As your iPod nano gathers dust in the corner of your room somewhere, perhaps next to your Blackberry Bold, Silly Bandz and all the other relics of yesteryear, it’s easy to forget that 2010 was only 10 years ago. But there’s more to progress than the relentless march of consumer technology – and this past decade has seen seismic cultural and social shifts, especially for the queer community.
It’s hard to believe, but in 2010 same-sex marriage was only legal in seven countries. And in terms of representation, we only ever seemed to appear in movies as the comic, ever-single sidekick ready to give the protagonist her much needed makeover. At the time, the EU released guidelines laying out the ways in which the global LGBTQ+ community still needed support. They came up with three key aims: promoting decriminalisation, fighting for equality and non-discrimination, especially in the workplace, and protecting human rights activists.
So, almost 10 years on, how successfully have these goals been met? Well in truth, the majority of change in criminalisation laws happened in the 1900s. Landmark advances did happen in 2018 when India dismantled colonial era laws punishing homosexuality, and in 2019 when international outcry halted Brunei’s attempt to end its moratorium on the death penalty for homosexual acts, but most countries across the world had already decriminalised homosexuality, with exceptions in Africa and the Middle East, and little changed this decade.