transgender | >Re-PHOTO

Rain on Pride Parade

Rain on Pride Parade: Times have changed since 2014 when I made a large set of pictures at the start of London’s annual Gay Pride on Saturday 28 June. Back in 2014 I was able to walk around freely and meet and photograph those taking part before the parade started. The colour pictures here are all from that event, where there were some short but heavy showers as people gathered.

I don’t think I had actually bothered to apply for accreditation, though I did on some previous years, as I didn’t intend to photograph the actual parade. But in 2017 security around the event was stepped up and it became necessary for everyone to have applied for permission to take part to get near.

I’d first photographed Pride in 1993 and it was then a very different event. Pride was then a protest and a defiant gesture, while now it has become a corporate-dominated gay parade.

I was pleased when some of these photographs were shown as a part of the exhibition Queer is Here at the Museum of London in 2006 and a larger set at at ‘Changing the World’, a Gay and Lesbian History and Archives Conference at London Metropolitan Archives in 2005.

Those pictures were in black and white, though I think I may also have taken some in colour, yet to be re-discovered in my archives, and they covered the 10 years from 1993-2002. You can view a set on-line, though there are hundreds more in my files. These include a small number from Pride 1998, which according to Wikipedia didn’t happen.

In 2017 I had decided to photograph the Migrants Rights and Anti-Racist Bloc who had joined the official parade in 2016. But in 2017 they were refused entry and instead – as I put it – “reclaimed Pride as protest, gate-crashing the route at Oxford Circus and marching in front of the official parade along the route lined by cheering crowds.”

This should have been the big story about that day’s Pride, but hardly made the news, and I think was totally ignored by the BBC – and doesn’t even get a mention in the Wikipedia article.

After this I decided not to cover Pride in 2018, going instead to photograph a march against the closure of acute facilities at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals in south London while it was happening. The following Saturday I went the following week to photograph the third Croydon Pride Procession, a much smaller and friendlier event.

In 2019 I went to Regent’s Park where people were preparing to join on the end of the huge Pride Parade as a Queer Liberation March in protest against the increasing corporate nature of Pride.

They included some LGBT groups unable to afford the fees to take part in the official parade, but mostly people were there because they felt it vital to get back closer to the origins of Pride, which began with the Stonewall riots 50 years ago led by trans women of colour.

I had to leave well before they set off to join the parade. The did eventually manage to do so, but had to force their way past the Pride stewards. The police had initially tried to stop them but then decided they had to be allowed to march.

Pride was cancelled in both 2020 and 2021. On July 1st 2022 I photographed the Gay Liberation Front UK commemorating their first London Gay Pride March 50 years ago marching through London on exactly the same hour and date. London Pride 2022 took place the following day but I went elsewhere.

More pictures from Pride 2014 on My London Diary at Rain on Pride Parade.

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners

On Saturday 3rd January 2015 I photographed two protests. First was a vigil following the suicide of a transgender teenage girl and the second another protest in the long series of actions calling on John Lewis to pay their cleaners a living wage.

Vigil for Leelah Alcorn – Trafalgar Square, Saturday 3rd January 2015

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners

Leelah Alcorn was a 17-year-old who threw herself under a lorry after her Christian parents forced her into ‘conversion therapy’, refusing to acknowledge her gender and forbidding her from transitioning.

Before her death Leelah had written a poignant suicide note on her Tumblr blog blaming her Christian parents, saying that from the age of four she had felt she was “like a girl trapped in a boy’s body” and describing her relief when she found the possibility of transgender transitions – but her feeling of hopelessness after she realised that her parents “would never come around” to her transition.

Leelah wrote: “The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights.”

“Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say ‘that’s f**ked up’ and fix it. Fix society.“

Even after her suicide her parents remained unwilling to accept her transition, burying her with a gravestone under her former name ‘Joshua’.

Those taking part in the vigil included a number of people who had also transitioned as well as other supporters of transgender rights. Speakers condemned the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ which has no basis in medical science and carries a high risk of suicide, calling for it to be banned and for those carrying it out to be prosecuted. It is already banned in some US states. They also demanded that her gravestone carry her chosen name of Leelah.

The protest ended with the lighting of candles and a two minute silence in memory of Leelah.

