We LGBTQ people have been trying for years to get people to pay attention to the FACT that hate speech leads to violence. When Donald Trump was elected, he brought in a whole crowd of anti-LGBTQ supporters; and gay-hating, trans-hating talking heads started dominating conservative media. Violence skyrocketed. The numbers are startling. You look at graphs and see these huge spikes that start with his election and that keep growing and growing and growing.

Things are still getting worse, because the Republican Party decided anti-LGBTQ tactics were great for them getting out the vote.

A parallel process started just about the same time in the UK with the Tories empowering TERFs and the like.

Suddenly, gay people like me and trans people who had gotten used to feeling safe most of the time are now looking over our shoulders at night. With good reason.

Prism & Pen, the queer journal I edit on Medium, is a microcosm of the violence in society at large. Five of our writers have been randomly assaulted in the street by strangers over the past year. That's just 12 months. Physically attacked because they were either gay or trans and looked it.

If someone had told me in 2016 that something like that could happen, I wouldn't have believed them. I had no sense this sort of backlash could happen and that violence would resurge.

But here we are. Major queer publications in the United States and the UK these days are filled with bloody photos every day. Like it's the 1970s.

Because hate speech leads to violence. It just does.