Levenshulme Pride

[diffrentcolours]

I'm writing this a week late. Last weekend was the Levenshulme Pride festival, mostly based around the local social club. cosmolinguist and I ended up going three times. On Friday night, we met up with some friends from Discord, which was nice - we've been planning to meet up for ages, but never quite managed it before. On Saturday we had no particular plans, but ran into some old friends from various bi events back before I was persona non grata on the bi scene for bullshit reasons. We sat on the grass with two of them and a baby, nattering away for what seemed like ages.

On Sunday afternoon we went along for the dog show, and ran into one of our baby queers from Trans Pride Manchester, the one who'd been to the deed poll thing. It was great to catch up. Later on at the trans open mic night we ran into the other one who was there to read some poetry, as was E. It was his 21st birthday so I bought him a drink! We also met up with P and her partner, and it was a lovely time all round. Unfortunately the room for the open mic was stuffy as hell, and the CO2 readings were at "risky even with a mask" so we ended up being those dickheads who bail from the open mic after doing their bit.

The open mic was the last event of the pride, and as it was winding down the social club's regulars started to return. After such a lovely weekend, feeling connected with various communities and people, it was a real shame that I overheard one of them making a transphobic comment. It feels like as soon as we stop occupying a space, people come and ruin it. I know this isn't true in general - most of the people at the Pride were local people supporting the event, presumably mostly cis & het. I hope this person had a miserable weekend feeling unwelcome at their local because of all the joyful people expressing love, community, solidarity and vulnerability.

Comments

[apiphile]

I'm glad you got to catch up with your old bi scene friends - it's good that hasn't been taken from you as well.

Shame you had to leave the open mic but totally understandable. I wish people would think more about ventilation.

... but boo, wow. What a shitty thing to have to overhear.