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Our Council has just agreed to fund a pride festival, having withdrawn funding for our annual community festival.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?

Sorry to you both and I do understand how this doesn't fit in with your agenda but I've never experienced a transwoman taking a knock back with anything but humour and good grace. However, straight men have called me much worse names for saying 'no'.

Now I'm aware that there are a few 'trans activist' message boards that have members who peddle the 'cotton ceiling' nonsense but I've never had any experience of it in real life. I think that it's the same kind of keyboard warrior type of thing that you see here and I don't see any value in blaming a whole community for an individual's behaviour; that would be like blaming either of you for the OP's position because you fit into the same demographic.

So, as a real life lesbian of long standing, I can promise you that a sense of entitlement to my body is not common behaviour from transwoman, it mainly comes from straight men and very occasionally from straight women and both of those groups can be fairly verbally aggressive.

I also know that there are plenty of straight women who will have no problem dismissing my real life experience because it doesn't fit in with their rhetoric. They will feel that they know more about being a lesbian that I ever could because they read about it somewhere and what they read fits in with what they thought anyway.

Oh, and the other thing I've noticed, is that member of MN who feel less than comfortable with transwoman will keep throwing up this 'cotton ceiling' stuff again and again for pages and pages on a trans thread. It's like a chorus of 'what about the poor lesbians?' but where vaguely homophobic or heteronormative post are made, those same members don't say a word.

It's almost like they don't really care about the 'poor lesbians' at all but are just using us as a tool to beat transwoman with. To be honest, I feel a bit exploited by that, it feels like they have a bit of a sense of entitlement over my identity.

I agree silentlyscreaming!

I personally find trans men and women as hot as everyone else.

I've never experienced it personally either, SilentlyScreaming, but I do know younger people who have.

As for ignoring homophobia, where?

I've never experienced a transwoman taking a knock back with anything but humour and good grace. However, straight men have called me much worse names for saying 'no'.

Same here silently

It's almost like they don't really care about the 'poor lesbians' at all but are just using us as a tool to beat transwoman with. To be honest, I feel a bit exploited by that, it feels like they have a bit of a sense of entitlement over my identity.

And that.

I know most transpeople just want to get on with their lives but unfortunately it's the extremists who have the ear of media and governments.

So do you think that transwomen are women like any others and that there would be no problem if self-declaration was the only criterion for changing gender in the UK? Even if the logical extension of that is Lian Huntley?

So do you think that transwomen are women like any others

No

and that there would be no problem if self-declaration was the only criterion for changing gender in the UK?

If you mean, can you guarantee that not one single trans woman would ever commit a crime against a woman, and can you guarantee that not one single man would ever take advantage to "self-identify" as trans just to get out of trouble, then obviously not.

If you mean, do you believe this would happen routinely - no I don't.

I stand somewhere between the two warring factions, and it generally ends with the rad fems calling me a handmaiden and the TRAs calling me a TERF, so it's not a topic I'm particularly enthusiastic about discussing.

I've not seen homophobia ignored? where?

How the fuck does a homophobic post complaining that Pride celebrates "alternate lifestyles" hmm degenerate into the 547,385 thread ranting about how awful and evil trans people are?

Possibly something to do with the fact that the T has taken over the whole LGBT movement and the transwacktivists who do want to force lesbians to have sex with males are those who scream the loudest.

The fact that other trans"women" might exist hardly matters as long as they don't speak up against this nonsense, and loudly enough to actually affect actual politics.

Because this is MN NotCaryl. Every single thread can be turned into How Trans People Are Plotting To Rape You.

Anyone that thinks that it's 'job done' for LGBT rights is either clueless or disingenious. How often does anyone see two people of the same sex holding hands in the street. Almost never, and I say this as a gay man living in London.

Although, I must say I never go to pride! I don't feel the need as I feel safe and secure in my social life and the acts are always dreadful. When I was 18 I appreciated the opportunity enormously though.

Having RTFT a bit more I can see where you're coming from OP. I have a cat, live in a terraced house and like gardening. In no way does sexy clothing represent me (especially now I'm 42). Pride marches seem to attract a lot of quite ordinary people, it's the show-offs who get all the press! For example I find drag largely annoying, but TV crews always zoom in on the drag queens. So it's a good question really, and the answer from me is, no - the pride that the media often portrays doesn't represent me at all.

Yes, there are some irritable responses OP, but I think the problem is the way that you've framed the question. Being gay is not my lifestyle, it is a life, and the only one I'll ever have. Right wingers often try to undermine us by reducing 'life' to 'lifestyle'. 'Flaunt' is another word you often hear in the same sentence, and I think your wording might be raising people's defences (as it did mine).

You quite rightly point out that we have equal rights, but that's not translated to the real world yet, but it is getting there.