Manchester Pride - where are all the lesbians?

[MurielThrockmorton]

Obviously I know they’re somewhere else and not here for obvious reasons but in 100 pictures there are hardly any women, and I’m not convinced many of the women are lesbians rather than “straight allies” (or queer).

There are even “pups” and a picture of a young woman with an “OK Karen” fan. This just seems an excellent visual demonstration about how lesbians and bisexual women are alienated from our own movement https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/gallery/100-pictures-perfectly-sum-up-27608459

The MEN claim that the 100 pictures perfectly sums up Pride is exactly right.

Wow - in those crowd photos it's very noticeable isn't it?

I got to about photo 27 and then saw what seemed to be Freda Wallace, but then it crashed and I'm not starting again. But what i saw seemed very male.

The two pictures I mention are on page 4 I think. But yes, massively male. We knew that but here’s evidence. Of course it could just be what the photographers focused on, but I suspect not. Wasn’t the saggy tits comment Manchester Pride last year?

There were quite a few lesbians in the Proud 2b Parents section of the parade.

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=681231207373255&id=100064591456902

Pride was about being proud to be same sex orientated. Now Lesbians are told they aren't allowed to say no to penis because that is transphobic. Why would you want to be with an organisation that says you have no right to exist? Completely lost the point of the original Pride.

Lesbians getting excluded from Manchester Pride in 2021.

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Oh if you look lovely you might see my little niece with her dad. The kid’s just hit puberty and if lay odds on she is straight. Dad certainly is. Why he thought this would be a nice day out for them I don’t know… 🙄

I don’t actually know any gay people who go to pride these days. And in my day the only kids would be those with gay parents.

*closely not lovely.

I wouldn't go. What's the point in Pride? Welcoming or accepting... don't think so.

It's an event taken over by corporate or government money. Lesbians with an understanding of biology aren't welcome

There were quite a few lesbians in the Proud 2b Parents section of the parade.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see pictures of them!

Oh if you look lovely you might see my little niece with her dad. The kid’s just hit puberty and if lay odds on she is straight. Dad certainly is. Why he thought this would be a nice day out for them I don’t know…

The last time I went to Pride was when it was in Kennington Park, and I don’t think there were any regional ones but I used to get pissed off when heterosexual people from the office would go for a party but they wouldn’t stand up for me when I was experiencing homophobia at work. Actually that’s not true, I did take DD to a local one about 15 years ago but it was so full of men in fetish gear that we didn’t stay.

And I was thinking how lovely I look today so I was bound to spot them

Did you maybe not look all the way through the pics OP? There seems a pretty even representation of women and men present to me.

The crowd scenes on canal Street are fairly men heavy but that will be by virtue of where they are taken... it's often the case that after the march men and women tend to congregate at different areas so you'll get some areas which are predominantly women and others that are predominantly men.

I just thought the bloke in the first picture is going to be finding glitter for years.

neighbourhood Baga did TWO shows in 2021, one at Eagle which is men/transmen only and one at Vanilla which is women only (not sure about latter's policy on transwomen but the female bouncers don't let men in).

Did you maybe not look all the way through the pics OP? There seems a pretty even representation of women and men present to me.

I did look all the way through specifically to see if there were more lesbians, and I don’t think there was anything like even representation. There are pictures of some of the women performers, but I think they are heterosexual. There are some women with gay men, but not much in the way of groups of lesbians that I could see.

Bev Craig is leader of Manchester Council and is a lesbian. I can also see a couple of lesbians I know in the pics of groups and crowds and my sister in law and her friends went but didn't go into the village as they hate the vibe. Some of my more political gay and lesbian mates haven't gone for years as they have the commercialism. I've gone to the parade in recent years and get invited to take part through work but childcare and strikes made it impossible this year.

Manchester Pride has always felt quite male dominated although I think there are a lot more Drag queens than ever. Probably because that's quite the thing at the moment. It also makes for more colourful photos than boring old lesbian mums.

I have been working right in the centre of the gay village this weekend during pride as part of the festival. There were plenty of lesbians around 👌

suggestions how on earth can you tell someone's gender identity by their appearance? "Men" and "women" aren't anything to do with physical bodies, are they, as you have argued frequently on these boards.

I've just linked to a Facebook post where there were loads of photos of them. You are complaining about one paper's representation of Pride rather than the actual event.

I went through all these photos for my sins. I simply wasn't seeing what OP was claiming. So I wanted to actually check my biases in case I was just seeing what I wanted to see.

Yes, there were some shots with largely male crowds in the village, but as others have pointed out that is entirely dependent on where the photo was taken.

But across all the photos - excluding those of performers, who are not representative of those attending Pride - there were 316 faces that could be seen clearly. Of those, I counted about 17 where I couldn't hazard a reliable guess as to whether they were men or women. I counted 142 people who so far as I could tell were biologically male (including drag queens, women who were obviously trans etc) and 155 who looked biologically female.

Of course that's not foolproof - of course you can't always tell from someone's photo what their biological sex is. But broadly speaking, that's a pretty even split.