Content warning: This article includes details about violence against LGBTQ+ people.
The United Kingdom has approved refugee status for the first time on the basis of non-binary gender identity as part of a landmark ruling on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers.
Arthur Britney Joestar fled El Salvador in 2017 after facing persistent stigma and violence for being perceived as gender non-conforming. In an interview, Joestar told them. that they “never had the freedom to explore” their gender identity in El Salvador without fear of being targeted for hate violence. “I was a really Christian guy, and I went to church like a lot, trying to hide my feelings of what was inside of me,” said Joestar, who was not out as nonbinary at the time. “I used the church as a getaway car, trying to escape from this reality of being LGBT.”
Despite attempting to conform to society’s normative ideas of gender, Joestar frequently faced abuse, recalling an incident where passersby threw a plastic bag filled with urine at them on the street. In 2013, five police officers noticed Joestar’s blonde hair, which was styled in long locs during a Zoom call, and delivered a brutal beating near the El Salvador Catedral. The officers, Joestar said, wanted to teach a lesson about “how to be a man.”
“After that incident, I got a kind of trauma around that,” they said. “I felt ashamed. I felt guilty because I thought, ‘This is not my fault. It shouldn’t happen to me.’”
While Joestar dyed their hair black in order to avoid future altercations, they began searching online for places that offer asylum to LGBTQ+ people, found information about a London-based charity, and began the immigration process almost immediately. “When you’re at risk, you’re not thinking much about the best place to run,” they said. “You just run.”
After their asylum claims were rejected three times, Joestar was finally approved in September, three years after leaving their home country. The ruling was historic for the U.K., marking the first time in history that a court had legally recognized nonbinary people as a protected group.
That victory was a long time coming for Joestar for several reasons. Although they initially came out as a gay man, they realized that they are nonbinary after seeing a therapist, who explained to them that gender is a spectrum and many individuals identify as neither male nor female. That concept resonated with Joestar, who never felt they wanted to transition but didn’t feel at home in a male identity.
“It was like a process of first exploring my outside gender identity, then my inside gender identity to come to terms with the person that I am right now,” they said. “My journey hasn’t finished, but there’s a long way that I already walked. I’m a little bit closer to the final stage.”
That journey is indicative of El Salvador’s long-standing struggles with anti-LGBTQ+ violence, which disproportionately impacts trans and nonbinary people.
A report last month from Vice noted that transgender women in El Salvador have an estimated life expectancy of just 33 years, which is 41 years below the average of the overall population, due to gang activity, police violence, discrimination, and hate crimes.
Although law enforcement doesn’t disaggregate homicide data to examine anti-LGBTQ+ hate violence, at least 600 LGBTQ+ people have been killed in El Salvador since 1992, according to Comcavis Trans, a local organization that supports trans women who need vital resources.
Last August, three police officers in El Salvador were convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for murdering Camila Díaz Córdova, a trans woman who attempted to seek asylum to the U.S. before being deported, in February 2019. Her death led organizations like Human Rights Watch to call on El Salvador’s government to pass LGBTQ+ rights reforms to curb future killings.
That violence is personal for Joestar, who noted that they have had acquaintances who were tortured, kidnapped, and killed. They said captives are commonly beaten with “rocks and sticks” while their perpetrators sexually assault them.
“It’s really a disgusting way to die, just because you’re different,” they said.
While the U.K. is not immune to anti-LGBTQ+ violence and Joestar noted that the government is “really horrible with immigrants,” Joestar said they immediately felt as if “somebody took a massive weight from my back” the moment they stepped off the plane from El Salvador. When their asylum claim was finally granted, it was shortly before their 29th birthday, and they celebrated with friends over Zoom.
“When I came here to England, everything started to feel different,” they said. “I began walking with a massive smile, and people on the street came up to me to say, ‘I don’t know why you are so happy but you made my day because you look like the happiest person in the world.’ I was tasting what is to be free.”
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