To only now realise that Pride is very anti-women - not just anti-lesbian - but misogynistic and male-orientated

[loveyouradvice]

I had no idea....

prideinlondon.org

Of the TWELVE photos that welcome you to their website ONLY ONE is of women .... and to compound the irony that one is of Stewards, i.e. women helping Pride happen, rather than celebrating and enjoying Pride as an active participant

I am really shocked that in this day and age ANY organisation that claims to represent WOMEN AND MEN can be so foolish as to show that they don't think women are important on the first page of their website.....

8 mostly middle aged women forcefully took the place of another float?

How would you put it?

They were told where to stand after aggressively demanding to be at the front. When rejected, they forced their way to the front of the parade, taking another groups space, and finally trampled over the rainbow flag to be right at the forefront, if I've understood correctly.

I heard they might be facing criminal charges but for what I'm not sure. Despicable behaviour but I don't think it's illegal.

Rape/death threats are not acceptable.

Neither was their behaviour.

A lot of movements that one thinks of being about equal rights are, at heart, about men's rights (labour workers / unions, Pride, anti-racism)

Yeah. Incredibly aggressive they were. And how dare lesbians try to express their boundaries at Pride!
And as for the flag. They didn't trample on it. But even if they had, it's so debased by the corporate hijack that I can't see why it would have mattered.

I dont have a problem with lesbians expressing boundaries. But they didn't have to take the place in the parade of the NHS workers that didn't do anything wrong, did they?

Agreed, TacoLover.

They can express their boundaries preferably not at the Pride parade , but it was disgraceful to trample the flag however capitalised you think it's become. And even worse that NHS workers were the ones who were most affected.

I think it shows how much they value others. You might expect them to try and take the space of trans marchers at the parade, despicable as that would be, but it's clear that this group of women didn't care at all who might be impacted by what they did. They valued themselves above literally everyone else there.

Do you know who won the award for 'Best Parade team' last year? A group of women dancers.

Ew. Lesbians centering themselves. Bloody selfish women.

Do you know who won the award for 'Best Parade team' last year? A group of women dancers.
Literally nobody in this thread has had a problem with them being women.

Ew. Lesbians centering themselves. Bloody selfish women.
Well I'd say that deliberately taking the place of another group(NHS workers) in the parade because you want to be more centered is quite selfish. In what way is that not selfish?

Taco: my point was that, if Pride is so anti-women, why would they give this award to an all-female group?

Erm.... Rosesandflowers you are exaggerating ... the first people seen to walk on the flag were Pride organisers as part of their organising - it was a huge flag and they had no inhibitions about walking across it....

It was a peaceful protest by eight middle-aged and deeply-admirable lesbians

There was NO violence and no "flag-trampling"

It was a peaceful protest in the best possible tradition... calm reasoned firm ... and entirely appropriate to Pride

I think Reanimated was making the point that Pride focused specifically on a woman's group last year, disagreeing with the title of the thread.

And yes, I'm struggling as to how their actions wouldn't be perceived as stressful.

While I disagree with the protesters' opinions, I have to commend them on an effective non-violent protest, though. Not a single punch thrown.

Oh... and it was the Pride organisers who asked them to walk in front of the flag rather than behind it... so yet again misconstrued!

TacoLover it was a protest against the erasure of their unique specific identity. Its purpose was to garner attention about this injustice.
It would not have been effective had they simpered quietly in the corner and deferred to everyone else in the hopes that they would be able to speak up at some point, if allowed.

Interesting that not a word has been said about Pride's misreporting of it....

I haven't seen footage/pictures, but from what I've read the protestors (who apparently weren't even registered) rejected being told where to stand, took the place of some NHS workers, and then pushed their way through until they walked over the flag. "Trampled" is the word I've heard used most often.

And yes, I think that's awful. They did their movement absolutely no favours if it was at all legitimate.

The group hijacked the parade to spread transphobic hate, and spat in the face of what LGBTQA stands for, which is inclusivity and rights for all.

HTH

And they were NOT centring themselves... they were brave enough to do it for Lesbians everywhere who want to maintain single-sex boundaries....

An actually astonishingly brave thing to do... as evidenced by the horrendous threats they are now getting online, which have NOT been condemned by Pride or Stonewall....

Somehow it seems acceptable to threaten physical violence, often extreme, against middle-aged unthreatening women who are protesting peacefully...... WHY IS THIS ACCEPTABLE AND NOT ROUNDLY CONDEMNED BY THE LGBT+ COMMUNITY?

They did not trample the flag. Do not rewrite history. It would have been hard for them to "displace" the contingent of NHS workers. And anyway, nobody would have noticed the protest if they hadn't tried to get to the front.

Pride was created by a black trans man who then took on the police and created a movement out of it. It has nothing to do with lesbians or white gay men. Or 'cis' people as a whole, really. Yet everyone seems to be be ignorant of that fact or just ignore it.

What's wrong with women putting themselves forward and first? We always see men doing stuff like this and it goes completely unnoticed. Good for them not taking a back seat. The NHS thing is a red herring designed to manipulate people into thinking they were meanies for not standing aside - as they always have to do.

"I haven't seen footage/pictures,"

Go and have a look then come back.

"The group hijacked the parade to spread transphobic hate"

Explain to me in simple words how what they said and did was "transphobic hate".

and entirely appropriate to Pride

Aren't the group advocating for 'T' to be removed from the acronym? In which place I think at Pride, where trans people are clearly most welcome, it wasn't appropriate at all.

More importantly, no, their actions weren't "appropriate" to Pride. They weren't told to simper in a corner, they were told to march in a specific place. But unhappy with that, they took the space of other marchers - it would be bad enough if they weren't NHS workers, for God's sake.

Whether or not you agree with their views, you can hardly argue their actions were not selfish.