'We have the right to live with dignity': More than 55,000 people march for London Trans+ Pride

On Saturday (27 July), between 55,000 and 60,000 people are estimated to have gathered in the capital for London Trans+ Pride. Now in its sixth year, this peaceful protest provides a safe space for one of our most marginalised and dehumanised communities.

It also gives trans+ people – an umbrella term that covers everyone who does not identify as cisgender – a platform to talk about issues that are often ignored in the mainstream media.

At London Trans+ Pride’s press launch on Friday (26 July), founding member Lewis G Burton told the Big Issue: “Having [this many] people take to the streets sends a message to the trans community that they’re loved and supported. It also sends a message to the government that we will not stand for these pointless bigoted culture wars that are damaging our community.”

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RuPaul’s Drag Race star Bimini said at the press launch: “It shouldn’t feel radical, but it is radical because we are in a society right now where so much fear-mongering and dehumanising of trans people’s existence and taking away rights and access to healthcare is happening. We need to stand up and we also need to turn out.”

The trans+ community is already feeling profoundly let down by the new Labour government. Two weeks ago, health secretary Wes Streeting confirmed plans to extend the Conservative Party’s controversial emergency ban on puberty blockers for young people experiencing gender dysphoria, which was pushed through by his Tory predecessor Victoria Atkins in May.

Puberty blockers are medicines that suppress the body’s production of sex hormones. They are routinely prescribed to children who are about to undergo a precocious puberty. Until recently, they were also prescribed to trans+ young people experiencing gender dysphoria because they prevent the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics.

Implemented as a result of the Cass Review, an independent report into gender services for children and young people that has been heavily criticised by trans-led healthcare groups, the emergency ban only applies to the prescription of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria.

“There’s an attack going on right now towards trans+ youth,” Burton told the Big Issue. “Puberty blockers are banned for trans+ kids when cisgender kids can still have access to them. That’s a very bigoted decision and one of the main reasons we’re marching this year.”

Burton also noted that everyone at London Trans+ Pride would be “marching in solidarity with Palestine, Sudan, Haiti and Congo”. For Burton, intersectionality is fundamental to the event’s existence. “What we need is solidarity between all marginalised groups to send a message to the government that we will not stand for any bigotry and hatred,” they said.

Some of the UK’s larger LGBTQ+ pride events, including the main Pride in London parade which took place on 29 June, have a heavy and rather controversial corporate presence. On one level, this reflects the success of the wider queer liberation movement. But on another, it seems to undermine the radical routes of a movement that began as a protest.

London Trans+ Pride provides a galvanising grassroots alternative. When the march began at Langham Place near Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon, participants waved placards saying “tranarchy now”, “queers for Sudan” and “gender – I hardly know her”.

One protester held up a sign saying: “Puberty Blockers, 24 years later. Healthy, safe and happy. No regrets.”

At the same time, the atmosphere is friendly rather than fractious. Jo, the parent of a grown-up trans son, told the Big Issue that London Trans+ Pride supplies the sort of positive representation that is sorely lacking in much of the mainstream media.

“As a parent, all you ever want is for your child to have a place in the world, which is why this celebration is really important,” Jo said. “Through coming to the march over the years, my son found other trans kids and positive role models, which is so much more helpful than the harmful rubbish that some people [online and in the press] spew out about trans people.”

London Trans+ Pride was founded in 2018 after a small number of anti-trans protesters took the lead in the main Pride of London parade without authorisation. Understandably, many trans people were left feeling persecuted at an event where they should have felt at home.

Speaking to the Big Issue ahead of this year’s march, actress and YouTube creator Abigail Thorn said this act of hostility made the trans+ community realise ”we need a space where we can put forward all the issues that matter to us without interference from cis people”.

These issues are numerous and deep-rooted. A 2018 Stonewall study found that one in four trans people have experienced homelessness at some point. Trans people are also more likely to live in areas of high deprivation, according to a UCL report published in November.

On top of this, recent research led by the University of Manchester found that trans people in England are up to five times more likely to have a long-term mental health condition than cisgender people.

Sadly, this last statistic is hardly surprising given that trans+ people invariably wait years for their first appointment at an NHS gender identity clinic. EM Williams, a poet, actor and movement director who oversees access for London Trans+ Pride, told the Big Issue that they have now been waiting three-and-half-years for their first appointment.

“That is absolutely ridiculous and the reality is we’ve lost many people [to mental health issues] while they’ve been stuck on waiting lists,” they added.

Against this bleak backdrop, London Trans+ Pride provides a beacon of hope. For Olivia Campbell-Cavendish, founder of Trans Legal Clinic, which provides free and accessible legal help to trans and non-binary people in need, the annual march is “a means of enforcing” the rights that trans people currently hold.

It’s also an opportunity to shine a spotlight on other rights that the community is still fighting for: though section seven of the Equality Act 2020 protects a person’s right to undergo gender reassignment, the UK still offers no legal recognition for non-binary gender identities.

And because trans+ people in the public eye are too often expected to justify or explain their identities instead of raising issues that matter to them, further progress is an uphill struggle.

“London Trans+ Pride is partly a response to the constant negative portrayals of trans and non-binary people in the media,” Campbell-Cavendish said. “It’s about us going out onto the streets and saying: ‘We have the right to live with respect and dignity.'”

Follow London Trans+ Pride on Instagram: @londontranspride.

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