STOP USING MY PAIN TO JUSTIFY WAR

BY KIAN B.

I remember the first time someone told me, “But in your country, don’t they throw people like you off buildings?” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Cold. Final. Weaponised.

I grew up in the in between. I’m gay. I am from Iran. I was already split in two before I ever left the house. My body existed as a contradiction, a source of shame and fear and pride all at once. I never felt fully safe. Not at home, not abroad, not even here in the UK where I now live, where politicians use “culture wars” to stir up votes and queer people like me are made into symbols of progress, sometimes of threat, but rarely of humanity.

And lately, something more sinister has been happening. Queer pain. My pain is being used. Not to protect us, not to uplift us, but as a moral weapon. As justification for violence. As a convenient talking point. I hear people say, “Well, your people throw gay people off buildings,” as if my suffering somehow proves their point. As if my identity gives them permission to drop bombs or justify dehumanisation. I know what regimes in Iran do to people like me. I don’t need reminding. I carry that knowledge every day. I live with it in my skin, in my silence, in the way I’ve had to learn how to stay small to stay alive. But I also know this: people are not their governments.

Saying “Iran throw gay people off buildings” is not just offensive - it’s lazy. It reduces millions of people to the actions of a regime. It doesn’t acknowledge that many people resist, protest and fight back. That there are queer people from Iran who risk their lives to exist. That people I know, people I love, are from Iran and they do not want to harm me. They do not throw me off buildings. They hug me, laugh with me, protect me. Blanket statements like these aren't just inaccurate, they're dangerous. They make it easier to justify erasing entire cities, families and histories. They make it easier to dehumanise. That’s not how the world works. That’s not how you talk about people.

I look around the UK right now and see the same double standards. A government that cuts protections for trans people while claiming to care about equality. A media that stirs hate and fear and then wonders why hate crimes rise. A country that detains queer asylum seekers in unsafe detention centres but wants to use my existence to morally posture on the world stage. If queer rights really mattered, we would see that reflected consistently, not just when it serves political narratives.

Don’t tell me that I matter just so you can justify harming someone else. Don’t pretend my freedom is your priority if you only invoke it when it’s convenient. If you truly care about people like me, then care about us everywhere not just when we’re useful to your argument. If you wouldn’t say “nurses kill babies in hospital” because one nurse was recently convicted of harming a child, then don’t say “the Iranians throw gay people off buildings.” Because it’s not just wrong it’s inhumane.

I’m tired of being someone else’s moral high ground. I am not your excuse for conflict. I am not your justification. I am a human being. I want safety. I want dignity. I want love and joy and community. I want a world where we speak truth to power without needing to reduce people to stereotypes or weaponise identities for political convenience.

So no, you don’t get to use me like that. Not anymore. Not in my name.