Pride: Some women no longer feel safe at what’s meant to be a celebration of all things LGBT

[IwantToRetire]

Last year, Oxfam was forced to apologise after posting an animation for Pride Month featuring a character who many said resembled JK Rowling, depicted with red eyes and wearing a badge bearing the word “Terf” – an acronym of “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” used as a slur against feminists deemed transphobic.

Such disputes may on the surface appear minor, but there are worries among those who were there in the early days of the Pride marches that they are a sign of a more dangerous malaise. They warn that transgender activism has sown bitter divisions within the LGBT community and is now threatening to derail the movement they helped to build.

the clash between lesbian and trans rights has become so pronounced that one group of women has felt compelled to set up a grassroots campaign called “Get the L Out”, to protest at Pride events.

In recent years its members have attended parades in cities across the UK, carrying banners bearing slogans such as “Lesbians don’t like penises” and “Transgenderism erases lesbians”.

Liane Timmermann, a member of “Get the L Out”, says: “Pride was previously a political movement for lesbians and gays and then it was totally hijacked by this gender-identity movement
.
“Trans activists have got higher up on the Pride board and it’s just become shocking.

“Lesbians who are same-sex attracted are not welcome at Pride now.”
Timmermann adds that, initially, Pride organisers were uncertain how to handle the group.

Members of the lesbian rights group were gently asked to leave one London Pride event, she says, but were ultimately allowed to stay because it would cause more disruption to forcibly eject them.

Pride in London, which did not respond to questions from The Telegraph, said at the time, in 2018: “They demanded to march behind the rainbow flag, which marks the official start of our parade. We did not allow that as we did not want to legitimise them or their message.”

However, as time has gone on attitudes have hardened. In 2022, police stepped in to remove the campaigners from Cardiff Pride after they were judged to be stoking a “confrontation” with transgender attendees.

And this schism within the LGBT community over trans ideology is set to widen. On June 29, the day of London’s annual Pride march, Jenny Watson, a 32-year-old lesbian activist, will hold an alternative rally in the capital, because she believes that the main event no longer represents women like her.

Similar to the members of “Get the L Out”, she feels that it has become dominated by the transgender movement and a growing number of men in “hypersexualised” outfits.

“Pride used to be simple and fun,” says Watson, who went to her first march at 18.

“But it’s just turned into this sexualised circus with men in bondage gear or wearing ball gags and lots of women just don’t feel comfortable to be there.

Just a few paragraphs from a much longer article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/17/pride-trans-activists-lgbt-debate-divided/

So strange to find lesbians being given a voice in the Telegraph that Guardian would never allow!

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/o7XEg

I'm going to be 70 next year. From the age of 15, in 1970, I've had varying degrees of involvement with left wing, feminist, and lesbian and gay politics (I'm bisexual but called myself a lesbian for a few years).
This is what I now think. Women should never have hitched any of their political wagons to men.
We should not have trusted left wing men. They did not care about feminism.
We should not have trusted gay men. They did not care about feminism or lesbians.
We should organise separately as women and only women. I'm done with the lot of them. I live with a bloody man now (he's ok). But politically we should organise as, and on behalf of, women and not trust a single man as far as we could throw them.
I'm angry.

For women by women has always been the only way in reality.

Trans rights activism is like a dementor, it sucks the joy out of everything it touches

Expecto Patronum!!

(Sorry couldn't help myself)

Feeling very nostalgic for the lesbian parades and marches of the 80s… haven’t been to Pride since the early 90s and would never go except to protest now. Limiting myself to small protests at local events which centre the T.

My lesbian friends no longer go. It's mainly men in fetish gear. Drag as well, although that wasn't as bad, just a bit over the top. The fetish stuff freaked them out. They have young children now and it's entirely inappropriate to see what they've seen at previous marches. Her and her wife made the decision few years ago to stop going (actually prior to them having their kids) when one of the fetish gear blokes in a gimp mask was openly masturbating on the street and none of the gay men around him batted an eye. They felt horrified and left. I was so angry at the time when my friend told me about it. The police were there! They did nothing. It's gross.

This is an excellent quote and reflects a lot of what i feel.

Lesbians and gay men have incredibly little in common tbh. Andrea Dworkin wrote brilliantly about this and was ignored, wish we'd listened.

My Lesbian and bi foremothers were there for gay men during the AIDS era but I now see that the support doesn't go both ways.

As for Pride, I loved it in the early noughties. So joyous. Now just hypermasculine, hypersexualised and hypercapitalist. No thank you.

Why would my post which was a link to a FWR thread be deleted ????????????????????????????????????????

