For anyone not aware, the London Pride parade on Saturday, 7th July 2018 was hijacked by a group of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs1) who were protesting the existence of Transgender people. They claimed they were protesting the erasure of lesbian identity, but the fact of the matter is that these claims are (for the most part) complete and utter tripe. Aside from the fact that they plain don’t like us, they’re getting up in arms about the Gender Recognition Act and don’t seem to grasp that everything they want to prevent trans women from doing… they can already do2. All the GRA essentially is is a way to make getting a Gender Recognition Certificate3 a much less painful process for those of us who would find the thing useful to have to live our daily lives like the rest of society.
The propaganda leaflets the TERFs were distributing were full of misinformation and twisted words, and the behaviour of these women was deplorable and frankly criminal, and potentially could have been dangerous. They won’t get prosecuted. They’ll just get a slap on the wrist, because crimes like this against trans people are rarely taken seriously. On the positive side, it did spark outrage in the lesbian community, with so many cis4 women coming out in support of their trans sisters and decrying the actions of the TERFs. Genuinely heart warming to see, and I have so much love for these women right now.
I’m pretty angry about the stunt in general. Trans issues aside, these women crashed a major event to push their issues, heedless of the disruption. They also displaced the NHS staff who were supposed to be leading the parade, and screwing over the NHS is a reason all by itself for condemning these actions. Respect our NHS, people. But I’m mostly irked by the lying contents of that leaflet. I’m going to take a few points from it and go through them.
