Source: EENvandaag.avrotros.nl (inDutch)

NETHERLANDS – Only 43 percent of LGBTQ+ people say that acceptance in the Netherlands is good. Besides increased resistance online, in politics, and on the streets, the community is seeing people around them more readily express unkind comments openly.

See larger photos and graphs of the poll at: EENvandaag.avrotros.nl/opiniepanel

This is evident from EenVandaag’s annual Pride survey among 22,218 members of the Opinion Panel, including over 2,400 people from the LGBTQ+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people). It’s the umpteenth consecutive year that the feeling of acceptance has declined. Five years ago, 62 percent of LGBTQ+ people felt things were going well.

Online and offline resistance

Respondents from the community cite primarily negative developments of recent years that have persisted as reasons for this deterioration. Online, but also in public, respondents experience significant resistance from religious, conservative, and bicultural quarters. For example, they cite increasing hate on social media and right-wing, sometimes Christian, conservative influencers and politicians who, according to participants, are increasingly gaining ground.

Negative reactions also often come from young people, often bicultural, on the street, according to participants. One panelist, for example, says: “If my boyfriend and I experience something on the street, it’s because of boys from a different background.” He points to online videos in which gay people are insulted and sometimes threatened. “Videos where they shamelessly shout ‘Death to gays,’ for example. We experience that too.”

Intolerance in one’s own environment

It’s also striking that LGBTQ+ people are seeing increasing intolerance among people close to them, such as family, friends, or colleagues. Nearly half (47 percent) feel they are more likely to make an unkind comment about the community out loud than a few years ago.

One participant wrote about this: “At a family birthday, a nasty little monkey came out of the sleeve with my 21-year-old nephew. He said that he and his friends didn’t think being gay was normal and that gay people ‘shouldn’t be so pushy.’ He was always such a sweet boy and well-mannered.”

Info

About this research

This survey was conducted from July 7 to 9, 2025. A total of 22,218 participants took part, including 2,416 from the LGBTQ+ community. The survey is representative after weighting for six variables: age, gender, education, marital status, national distribution, and political preference, as measured by the 2023 parliamentary elections.

Threatened and spat upon

In the past year, 4 in 10 LGBTQ+ people surveyed (42 percent) experienced something unpleasant. This usually involved nasty remarks or “jokes,” or verbal abuse. Another 1 in 10 (12 percent) faced threats, and an almost equal number (9 percent) were spat upon.

This often happens in public, on the street or on the train, but also at work (18 percent) or in private situations (20 percent). Participants experienced negative behavior. “Someone made a really nasty, derogatory joke about me in front of colleagues. Later, I was teased about it a few more times. I was ‘sick’ for a few months. Not literally—I was working—but I dragged myself through the day without energy during that period.”

Half avoid US as a holiday destination

It’s not just domestic developments that are causing concern for participants. Following the election of Donald Trump last November and the anti-diversity policies he has pursued since then, about three-quarters (72 percent) are worried about acceptance abroad.

And that’s why many people are taking this into account when booking a vacation. Of all participants in the community, 62 percent say they pay attention to whether a travel destination is LGBTQ+ friendly; slightly more than last year (57 percent). Here too, the trends in America are visible: about half, 47 percent, of the LGBTQ+ people in the survey would not travel to the United States now out of fear for their own safety.

Comment by Tom Verhoeven ( @tomVerhoeven Fetlife profile).

When I was a child and teenager in what seemed like a puritanical era, things were much clearer and much freer than they are now in this patronizing period.

There were religious movements that condemned homosexuality while simultaneously leaving gays and lesbians alone. Within that apparent confines, people indulged in sexual excesses and orgies of all shapes and sizes. This was the era when swingers’ clubs and BDSM clubs flourished and sprang up like mushrooms.

On our pillar TV channels, especially via VPRO and VARA, there were sex acts, strip shows and sometimes even BDSM performances with naked bodies.

When these broadcasters, along with the rest, transformed themselves into the most pedantic broadcasters, and nudity on TV became taboo again, influenced by wokeness and migration. After all, many Muslims don’t tolerate impurities on TV. On the other hand, there’s a strong push for LGBTQ+ acceptance (excluding BDSM). Whereas in the past, people were akin to live and let live, or secretly peeking at the filth only to later be outraged, even though they hadn’t missed a second of it.

The push for LGBTQ+ by the woke community has significantly increased the aversion to it, as people feel it’s being forced down their throats, even in young children. This has led to the “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” side digging in their heels. The principle of live and let live has been, and continues to be, rudely disrupted. People who want nothing to do with Queer are constantly being confronted with this via (social) media.

On the other hand, the Wokes pamper the Muslim community in this country. They, according to their religion, despise queers. As a result, their youth can freely lash out, spit, and curse if they see, for example, a gay couple walking hand in hand. The left-wing and centrist political parties turn their backs on this problem. Just like the Wokes, who continue to pamper Muslim norms and values.

Queers are acting as canaries in coal mines, and with this trend, the canary will surely die. By then, it will be too late to turn the tide. Especially if our borders remain open to people with very different norms and values.

BDSMers enjoy little to no protection from the woke and LGBTQ+ communities. After all, our terms like “slave,” “slavewoman,” “Master,” and “Mistress” don’t fit the woke concept of enslaved Black people a few hundred years ago. So our fate is slow banishment, exclusion, and deep reentry into the closet. Unfortunately, I can’t make it any prettier, considering the experiences of simply using the word BDSM on social media and AI.

Despite the fact that:

Live long, healthy, happy and in kinky prosperity 🖖🏻

tom Verhoeven