to ask if all LGBTs approve of Pride festivals?

[MrsMuddlePluck]

Just to be clear - I will defend any LGBT to protect and preserve their rights. In the past I have stepped in to stop a customer patting my employee's cheek when he was intimidating him for no other reason than his being gay.

Now that we have equal rights and as a society we are more accepting of people whose lifestyle differs from ours, can we stop with the 'pride' marches and the flying of rainbow flags to show our solidarity? I know we still have some way to go but photos from Pride festivals 'celebrating' alternative lifestyles make me feel uncomfortable. Surely you don't need to dress up in sequins or bondage gear and flaunt it in the street, to make you a better LGBT? How do LGBTs really feel about this?

Our Council has just agreed to fund a pride festival, having withdrawn funding for our annual community festival. Can't we celebrate together instead of excluding straights from one, or LGBTs from the other?

Strongerandleaner summed my thoughts up well 👍

I'm the + at the end of lgbtqia+. Pride festivals are usually catered for white trans women and white gay men. People of other sexualities and races never get a look in - so I don't bother going. However I fully support councils funding pride because poor representation is at least some representation.

I do not want to live in a world where homophobic transactivists coerce lesbians into having sex with the bepenised (previously known as males.

Or one where young lesbians are bullied for being themselves. Stuff like this makes me very thankful I came out 20 years ago.

Copied from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/behaviour_development/2854657-proud-of-ds-s-response-to-trans-nonsense

My son is 12 and has a friend at school, a lesbian who is into anime and gaming and has been completely ostracised by most the school for refusing to admit she is trans.

Because she fits into a more traditional male gender role her refusal to trans is seen as transphobic and shes been bullied awfully for her transphobia.

Its utterly heartbreaking how confused this has all become in the minds of some young people.

The school will not help because she upsets and triggers the trans kids by not fitting in the box, making her the bully.

Every time she explains she can wear pants, have short hair and fancy women yet still not be a man she is, without meaning too, questioning the gender narrative that the rest of the children seem to take with deathly seriousness.

Luckily shes joined a little group of friends including my ds who are more concerned with tech than people!

good grief Empress
Twilight zone.

The bondage S&M elements that you talk about don't bother me because they aren't real. No one is inflicting pain on anyone at our Pride march and flambouyant costumes are part and parcel of the theatre of parades.

Astoria I think I might be worried it's not a case of "poor representation" but "misrepresentation", which is likely to be worse than poor or little representation
Apologies, I don't know what lgbtqia+ means though.

Another note bdsm aren't necessarily a 'bedroom' things and some pratise it 24/7 or 'lifetsyle'.

Stronger - lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual +

Shocking spelling - couldn't see with the light shining on the screen.

good grief Empress
Twilight zone.

Homophobia. The flip side is the stories of young lesbians being bullied for not wanting to date trans girls.

Yeah, I think "all LGBTs" think the Pride festivals are the best thing ever.

Apart from the ones that don't.

Seriously though, not "all LGBTs" like being bundled together. There are plenty of "LGs" who despise "Bs" and/or "Ts" and vice-versa - they are not a special group who think the same or even respect each other!

Fine by me. And we're a long way off from equality, I'd your cheek-patting incident is anything to go by.

L's and G's aren't the biggest fans of one another either

I think we need to get away from worrying too much about fetish costumes and the like - it's a march, people are going to come out and make their point like they would at any demo. That's what it's about.

We need Pride because there are still 70+ countries in the world where simply being gay is illegal and in many cases, punishable by death or imprisonment. That alone should be reason enough.

Very true pointy and even with hard earned rights, there is always the possibility of them being taken away.

It can all get a bit confusing imo.

I know someone who has recently transitioned F-M. An all-staff email went round telling us this, and that henceforth he was only be referred to by male pronouns. He was in a lesbian relationship and still has the same partner, so presumably they're now straight.

To add to the confusion, before he transitioned, they were in a civil partnership. Straight couples can't be in a CP, so do they now have to get it annulled or does it just sort of lapse?

I totally get how some LGB people regard T people as something very different.

We need Pride because there are still 70+ countries in the world where simply being gay is illegal and in many cases, punishable by death or imprisonment

And yet we still deal with these countries

It wasn't that long ago since men could be jailed for being gay.

I was listening to Eddie Mair last week discuss something that happened in Australia. It seems there was a gang attacking gay men who were meeting for sex near a cliff. They were being thrown over the edge. When the bodies were found, they were dismissed as suicides and no investigation was being done. A general indifference.

It took an effort for things to change and for such incidents to be taken seriously. That was only 30 years ago.

Austrailia is one of the most intolerant 'western' countries on earth - hardcore intolerant values with a 'progressive' white 'western' face. I lived there for a while across many cities & had violent/borderline violent racist abuse at least 2-3 times a day everyday just for being brown. God knows what would have happened if they found out my sexuality. Properly Asian countries are far better.

Is that a 'thing' now - lesbians being bullied for not wanting to date trans girls?

Yes.
There are, obviously, plenty of totally reasonable transwomen who respect boundaries and would never do this. But it is happening.

Is that a 'thing' now - lesbians being bullied for not wanting to date trans girls?

Well it is and it isn't. There is a small number of transwoman who feel entitled to lesbians. However, lesbians, like all other women, have grown fairly adept at fighting off those who feel a sense of entitlement to their bodies because it's not exactly uncommon.

Some (rad) fems feel a much bigger sense of outrage when it happens to lesbians than when it happens to straight women. I'm not quite sure why they think we are such special snowflakes.

In common with straight women, this is something that lesbians experience much more often from straight men.

To be fair, most of the inappropriate sexual behaviour I've experienced (apart from from men, because well, they just can't help themselves) is from straight women. I've not really experienced any from trans women but plenty of straight colleagues and friends have suggested trying it out with me in a "oo, that sounds exotic and exciting, I quite fancy a go" way, like I'm a sexual Alton Towers or something.

Personally, for the whole pride thing, I think as long as straight people think they're doing us a big old favour by employing us and being nice to us and not actually stoning us to death in the street then of course there's a need.

And then, of course, there are the straight women who crack on to men, they know to be gay, after a few drinks.

It's almost like, it would be fair to say that most groups of people have a few rouge members who have problems respecting other's boundaries but that doesn't play as well to the trans outrage.

That's certainly true silently, but the difference between straight women being knocked back by gay men, and transwomen being knocked back by lesbians, is that straight women don't accuse gay men of being bigots and heterophobic. At least I assume that doesn't happen

My feeling around the whole "cotton ceiling" discourse, is that these TW possess a sense of entitlement that only comes from growing up as a straight (usually white) male. Quelle surprise.

Also, when. a straight man has a go at a lesbian for not wanting sex with them, it's clear that the man is being unreasonable. Heteronormativity. Homophobia. Male entitlement.

When a transwoman (and I did say not all transwomen) has a go at a lesbian for not wanting sex with them, the lesbian is apparently transphobic, TERFy and a vagina fetishist for only being interested in biological women.