Thursday 26-07-2018 - 10:06

“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us” – Marsha ‘Pay it No Mind’ Johnson

In the early morning of 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Manhattan and a resistance of the marginalised LGBT+ community took place, led primarily by transgender women of colour. This was followed by a second night of rioting and the organisation of activist and liberation groups, laying the scene for the gay liberation movements in the United States and around the world. The next year, the first gay pride parades took place in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco on the same day as the Stonewall Uprising.

Pride is now an annual event observed across the UK and the world in the summer. Since 1985, there has been a Pride celebration of some kind held in Manchester at the end of the August bank holiday celebrating the contributions of the LGBT+ community to Manchester and protesting for the liberation of our communities.

Pride provides a safe and accessible space for people to express themselves and to meet other LGBT+ people, but it also gives LGBT+ communities a platform to enact change. It is necessary for pride to be political - Pride is one way in which we can challenge the system and make change to better the experiences of our community. We have to be committed to the spirit of solidarity to the most marginalised in our communities.

This year has been an especially difficult year for our transgender siblings. From the national media’s moral panic over access to single-sex spaces to the anti-trans demonstrators at Pride in London, it feels as if we are taking a step backwards where transgender people’s identities and dignities are not respected in the same way as cisgender people’s.

We can see this same difference in treatment in Universities – according to Stonewall’s University Report, 36% of trans students had negative comments or conduct made against them by a member of University staff because they are transgender and 39% of transgender students wouldn’t feel confident reporting transphobic bullying to University staff.

A lot of this backlash is in response to the Government’s intention to make reforms to a piece of law that governs how transgender people get their gender changed on birth certificates and official documents called the Gender Recognition Act. The Government is keen to hear the responses from a number of people, whether they are transgender or not, and we as officers are looking to write a response as a Union with our transgender members.

You can find out more about the consultation here.

We want as many students as possible to take part in the parade this year to show their solidarity with transgender people and the LGBT+ communities in Manchester.

The University will be in the parade and students are able to take part. You can sign up to take part in the parade here and we'll be sharing more news about the consultation soon.