Wednesday, October 4, 2023
  • Sign In
  • Sign Up
Donate
Lesbian and Gay News
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Reports
  • Opinion
  • Interviews
  • Politics
  • Lesbian Lives
  • Gay Lives
  • Conversation
  • Home
  • Reports
  • Opinion
  • Interviews
  • Politics
  • Lesbian Lives
  • Gay Lives
  • Conversation
No Result
View All Result
Lesbian and Gay News
No Result
View All Result

Claire Heuchan: I’m a proud lesbian, but I won’t go to Pride

Home Opinion
byLesbian and Gay News
June 20, 2021
in Lesbian Lives, Opinion
4 min read
Claire Heuchan: Using difference creatively
TweetShare

I still remember my first Pride, nearly half a lifetime ago. I was fifteen years old, having a day out in Glasgow with my mother, when we found the parade kicking off on Queen Street. In the years between then and now, I have often wondered if this choice of start point was intentional. But at the time I wasn’t familiar enough with gay culture, or the ironic reclaiming of slurs, to question it. Plus, the feathers and flamboyance were so far removed from what I’d seen of the world that they commanded my full attention.

Mum was happy enough to watch. She’s a lesbian. And at the time I still thought of myself as bisexual. So, we stood together on the side-lines and watched the parade go by. I was entranced by a float bearing perhaps a dozen gay men and a banner about gay fatherhood. They blew kisses into the crowd, and it was one of the few occasions in my teenage years where the attention of unknown adult males felt like a safe, welcome thing.

You may also like

EHRC skewers the UK Government’s Conversion Therapy proposals, by Bev Jackson from LGB Alliance

Jo Bartosch: “It is the EHRC’s job to look at facts; their intervention has been like the return of adults to the room.”

Gary Powell: “Was it our own internalised homophobia that allowed the gender lobby to hijack our gay rights movement? As though that’s all we are worth?”

Jo Bartosch on how gender critical campaigners are being labelled domestic terrorists and threats to national security by ‘radicalisation’ academics at King’s College London

Things got slightly awkward when a group of men started jousting with giant inflatable penises. Witnessing anything vaguely sexual alongside your parents is always excruciating. But it seems so tame compared to the fetish gear that porn culture has since brought into the mainstream. Had there been any overt BDSM on display, like the images I see circulated on Twitter every Pride season, there is no doubt in my mind that Mum would have said we were leaving. And I would have been perfectly happy to agree.

A recent survey found that 53% of lesbian and bisexual women don’t feel comfortable or welcomed at Pride.

Back then, it would have been unthinkable to me that – as a grown woman with the freedom to go to Pride each year – I would choose not to participate. But I haven’t been to Pride in years. And I’m not alone in that. A recent survey found that 53% of lesbian and bisexual women don’t feel comfortable or welcomed at Pride. Less than half of the women surveyed said they planned to attend Pride, though the vast majority of them lived in towns or cities where Pride had been organised.

Something has gone seriously wrong in the LGBT community when the majority of women feel alienated by Pride. And although I will always remember my first Pride with fondness, I realise now that there were very few women involved in the march. The only all-female group I saw that day were SheBoom, the biggest women’s drumming ensemble in Europe. Everywhere else, men dominated. Sexism has been undermining our community since it first formed, undermining pioneering groups such as the Gay Liberation Front. And until we address misogyny in LGBT spaces, nothing is going to change.

Pride began as a protest. It was a way of commemorating the Stonewall Uprising, which was sparked by a butch biracial lesbian resisting police brutality. Her name was Stormé DeLarverie. Although Stormé’s name has been all but erased from LGBT history, side-lined in favour of her male contemporaries, there would be no Pride without her courage. I often wonder what Stormé would make of uniformed police officers joining in the march; the rainbow merchandise churned out by corporations; Pride’s sponsorship by international banking conglomerates.

Rainbow capitalism has little to offer the average lesbian, who is more likely to live in poverty than the average straight woman or gay man. Yet it’s shoved down our throats at every possible opportunity by brands eager to cash in on gay rights, reducing liberation politics to a marketing trend. This cynicism and greed of corporations, along with the misogyny we experience in LGBT spaces, push women out of Pride.