More at Vigil for Leelah Alcorn

Pay John Lewis Cleaners a Living Wage – Oxford St, Saturday 3rd January 2015

Members of the Cleaners And Facilities Branch of the IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) protested along with John Lewis customers protested outside the flagship Oxford St John Lewis store calling for them to live up to their ethical reputation and pay those who keep the shop clean a living wage. The cleaners complain the company treats them as second class citizens.

They were also protesting at the assaults on protesters by police at their previous month’s protest inside the store, where many were attacked as they were trying to leave after a peaceful protest. This time the protesters made no attempt to enter the store which was guarded by a line of police and extra security officers, but protested on the wide pavement outside.

Over 125,000 John Lewis customers had signed a petition calling on the company to ensure that it live up to its ethical reputation and ensure that the cleaning contractor pays all cleaners working in the store the London Living Wage. Neither John Lewis or the contractor recognise the IWGB as representing the workers, although it is the registered trade union which almost all the cleaners belong to.

As well as not being paid enough to live on, the cleaners have much poorer conditions of service than the directly employed staff they work alongside – who also get a large annual bonus as “partners” in the business. By outsourcing the cleaning John Lewis is refusing responsibility for work done in its store and vital for its running. They could include conditions for proper pay and conditions for the cleaners in the specification of their contracts but fail to do so.

*IWGB (Independent Workers Union of, Great Britain) General Secretary Alberto Durango*

The protest was led by IWGB General Secretary Alberto Durango and President Jason Moyer-Lee. There were short speeches of support by others including Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, (Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb) and Mick Dooley of London TUSC, as well as a great deal of noisy shouting and blowing of horns.

*Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb*

Many of the public on busy Oxford Street took the flyers being handed out and expressed support for a proper wage for the workers and disgust at the failure of John Lewis to treat them properly.

After around an hour and a quarter the event ended with a march around the outside of the large building, with security and police rushing inside the shop to meet them at every door. But even though the protesters sometimes arrived before them, they made no attempt to go inside.

More pictures at Pay John Lewis Cleaners a Living Wage

End Murdoch’s Transphobia

Campaigners from Transmission, a group supporting the rights of trans people, came to protest outside the offices of The Times newspaper against their publication of transphobic articles.

The protest came after articles were published written by Lucy Bannerman criticised the work of the Tavistock centre, which runs the country’s only NHS gender identity service.

In a statement published the same day as the article, the centre strongly rejected the claims made in the article and stated:

The Service always place a young person’s wellbeing at the centre of our work and have a clear position of independence from outside lobby groups on all sides of the debate.
and
A recent Review into the Service found no immediate issues relating to patient safety and no overall failing in approach. It did make recommendations to further improve the Service, these will be implemented over the next 12 months building on the work of the Service to date.
You can read the full statement at https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news/stories/gender-identity-service-times-8-april-2019/

This is not an isolated article and the same journalist has previously written unfavourably and inaccurately about trans charity Mermaids and has suggested ostracising trans athletes for competing in sports.

In a court case in which a transgender activist was convicted of assault, Bannerman tweeted unfavourably on the judge correcting witnesses who deliberately referred to the defendant, a trans woman as ‘he’. As was pointed out in a comment on her post, you would expect a judge to challenge racist or homophobic language and it should be no different for transphobic language.

Bannerman appears to have aligned herself with what are commonly known as ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ or ‘TERFs’ for short. Its a description they don’t like, though it appears descriptive rather than derogatory. I’m unaware of any other satisfactory description which clearly distinguishes them from the wider feminist movement which is supportive of transgender women.

Terfs have a record of disruption which although it does not endorse the use of violence against them certainly makes it more likely as it enrages others. Last year they gained the opprobrium of virtually the entire gay community by hi-jacking the start of Gay Pride – a very diffferent reaction to a similar take-over the previous year by migrant gay communities which was applauded by all except a few of the establishment. They also caused chaos at the Anarchist Book Fair, leading to its cancellation this year.

Propaganda like Bannerman’s articles can only appear in The Times because it reflects the views of the editor and more importantly the proprietor of the paper, Ruper Murdoch.

More pictures at Times end transphobic articles.

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