A disturbing picture has emerged of the physical harm inflicted upon two gay women on a London bus recently, after a gang of men viole...
A disturbing picture has emerged of the physical harm inflicted upon two gay women on a London bus recently, after a gang of men violently attacked them for refusing to kiss.
28-year-old Melania Geymonat, a Ryanair flight attendant from Uruguay, was on a date with her girlfriend, American-born Chris, in London last week. The couple got a night bus home to Chris' flat in Camden, but when they reached the top deck, a gang of men began to shout at them.
"We must have kissed or something because these guys came after us," Melania wrote on a Facebook post describing what happened. "There were at least four of them. They started behaving like hooligans, demanding that we kissed so they could enjoy watching, calling us 'lesbians' and describing sexual positions."
Nobody else aside from Melania, Chris, and the group of men were upstairs on the bus, so when the gang became violent, nobody was there to intervene. The men began throwing coins at the women, triggering Chris to approach them.
"On an impulse, I went over there only to find her face bleeding and three of them beating her up. The next thing I know is I'm being punched," wrote Melania.
"I got dizzy at the sight of my blood and fell back. I don’t remember whether or not I lost consciousness."
When Melania came round, the bus had stopped and police were on board. The flight attendant says she was "bleeding all over", and both the women's belongings had been stolen. In the aftermath of the attack, Melania has been unable to return to work due to her injuries, which include a suspected broken nose.
"What upsets me the most is that violence has become a common thing," she wrote. "That sometimes it’s necessary to see a woman bleeding after having been punched to feel some kind of impact.
"I’m tired of being taken as a sexual object, of finding out that these situations are usual, of gay friends who were beaten up JUST BECAUSE. We have to endure verbal harassment and chauvinist, misogynistic and homophobic violence because when you stand up for yourself shit like this happens."
As Melania pointed out in her Facebook post, considering June is Pride Month, what better time to spread important messages of love, equality, and anti-hate - in the hope it might stop such senseless displays of violence on people simply because of who they are.
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