When groups like the Lesbian Rights Alliance challenge Stonewall, or Get the L Out protest Pride, they are vilified. But it’s easier to monster grassroots lesbian organising than to ask what drove women to form those breakaway groups in the first place.

These values in no way represent me as a lesbian. When I think of what really makes me proud to be gay, it’s the women who build lesbian community for little reward or recognition. I feel proud to belong to such an exceptional group of women. Proud that the older lesbians in my life saw something in me worth nurturing. Proud to be able to do the same for the younger lesbians in my life. But I feel no pride in a movement that repeatedly turns its back on lesbians.

When groups like the Lesbian Rights Alliance challenge Stonewall, or Get the L Out protest Pride, they are vilified. But it’s easier to monster grassroots lesbian organising than to ask what drove women to form those breakaway groups in the first place. Because we are conditioned to expect women to subordinate our needs and shoulder the bulk of care work, people can have a knee-jerk dislike of women centring ourselves and each other. Lesbian separatism has always been viewed through the lens of suspicion. And that misogyny only widens the divide threatening to fracture LGBT community.

Claire Heuchan is an author, essayist, and Black radical feminist. She writes the award-winning blog, Sister Outrider.

Tags: Claire HeuchanPride
Previous Post

Gary Powell speaks to Jennifer Lahl about her new film “Trans Mission: What’s The Rush to Reassign Gender?” which is released today

Next Post

Caroline Spry: The woman who put gays on TV

Comments 1

The views/opinions expressed in these comments are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Lesbian & Gay News. Please thoroughly read our comment policy before posting.
  1. DC Hampton says:
    2 years ago

    Giant penises in a Pride parade . . . see, that's where things began to go wrong. I'm a Gay man who has also felt alienated from Pride celebrations for many years. If you investigate why the word "queer" has become so accepted in mainstream society, that research will no doubt lead you at some point to the excessive behavior and bizarre imagery that have become the trademark of Pride. They used to talk about the LesBiGay community, and I did feel proud. Now they talk about the "queer and trans" community, news anchors and government officials use that kind of language, and I don't know what to feel.

    Reply

To view all comments and to join the conversation, please sign in or register.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must sign in to join the conversation.

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Sign in to comment.

Would you like to sign in or register?

TopStories

Jo Bartosch: Lost lesbians in the census
Reports

Jo Bartosch on why intersex people are fed up with their medical conditions being repurposed as a transgender identity

by Jo Bartosch
August 7, 2021
12.4k
Dennis Kavanagh: Queer?
Opinion

Dennis Kavanagh: Queer?

by Lesbian and Gay News
March 23, 2021
7.2k
Lynn Alderson on the Alphabet Soup: “Why LGBTQI+ is not a thing.”
Opinion

Lynn Alderson on the Alphabet Soup: “Why LGBTQI+ is not a thing.”

by Lesbian and Gay News
May 21, 2021
6.1k
Lesbian women talk about meeting ‘transbians’ on women-only dating sites
Lesbian Lives

Lesbian women talk about meeting ‘transbians’ on women-only dating sites

by Jo Bartosch
August 7, 2021
26.2k
‘A Guide to Peaking the Woke’ by an LGN reader: “Most people have no idea of the harm that lies beneath the rainbow flags and the seemingly innocuous mantras.”
Opinion

‘A Guide to Peaking the Woke’ by an LGN reader: “Most people have no idea of the harm that lies beneath the rainbow flags and the seemingly innocuous mantras.”

by Lesbian and Gay News
November 21, 2021
10.2k

RecommendedPosts

EHRC skewers the UK Government’s Conversion Therapy proposals, by Bev Jackson from LGB Alliance

EHRC skewers the UK Government’s Conversion Therapy proposals, by Bev Jackson from LGB Alliance

by Lesbian and Gay News
February 7, 2022
2.1k

The End of the World is Flat reviewed by Jo Bartosch: “That Edge has sought to satirise woke group think through a novel feels significant; fictionalising the trans war on reality is a way of reifying it in the public imagination.”

