indeed the LGBT community is no different from any other. In religious groups for example there are degrees of fervour and religiosity – these are differences, but it is what we do with them. As an ally part of my responsibility is never to be presumptuous as to why there are divisions and how they have come about. I wouldn’t welcome someone who isn’t Jewish telling me what antisemitism is”.
“We must all look to ourselves. Ensure that when I have questions of another community that I do not belong to, I ask them in a respectful way. We sometimes have a fear of asking the questions because we don’t have the right language, but questions are important as so much prejudice comes from a lack of understanding and a lack of knowledge”.
“We must be upfront about our own prejudices. We all have an unconscious bias but it is what we do with these. I would ask that someone learn about me, Fiona, learn about me the individual. It then becomes harder to behave in an antisemitic way. If we meet and care about individuals, we are less likely to group people together and make a homogenous judgement. If we all took care of the little corner of the world around us, we would be so much more impactful.
“To be an ally does require upstanding not bystanding. It takes individual responsibility and then as a community we are stronger if we work together and don’t just take care of our own back yard. It starts with me”