Photo report: Trans+ Pride 2019

On 14 September, London saw its first ever Trans+ Pride. Photos by Steve Eason.

Around 1,500 people joined the London’s first ever Trans+ Pride. Since 2012, there has been an annual Trans Pride in Brighton.

Only this week, there were reports that the Tories have been polling ‘culture war’ issues ‘such as transgender rights’. Many of those on Trans+ Pride London had the following message for them:

Part of the background to the London event was the hi-jacking and disruption of recent Pride events in attempts to exclude Trans people.

Fifty years ago this year trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera played a leading role in the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising that helped to spark the gay liberation movement. Trans+ Pride London was celebrating a shared history of unity in struggle.

Organiser Lucia Blayke described the march as: ‘For healthcare, for social housing, to stop the deportation of trans refugees in the UK and many other issues.’

A 2018 report by Stonewall revealed that 42% of trans people who would like medical treatment have not because of fear of consequences for their family life; a third suffered descrimination in cafes, restaurants, bars or nightclub in 2018; more than a quarter have experienced domestic abuse; almost half of trans people fear discrimination or harassment when using public toilets.

But as Roz Kaveney put it in a 2016 interview with rs21:

The capacity of the trans community to look after its own should be a rebuttal in itself. It should be pointed out that that solidarity has been achieved in the face of attempts to force trans people into isolated secrecy by both medical gate-keepers and some progressives.