Special Correspondent @theipaper. Previous LGBT Editor BuzzFeed News. Specialist Journalist of Year 2018. Rep @unitedagents Patrick.Strudwick@inews.co.uk 🏳️🌈
Feb 8 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
"Punchlines about a tiny, powerless minority, who are disproportionately likely to be beaten, bullied, raped, rejected by families + denied employment, is heartless whoever is listening, whoever is in the room. It matters every time. It affects everyone." inews.co.uk/opinion/rishi-…2/ "It calls to cruelty everywhere. It dehumanises us all. It frightens and belittles anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into conservative notions of sex and gender."
I watched Channel 4's "Gender Wars" film. It fails women, fails trans people + misses the real story.
Here I trace what's really happening to women's rights, trans rights and the LGBTQ community across the globe, as the anti-trans movement gains ground. inews.co.uk/opinion/channe…2/ Here's what Ch4's "Gender Wars" film should have exposed - Part 1:
EXCL: All those saying the World Cup could change things in Qatar? Here’s the only out gay Qatari warning there’ll in fact be a crackdown on LGBT ppl after the tournament to “cleanse the Western influence”.
“It’ll be us left suffering the consequences.” inews.co.uk/news/gay-qatar…2/ All the focus has been on whether LGBT fans would be arrested in Qatar by the authorities, but this completely misses another threat altogether according to Dr Nas Mohamed: hate crimes by locals. inews.co.uk/news/gay-qatar…
Nov 2, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
EXCLUSIVE “Qatari officials gang-raped me for being gay.” Hunted down on dating apps, beaten, raped, imprisoned and deported - as the media focuses on fans at the World Cup, LGBT people who’ve lived in Qatar reveal what the authorities do to them in secret inews.co.uk/news/qatar-off…2/ A man messaged Ali on a gay dating app. “Then I received a call telling me he is interested to meet. But the condition was I had to go to his hoteI. I opened the door, and I went inside. There are six people.” They were police, he says. inews.co.uk/news/qatar-off…
Mar 31, 2022 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
I’ve spent 12 years investigating conversion therapy. I subjected myself to this torture to expose it and stop others being harmed. The decision by the government to ditch the ban on this abuse is a betrayal of LGBT people. My reaction: inews.co.uk/opinion/propos…2/ "This is the u-turn that warrants no understanding, and no forgiveness. Instead of moving forward by legislating, now the government says it will “explore the use of other non-legislative measures”. Like what? Wagging a finger? Tutting?" inews.co.uk/opinion/propos…
Mar 26, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
EXCL: “Where I can be me.” Inside Britain’s first LGBT retirement home. Years in the making, decades in planning, the first residents moved in 3 months ago. Here they speak out about their extraordinary new life. No other news outlet was granted access. inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyl…2/ Meet Lydia, the first resident. When she moved in, “On the doorstep was a big white package with a rainbow ribbon." Inside was a mug with the motto of this pioneering housing scheme: How we live our lives out. “I was on my own. And I burst into tears." inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyl…
Feb 18, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Excl: Women in Britain are developing what used to be called AIDS (late-stage HIV) yet aren’t being encouraged to take PrEP, the HIV prevention drug.
There's little awareness + huge barriers to access.
This is a scandal.
“It feeds into a real misogyny." inews.co.uk/news/long-read…2/ Headlines last week revealed more heterosexuals are being diagnosed with HIV than gay men.
But did you know that more than half of women are being diagnosed late? And while PrEP caused a huge reduction in HIV among gay men women just aren't getting it? inews.co.uk/news/long-read…
Nov 10, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: A story about trans rights has become an accepted fact: that trans people are seeking more rights than ever.
Turns out, it's the other way round. A new legal case has been unearthed that was suppressed for 50 yrs which silently removed trans rights: inews.co.uk/news/long-read…2/ A lot of ppl though they knew about the history of the trans movement. That was until Prof Zoe Playdon spent 5 yrs investigating the case of Ewan Forbes, an aristocrat who began living as a boy in the 1920s.
His case was covered up. And the reason... inews.co.uk/news/long-read…
Nov 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A new therapeutic treatment has been developed to help people with suicidal ideation. It's adapted from an approach used to work with people who hear voices.
The therapist behind it explains how his technique is helping more and more suicidal patients: inews.co.uk/news/long-read…2/ The idea behind it is to uncover what the suicidal thoughts mean — and what they're concealing — to unlock what's causing them.
Oct 29, 2021 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
The proposed "ban" on conversion therapy won't protect most victims because any adult will still be able to "consent" to it.
What's proposed will in fact protect conversion therapists. Having investigated such "cures" for 12 years, here's my analysis:
These are the voices of gay people in Afghanistan, fleeing from the Taliban. In 20 years of journalism I have never interviewed people in such utter peril, who know they are going to be murdered. Hear them. Help them. They're begging you. inews.co.uk/news/world/lgb…
/2 "Two cars came, with Taliban in it. They said, ‘Where is his home?’ and beat him so much. They took him away and then they kill him. Afterwards they brought the body [back] and cut his body into pieces to show the people that this is what we do with gay people. He was 24."