I’ve heard a few gay men saying that Pride doesn’t appeal to them any more as well, for very similar reasons as mentioned in previous posts. But I definitely agree that male sexuality, especially the unfettered or unrestrained version we often get these days, is very often not pleasant for women to be around.

x.com/AllianceLGB/status/1803835789341602232?t=tiRYZVX0h6Q-Pd7-GmEWFw&s=19

And as for this, from Pride in London - I'm horrified at the glorification of bilateral mastectomy for vulnerable girls. Good letter from LGB Alliance to Sadiq Khan.

That's an excellent letter @JulesJules

Stop harking for a past that wasn't there. It is sad that your posts lie about history.

Early pride marches were political and demanded rights for all minorities from lesbians, gay men, and trans people.

e.g There was
STAR : Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. "STAR was a radical political collective that also provided housing and support to homeless LGBT youth and sex workers in Lower Manhattan.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetTransvestite_Action_Revolutionaries

Personally, Pride doesn't appeal to me either, but then again I am too old for it. I'll take a quiet cup of tea and biscuits thanks.

I came across this on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TheVikingDane/status/1804746673567985842

For those who can't access it, it's a video of a young white woman covered in glitter and rainbow accessories and with rainbow-coloured hair at New York Pride 2024. She's being interviewed by a guy who asks her what she finds so exciting about Pride month. She says that it's very important to celebrate New York's diversity, gayness, queerness and fabulousness in general. He asks her when she realised she was gay or queer. She says she's straight.

It takes me back to a Pride event about 18 years ago when I went to Pride to hand out flyers advertising an event my lesbian group was holding. About one in 10 women took the flyer. The rest read said 'I'm straight' as soon as I said 'We're holding a lesbian club night....' I stopped going to Pride after that.

There's blackface and womanface and now there's Prideface.

Thank you for linking to this.

That poster is deeply offensive. I can’t begin to imagine trying to explain what it means to young children, and I feel for every woman who’s had to undergo a life-saving mastectomy as a result of breast cancer who has to walk past this in her daily life. It’s abhorrent.

Early pride marches were nothing to do with trans people. Why do they try to crowbar themselves into everything?

Fred Sargeant was one of the main leaders of the Stonewall Riots and is very clear about the role of trans people in the riots:

They did virtually nothing at Stonewall or to help create the gay liberation movement. If they couldn't grift, they didn't do anything worthwhile. Establishing a cell in GLF called S.T.A.R. whose only tangible result was a eight-month squat in a rundown apartment on 2nd Street without utilities for drug-addicted sex-workers, isn't the accomplishment that some make it out to be today. The owner of the building was in the mob, fer chrissakes.

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/fred-sargeant-debunks-the-latest

Well had to go into central London and ran into the rainbow crowd.

Mixed sex couples, groups of corporate sponsored t-shirted colleagues (big banks and finance companies, law firms etc), gangs of giggling teen girls on a jolly, moms and their special little kid (dressed up to the nines in sparkly frocks - saw a couple of these and to be honest the lads didn't look all that happy), and many many good little allies in their ally T-shirt's. Also quite a few older women in sparkly clothes and hats. And a very large chubby bloke in a string vest which was rather unnecessary.

It's Halloween for straights. I hear a straight woman is leading some march - she says doesn't like sex very much, and apparently that makes her very special indeed.

I don't know any gay people who are going.

It's really not 'Pride' anymore. It was a protest (yes I'm that old. Yes I was on the scene from late 80s) - it's just a piss up now.

And flags - everywhere flags. Rainbows on streets, staff uniforms, cupcakes and lollipops. Roads blocked off. Crossings blocked.

Go and have a blast by all means, but don't pretend you are marginalised and discriminated.

I didn't know until I saw a minor article on a website that it was Pride London today, they are now really trying to downplay it.

Noticed that a lot of brands aren't doing special Pride ranges this year, obviously find that they sold poorly.

There’s a gay man pride today (not sure where it is). To get away from all the straight folk and cranks. I saw a video from Cardiff’s pride and it was a hell of a lot of doggies, white faced nun types and bondage folks.

My DC (ftm but slowly giving it up, no surgery thank God or drugs) has been to one pride event in eight years.
She said not for her, full of weird people.
She hates the way people jump on her as she's at a posh uni and want her to be a spokesperson. Not for her and she thinks there's too many predatory people in the ranks.

Oh and flags all along Piccadilly and regent street. Yeah. Marginalised.

Not sure where the gay male one was but there was also a small lesbian only one in Westminster. Which was lovely.

Our small local town laid on a pride day and a gay friend rolled his eyes and said to me, 'Oh God, Pride next weekend, isn't it?' He won't touch it with a barge pole.

Lesbian here, I was at Pride this morning. Sorry to disappoint, but it was very family friendly, safe and respectful. Not a man in fetish gear to be seen.
The Torygraph probably isn’t the best source of objective news.