The End of the World is Flat reviewed by Jo Bartosch: “That Edge has sought to satirise woke group think through a novel feels significant; fictionalising the trans war on reality is a way of reifying it in the public imagination.”

by Lesbian and Gay News
August 5, 2021
1.7k

Rainbow-dressed monkey man with “perky prosthetic bum cheeks, sagging nipples and eye-catching dangling dildo” hired by Redbridge Libraries for children’s reading event, reports Jo Bartosch

Rainbow-dressed monkey man with “perky prosthetic bum cheeks, sagging nipples and eye-catching dangling dildo” hired by Redbridge Libraries for children’s reading event, reports Jo Bartosch

by Jo Bartosch
July 14, 2021
4.9k

Kellie-Jay Keen: The locker room has a lot to answer for

Kellie-Jay Keen: The locker room has a lot to answer for

by Lesbian and Gay News
February 26, 2021
4k

Kay Knight: The shaming of homosexuals for having sex

Kay Knight: The shaming of homosexuals for having sex

by Lesbian and Gay News
August 11, 2021
5.7k

Professional Judy: Drag queens and our gay history

Professional Judy: What does LGBTplc do when it has been exposed with its pants around its ankles? It goes on the attack.

by Lesbian and Gay News
February 26, 2021
1.5k

MostRecent

Announcement from the LGN Management Team: Lesbian and Gay News is closing

Announcement from the LGN Management Team: Lesbian and Gay News is closing

March 27, 2022
6.9k

Lesbians United on taking back the narrative

March 23, 2022
480

“The current model is not sustainable and another model is needed”: Interim Report of Cass Review welcomed by families with transgender-identified children, reports Gary Powell

March 23, 2022
756

Categories

  • Activism
  • Books
  • Conversion Therapy
  • Film
  • Gay Lives
  • Gender Dysphoria
  • Interviews
  • Lesbian and Gay News
  • Lesbian Lives
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Reports
  • Sponsored Editorial
  • Theatre
  • Transgender
  • Videos

Related Posts

Lesbians United on taking back the narrative

Lesbians United on taking back the narrative

March 23, 2022
480
Claire Heuchan: Using difference creatively

Claire Heuchan: How do we find more lesbian spaces?

February 23, 2022
1.1k
Shereen Benjamin on Stonewall: “It is alarming that City of Edinburgh councillors would affiliate their council to this increasingly discredited organisation.”

Shereen Benjamin on Stonewall: “It is alarming that City of Edinburgh councillors would affiliate their council to this increasingly discredited organisation.”

February 20, 2022
1.4k
Jo Bartosch: “One might have hoped that Lord Herbert might have questioned the huge rise in rates of referral to gender identity clinics, that he might have met with LGB Alliance.”

Gary Powell: Why Conservative backbench MPs should demand that Boris Johnson cancel the “Safe To Be Me” international LGBT conference

March 1, 2022
1.3k
EHRC skewers the UK Government’s Conversion Therapy proposals, by Bev Jackson from LGB Alliance

EHRC skewers the UK Government’s Conversion Therapy proposals, by Bev Jackson from LGB Alliance

February 7, 2022
2.1k
Jo Bartosch: “It is the EHRC’s job to look at facts; their intervention has been like the return of adults to the room.”

Jo Bartosch: “It is the EHRC’s job to look at facts; their intervention has been like the return of adults to the room.”

February 1, 2022
1.4k

Next Post
Caroline Spry: The woman who put gays on TV

Caroline Spry: The woman who put gays on TV

Categories

  • Activism
  • Books
  • Conversion Therapy
  • Film
  • Gay Lives
  • Gender Dysphoria
  • Interviews
  • Lesbian and Gay News
  • Lesbian Lives
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Reports
  • Sponsored Editorial
  • Theatre
  • Transgender
  • Videos

About Us

Lesbian and Gay News is an alternative source of news and opinion. Lesbian and Gay News picks up from an historic tradition of British lesbian and gay publications such as Gay News, which ran from 1972-1983, and The Pink Paper, which ran for 25 years from 1987.

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 staging.lesbianandgaynews.com - BM Payments Services Limited

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Reports
  • Opinion
  • Interviews
  • Politics
  • Lesbian Lives
  • Gay Lives
  • Conversation
  • Videos
  • Sign In
  • Sign Up

© 2021 staging.lesbianandgaynews.com - BM Payments Services Limited

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.