Zack Polanski on frightening moment he was gay-bashed in Manchester for holding someone’s hand (EXCLUSIVE)
"I just remember crawling up into a ball and hoping it was going to stop," the politician said of the incident from his youth in his Attitude 101 cover interview
By Aaron Sugg
Attitude cover star Zack Polanski has recalled the moment he was the victim of a homophobic attack in Manchester when he was a teenager, after holding someone’s hand.
Recently named the Attitude 101 Trailblazer for 2026, Green Party leader Polanski uses his voice as an LGBTQ+ politician to make change for his own community and for the rest of the UK, having grown up during the Section 28 era.
In his cover interview, Polanski recalled a time when he was gay-bashed and subjected to defamatory slurs on the streets where he grew up, at the age of 16.
“I fell to the ground and kept being kicked” – Zack Polanski on being gay-bashed in Manchester
“I felt, like, a smack on the head and [someone] shouting ‘faggot!’ I fell to the ground and kept being kicked. I just remember crawling up into a ball and hoping it was going to stop,” Polanski reveals.
He went to hospital but didn’t need serious treatment and never told his parents due to the political climate, when the UK was still under Section 28, which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality.
“This was around [the] Section 28 [era],” he explains. “You weren’t [finding community] in school; it didn’t feel like there were community support groups.”
“The way I was finding out who I was was through bars and nightclubs” – Polanski on growing up as gay during the section 28 era
He found his sanctuary in gay nightlife: “The way I was finding out who I was was through bars and nightclubs, which is a pretty unacceptable place for a 14, 15, 16-year-old to be hanging out.”
Polanski attended a Jewish school before winning a scholarship to a private school in Stockport, where he was thoroughly bullied, despite his achievements.
“Lots of name-calling, stealing belongings like pencil cases and that being thrown around the classroom, locked in cupboards,” he recalls.
“I’d just sit in the toilet cubicle” – Polanski on being too frightened to join in PE lessons during school
Bullying became so bad, in fact, that he used to hide away in the toilets to avoid the toxic heterosexual culture of PE lessons.
Squirrelling himself away during double PE lessons, he says: “Three hours where I’d just sit in the toilet cubicle, the door locked with a book and a little torch.”
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