Pride In London - A Pride Without Hate

[severnbore]

prideinlondon.org/news/2019/3/31/a-pride-without-hate

'Susie Green, CEO of Mermaids said: To back out of Pride in London when they are showing that they are addressing these issues only bows to hate. Mermaids is working with our partners and Pride in London. We will only take part if we are satisfied that concerns have been addressed and that security and safety, especially of vulnerable people, particularly children, is paramount. Pride in London have apologised for the mistakes made last year, and the distress caused. They are committed to standing up to intimidation and oppression. So are Mermaids, alongside our partners Stonewall, UK Black Pride and We Level Up”. '

The devastation wreaked by those 8 lesbians! Central London is still a wasteland...

Why does SG get to dictate conditions in this way?

But mainly, I object to non-LGBTQ-identifying people having a pop at how we should run Pride. That's our baby, not yours. You have the rest of the year.

Maybe tell Susie?

Indeed.

Its baffling to me, how upset transactivists and such get when female people enforce their sexual boundaries. Are they meant to just accept males because bigot?! I mean, it used to be a 'joke' among men that they were lesbian/. Now they appear to take it seriously, yet oddly enough, never seem happy for their partner to be another male lesbian, always has to be a female one, odd that

Hey, how about that third space?! For people who don't like everyone else.

Skyzalimit

"Hey, how about that third space?! For people who don't like everyone else."

May I ask you to avoid trivialising this situation please? Females have universal rights in our world in addition to the Universal Human Rights we all have and Pride & Stonewall are trampling all over them.

See: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW]

www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm

Skyza - males who don't like respect the human rights of females, as enshrined in international law, can most definitely create their own spaces. And flipping well stay there!

I asked you some polite reasonable questions but you've chosen to complain about something someone didnt actually say instead.

It feels like maybe you dont actually want to enagage and are just being goady for the sake of it.

It's very much the way TRAs tend to argue here.

Ferdinand, your questions were not that clear. Can you clarify?

Sky it’s not that anyone doesn’t like everyone. It is that lesbians (same sex attracted) are being coerced into sex with trans women, which they do not want (“coping with penis” is not fun).

After years of raising this politely - blogging, podcasting, tweeting - all to no avail, last year they tried to raise it more assertively.

Nobody listened. Stonewall (including Linda Riley) said they were hateful trouble makers, and now they are banned.

Your lack of empathy is interesting.

And discriminating against female sin this way is illegal.

Can you clarify?

Ah perhaps you didn't understand mine earlier, since you haven't answered it (or the OP's) yet. Happy to clarify (well, repeat):

Do you think Mermaids (a pro-child transition lobby group) should be able to dictate what lesbians (female homosexuals) can and cannot do or say at Pride (an event specifically set up to include female homosexuals)?

Yes or no?

It's an easy one. Only needs a single word. Which is it to be?

Hey, how about that third space?! For people who don't like everyone else.

What would you say to people like me who feel strongly against all this because they as (straight) people would have identifed as trans had the current definition been the one used in the 90s? Either we are actually non binary (or maybe AGender) and should be welcome and our views heard and respected as part of the community or not... And if not, why not?

Literally the difference between me and a teenager who identifies as non binary is that I don't believe anyone fits the gender binary. I can't fathom anyone actually feels cis it's so foreign to me. So really I should have the same say in pride as any other non binary person.

As a lesbian Sky, do you really feel attracted to and want to have relationships with male-bodied people?

LangCleg Wrong question.
Mermaids is dictating the conditions under which they would participate in Pride. Which is their choice.

2BthatUnnoticed anyone coercing sex with anyone else is wrong

"anyone coercing sex with anyone else is wrong"

That sounds like a "Yes" answer to me, Erythronium. Does it sound like that to you?

It could be Jacky, but maybe Sky could confirm.

It's that 'slippery' post modern version of coercion that's the sticking point, isn't it?

It's only the Genderists who can't see any coercion in "Of course you can say no. But you might want to reflect on what kind of person that makes you..."

Nope. Coercion=not consensual=not ok

Erythrium I am not what you'd call a gold star lesbian, but then most aren't.

I'm not interested in having relationships with people born, raised and living as male. I did that for a while before I came out and didn't like it.

I quite fancy trans men. My wife (together 11 years) is quite nonbinary in terms of identity and looks, but is what you might call female bodied. I have fancied a trans woman or two. And anyway, one can't make assumptions about who is and who isn't in possession of the correct chromosomal arrangements.

I identify as a lesbian but I consider these things more fluid/less boundaried than some might. It's not helpful to police the boundaries either. We are all on a spectrum. If you're LGBT you will know the deep history and narratives involved in those ideas.

LangCleg Wrong question.

All the LOLs ever LOLed.

If you're LGBT you will know the deep history and narratives involved in those ideas.

Well, I know that when I came out in the 90s lesbians got shit for not being interested in males. But back then we all knew that was a homophobic attitude. Now the LGBT community has legitimised it.

@Ferdinandandhismassiveballs Interesting that you say that. (“What would you say to people like me who feel strongly against all this as they as (straight) people would have identifed as trans had the current definition been the one used in the 90s?”). I certainly felt myself to be different to other girls in the 80s (although how did I know how they felt?), but being extremely short and slight at the time, I didn’t feel that my body channelled any alternative feelings I might have had very well. I never really thought too much about it: my femaleness wore Laura Ashley florals, inside which was a personality very un-‘feminine’. I liked playing with preconceptions and confounding assumptions. I would say now that ‘non-binary’ is the natural human state.

@skyzalimit “...I consider these things more fluid/less boundaried than some might. It's not helpful to police the boundaries either. We are all on a spectrum...” I totally agree. And sometimes it’s a very chemical, non-brain reaction that results in fancying someone or something while your thinking self is going WTF. Which is why I think everyone should be free to express themselves as they wish, be with whoever does it for them, wearing whatever the hell they want. As long as there is consent - and it doesn’t trample over anyone else’s rights. And that’s where we hit the issue of male demands on female space. Which it shouldn’t be necessary either to access or maintain if we lived in a brave new world of acceptance and mutual compassion. Clearly we don’t.

I'd love to know when and why bisexuality became the thing no one wants to claim. I can see lesbians being subject to significant pressure, and dealing with a real erasure of their spaces and freedoms via a kind of colonization by people who seek to redefine them out of existence.

But what I find fascinating is the way bisexuality is becoming almost taboo. There are out and out attacks on it for being transphobic, and attempted replacement with pansexual. And then there is this utterly weird insistence from some women that they are 100% lesbians who also like men. Like bisexual is wrong and something that cannot be named.

Now, I'm not a very big fan of the phrase 'gold star' because it does set up an unnecessary hierarchy, but in a heteronormative world, stacked especially against female homosexuality, I can understand why some lesbisns use it.

There's nothing wrong with being a woman who came out later in life and made the realization that they were a lesbian, despite maybe having been in a heterosexual marriage. 'Gold star' does take a pop at that, so I don't like it. But there is a difference between a woman realizing that despite performative heterosexuality, she is homosexually oriented, and a woman who is still quite open to the occasional penis while being oriented towards women. The difference is the second one is bisexual. And there is nothing wrong with that. Why are some 'pro trans' women so averse to being bisexual?

@floralbunting My impression is that bisexuals were always perceived as a bit dodgy, even before the trans issue became so prominent. Certainly that was my experience in the 80s and 90s. Unreliable. Able to slide back to heteronormative obscurity, when the going got tough.