Feb 1, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I often write out of love or anger. Sometimes both. When Vice asked me to review It's A Sin, so much of both poured out: experiences through the AIDS crisis, through HIV and LGBT journalism. Here, then, is my [spoiler filled] review of the whole series: vice.com/en/article/v7m…
"The lesson is this: you only have to wait 40 yrs, have 35m die in skeletal agony, have another pandemic affect everyone and a once-in-a-generation dramatist to devote five hours of primetime TV to your plight in order for people to fully, you know, care." vice.com/en/article/v7m…
Jan 25, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
I’m deeply saddened to learn that Dr Joseph Sonnabend, one of the most important figures in the history of AIDS, died yesterday. I spent time with him in 2018 for one of the last interviews he ever gave. Let me tell you about this man and what he did: 1/ buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwi…
Sonnabend was one of the first doctors to raise the alarm. In 1979, while running a sexual health clinic in Greenwich Village, he wrote to the NY Health Dept to warn them of the symptoms he was seeing: low white blood cell counts, enlarged lymph nodes. He didn’t get a reply. 2/
Jan 22, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Most people have no idea what it was like to be young + gay in the 80s/90s. When straight friends were holding hands in the playground I was in gay bars where there were guys in wheelchairs with KS on their faces. The 1st man I fell for had AIDS. That was my adolescence. #ItsASin
And being a child - 12,14 - and knowing you were gay at that time meant knowing you would very probably die of AIDS. I barely have the words to describe how crushing that was. Few straight people get that - and few under 40s. If Covid is your first pandemic you’re lucky. #ItsASin
Jul 3, 2020 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
I spent over a decade investigating and reporting on conversion therapy; put myself through it to expose the practice + got the first therapist struck off for it. (That took 3 yrs). I know what needs to be done + am happy to offer insights to any MP or @GEOgovuk wanting to end it
2. For anyone else wanting to know what conversion therapy does to you, here is some of my work. First, my undercover investigation into a U.K. psychiatrist and a psychotherapist who both tried to “cure” me: independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-b…
Feb 27, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
EXCL: White men are weaponizing meth against black and Latino queer people.
In a 3-part investigative series, I report from LA on the eruption of meth-fuelled abuse, sexual exploitation, rape, and slavery devastating the lives of LGBT people of color. buzzfeednews.com/article/patric…
It began with 2 bodies being pulled out of an apartment building in W Hollywood. They were black gay men, killed by meth. The home was Ed Buck’s, a millionaire donor to the Democratic Party. The media focused on him: the rich white man. Queer people of color weren’t being heard.
Oct 20, 2019 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
10 years ago a woman came up to me at an awards ceremony. “I’m Deborah,” she said. We clicked immediately. We got drunk, gossiping and laughing for hours. I loved her. We got in a cab to go to a party, she leant over and said, “I’ve just found out I have breast cancer.” /12/ It was so startling, and so - it turned out - *her*. I just wanted to hug it away, to banish it. She had hardly told anyone. I was a stranger, really. Easier, then. She smoked out the window of the cab and all I could think was beautiful she was. Just gorgeous. And how funny.
Sep 8, 2019 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The documentary I made that’s on tonight is personal. Everything changed 2 yrs ago. I’d been reporting on the darker sides of chemsex and G since the trial of serial killer Stephen Port. People told me how many people they knew who’d died from G. But then I got a call.
My first boyfriend from 20 years ago, who I’m still friends with, phoned to say he had just come out of hospital. He’d been in a coma for 5 days and came very close to dying. All he did was pick up the wrong drink. It had G in it.
Sep 4, 2019 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Phillip Lee MP, who’s just defected to the Lib Dems says his attempt to block HIV+ people from coming to this county was a “Public health issue not an equality issue.”
This is a man who does not understand HIV.
First of all, people on effective treatment pose ZERO threat of transmission to others.
Second, here’s why HIV is an equality issue.
Shall we look at whom HIV disproportionately affects?:
Women
Gay, bi + trans people
POC
People on low incomes
People from low income countries
May 31, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Can someone explain when it’s “age appropriate” to tell children that heterosexual people exist?
It’s not LGBT people or LGBT-inclusive education that sexualises children, it’s bigots and homophobes. They reduce us all to sex acts. Not human beings who love, who have an identity as wide and deep as theirs. Not children who grow up in fear and silence. Just sex acts. Animals.
Jul 3, 2018 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Today is very strange for me. The government has announced it'll ban conversion therapy. 9 years ago I subjected myself to it, going undercover to investigate conversion therapists. No UK journalist had done this before. No one knew what was going on. This is what I learned. 1/2/ The level of harm and damage done is beyond what you can possibly imagine. I was a journalist. It shouldn’t have affected me. I ended up having neurological episodes – spasms and uncontrollable contortions in my face and other parts of my body.
