Pride for teens?

[HiDD]

DD(15) wants to go to Pride London.

AIBU to advise strongly against? My sense is it’s not a family-friendly event these days.

I'm sure she will be perfectly safe. Is she going with friends?

it's not family friendly.

London is a reasonably safe city, but even so it is hardly unreasonable to assume that there is some risk. "I'm sure she will be perfectly safe" is naive or the words of someone talking about another's child, not their own.

Pride itself is now homophobic and misogynistic and is mainly about the public display of fetish and paraphilia, not rights.

London is a safeR city than many.
But this isn't necessarily a safe event.
Why on Earth does she want to go?

My DD and her friends wanted to go to local Pride, I was non-committal as wanted to research the history of the event (as some are safer and more teen friendly than others) but all her friends mums said No for similar reasons.

I think it was the first time DD realised that being a lesbian isn't all hearts and rainbows and there will be people who hate just because of it.

London Pride’s not even lesbian friendly nowadays. I loved it when I first came out but now I stay well away.

Oh come on, the big problems are going to be the stuff that goes on in the bars and clubs later on. I'm assuming a 15 year old will be home early evening. It's not my cup of tea but i would let a 15 year old go with friends.

London is totally safe. Pride might make her see things she doesn't want to these days.

She wants to go because, she says, it will be fun and all her friends are going.

We’re in London and London has the problems it has; London kids have to deal with that. My concern is that Pride has become as Jamie describes.

Tbh, I think some of her peers’ parents are slightly clueless Gen X progressive types who haven’t kept up to date with developments in the wider culture, so I’m going to look like some old reactionary.

Let her go and make up her own mind. It might be a great coffee and catch up to have with her when she gets back.

Its a toss up between her finding the floats and costumes gross and totally focused on a very minority male view of sex and sexual attraction or her thinking this is cutting edge I really need to get into bondage and thinking men exposing their penises is really liberating.

I suspect the onlookers will be family friendly as so many women have been brain washed into thinking these exhibitionist men are "normal" gay behaviour. And many will have children with them.

But there will be little or nothing about women.

Let alone lesbians who do not think a man can be a lesbian.

Pride just seems outdated. What "rights" do LGB or even T not have that they should have?

Safety wise I wouldn't think any greater risk for a 15yo than anywhere else. Nowhere is completely without risk.

Pride in London is perfectly family and solo teenagers friendly, she won't see there anything you won't see on random social media feed. People describing it as "display of fetish" must be living some very sheltered and boring lives in a cave.

The biggest risk anyone would face is on the way to or from it by some rainbow hater who sometimes attack people who came to celebrate and split off the bigger group, but as she is going with friends that's not a risk.

She'll be fine. There will be some (mainly straight...) people who use it as an excuse to display their fetishes in public, but as long as she uses common sense, it's no more dangerous than any other event with large crowds.

I offered an inventory of my misgivings for consideration and have left it up to her.

If she runs into a pack of fat lads in latex dog gear she can’t say she wasn’t warned.

On a more serious note, I’ve explained why some of the Gs, the Bs and especially the Ls no longer feel Pride is for them.

(I used to be a regular poster here, btw, but nc’d to be on the safe side, especially now DD has a trans-identifying person in her social circle and would prefer her DM’s terven tendencies not to be revealed.)

Yeah, I’d prefer for her not to get an eyeful of that sort of thing.

I haven’t been to Pride since, iirc, 2008 (and that was with a mixed-age group of lesbians of the old-fashioned XX variety) so I can’t make an assessment of the likelihood of encountering public sexual activity.

She’s had peers with two mums, with two mums and a dad who’s around, and adopted by two dads; she’s had jaunts down OCS with uplifting talk about liberation. But who wants to have to sit down and explain all this kink-flaunting to a kid who just wants to be a good friend??

I first went to Pride with my friends in my teens- it was tranformative, honestly, to be amongst that crowd. I continue to attend annually, there's something so freeing about being amongst other LGBT people. I don't know how teen-friendly London Pride in particular is, but as long as she knows what to expect I wouldn't have an issue. It depends how mature she is and what she's comfortable with as well, if there are more adult elements to the parade is she the kind of person to be fine just thinking "not for me" and looking the other way?

You don't mention if your DD is LGBT herself, if so I think she'll probably get a lot out of it as a community event. While she'd still be more than welcome as an ally, it wouldn't feel as personally important and there may be other summer events in the city that suit her better.

Thanks, @dykedrama, I absolutely understand the power of that experience. (Being the age I am, I still feel moved when I take the occasional stroll along OCS and reflect on the huge changes that have happened over the last 50 years.)

DD isn’t LGBTetc herself, as far as I can tell; she’s got a boyfriend (though as it seems possible to identify as queer while being suspiciously conventionally straight, what do I know?!). Seems to be an allyship thing.

I remain sceptical about the addition of everything after the LGB, not least because I’m a massive TERF the interests of the T seem to be somewhat at odds with those of the LGB.

Turns out it’s a school trip

@HiDD, hold up - an actual, organised by the school, school trip?

To be clear, I’m not unhappy about allyship as a motivation. She says there’s a lot of homophobia in the student body at her state secondary and it’s good that she wants to support her friends.

It would seem so. I’d think there might be some safeguarding considerations and an interesting risk assessment!

Some of the lovely sights your underage child might be seeing.

Imagine the uproar if she was found looking at this online and the school found out...

Those were my immediate thoughts.