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.

No one pulled back from gay rights in the 90s. On the contrary - support for gay rights was steadily increasing through the 90s.

You only need to see the photos on the internet of naked males being a parade with children, men wearing plastic penises on their head and torso (I have one saved I can post) with children around, and another I have is of a drag queen that had an inflatable penis on their crotch that they pumped up to erect state and squirted water. Also with kids around. You must go to a very sheltered pride parade if you haven't seen these things. These days the most debauched and outrageously pornographic the better (so they think) with pride parades. None of them are for children.

Have you been to pride or do you get your information from the internet? If the males were naked then they were have been arrested for indecent exposure, there are police there after all. Children should know that women and men have different bodies. Rather foolish not to teach children about the human body don’t you think? There’s a huge difference between a child of 5 going compared to someone that is 16. At 16 they a teenager, fully aware of how the human body works as is of legal age to have sex. Post the picture you have so we can see what you mean.

Jesus wept.

.

Also this.

It won't let me post the video clip as it only allows jpeg, png and gif.

Photos under review and not through yet.

Good lord, please stop drooling.

Mate. Put it away.

'..., 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 mean, is she the kind of child.

OP you know your DD best, I'm sure you can risk assess. My own thought would be that it's not so much that the annual opportunity for the rainbow washing of corporate financial services and local authority departments to mingle with men in grimy latex will be directly any more dangerous than another public event, as that kink and 'boundary pushing' is normalised by repeated and ubiquitous pushing of messages like the ones we've seen on this thread.

It's not up to children to 'look away' from adult exhibitionists. Children don't need to be exposed to fetish and kink as an educational experience.

Children need to be taught strong boundaries and awareness of people who push at boundaries and the motivations of those people.

Kink and fetish should be entirely and rigorously dependent on consensual adult participation only.

I read some of it. I think they’d prefer if we could somehow arrive at a settlement where women, especially the non-compliant Ls - let’s face it, the worst and least compliant of all women - weren’t allowed out without a male chaperone. In effect, this is their current offer. Nice.

This is challenging my recollection too. Like, the 90s were arguably the transformational decade for gay rights?

Thank goodness you’re here to offer this outstanding advice on PSHE/RSE.

Did you also explain that tens of thousands of L, G and B people will be there because they don't buy into the trans exclusionary nonsense? Or that many LGB people who tend to avoid it do so because it is too commercial and insufficiently focused on protesting for the rights of the most persecuted in our community?

As for nonsense about it being all about fetishes, she's in for a rude awakening when she rocks up and spends two hours watching various banks and law firms going past with some sequins and Cher music.

On the plus side, I’ve had an opportunity to explain to DD that the reason we leave a clear zone between adult sexuality and children and younger teens (the latter developing towards maturity) is because it makes it much easier to spot dangerous people approaching; if the self centred, the ideologically driven, the commercially motivated and the hopelessly naive clutter it up, they provide cover.

I saw a Brighton pride parade about 10 years ago. I think we can all agree that things have changed significantly since then.

If it's a school trip, presumably she and her friends won't be able to peel off and do something else if they don't like it - that would be my main concern.

Btw are they marching or watching? What are they planning to wear? Will there be debate around some of it or is that not allowed? There could be anti JKR chants for example, lesbians banned from marching that sort of thing.

Kind of. I came out in the late 90s and there was a wonderful lesbian world out there. Bars, pub nights, quiz nights, book groups, you name it.

But then Stonewall needed a new cash cow & now most of the lesbian groups I know of are underground again because it’s unacceptable to exclude males. Although for whole new reasons.

My kids' school does a trip to Pride through their LGBT club, I think it's quite a common thing and I'd have no issues with my (late teen) kids going if they wished.

Incidentally, in case anyone would prefer not to just rely on pearl clutching nonsense about pride, you can actually see a very recent full London Pride parade on youtube. From start to finish. I haven't been in a few years, but this is how I remember it when I was last at it.

I've only skimmed the first two hours to see if perhaps it has in fact changed significantly since I was last there (a year or two pre-Covid). It hasn't. In those two hours, out of maybe 60 or 70 marching groups, one had any sort of link to kink (a leather club).

Of course to listen to folk on here you'd have to think wearing a gimp mask and nothing else was mandatory for Pride. But the video tells us different.

Editing and the manipulation of that video doesn’t represent what Pride has become.
the photos posted up thread show the reality.

At London Pride at least, especially as the day wears on and more drink has been taken, it's really not difficult to spot men with their cocks out. You kind of have to make an effort not to notice.

This contrasts a bit with the straight parents bringing their children along to watch, and Labour MPs dad dancing, which is the TV-friendly side of Pride.

I mean its literally a continuous shot of the parade from start to finish.

No manipulation involved. This is proper moon landing was fake level delusion now.