You Don't Live Like I Do

This weekend was Trans Pride Manchester. I'd been looking forward to this for a while - it's a very different occasion from the big corporate Manchester Pride, and there's something very cool about thousands of trans and nonbinary people (plus supporters like me) marching around Manchester. It's a low-budget affair, lots of home-made banners and placards. This year cosmolinguist and I were marching with Not A Phase, who organise the trans gym sessions. The idea of marching as a bloc fell apart pretty much before we left the rally area, but there were still a bunch of relevant T-shirts scattered throughout the parade. P was there with roller derby people, and I gave her a little flag I'd made at Queer Club for her to wave.

Before the march started, there were some good speeches, including from both the outgoing and new directors of Trans Pride Manchester. There's been a changing of the guard at the top, which is a good thing - the old crew did their best but were swamped by the commitment and weren't great at either seeking or accepting more volunteer help. I'm hoping that under new leadership the event will go from strength to strength (and they'll put the events on the website rather than locked behind an Instagram login, and I'll actually get chased up when I volunteer to steward the march!)

Much like last year, fascists happened to pick the same weekend to have their own little shindig in the city centre. On an organising group, somebody from the Socialist Worker's Party was claiming that Trans Pride Manchester should cancel itself and everyone should go join the SWP (Stand Up To Racism being an SWP front) protest against the fascists. And if we didn't, and went to Trans Pride instead, then we were enabling fascism which made us fascists ourselves. This is the kind of bonkers nonsense the SWP usually come out with, but I intended to go from the end of the Trans Pride march to a non-SWP counter-demo anyway. So the message on my placard was "No TERF, No fash, No SWP, Trans Rights" in coloured bubble lettering. Lots of people commented positively on my placard, particularly the "No SWP" bit. They're not actually popular among the communities they claim to represent; just well funded and obsessive.

The march itself was good fun. Positive vibes all around, friendly faces from trans gym, Queer Club, UTAW and other places. The vibes were excellent. My favourite chant was "We're here, we're mad, we're gonna trans your Dad." I'd planned to meet up with a couple of the young queerlings I know from the Internet but neither of them managed to make it and were terribly apologetic. At the end of the march we sat and chatted with friends in Vimto Park, before heading up to Piccadilly Gardens. By the time we got there, we couldn't see any fascists or counter-protesters. So instead we went for a drink with a friend at Mala in the Northern Quarter. Turns out that the fash had marched off to St Peter's Square which is why we missed them. The drink, food and associated chatter was lovely, but I was soon flagging and we had evening plans, so we headed back towards the bus stop.

On the way back through Piccadilly Gardens about half a dozen fash had returned and several of them approached me on seeing my sign, asking to interview me for their shitty fascist YouTube channels. I'm pretty good at being boring, and I didn't rise to their bait or give them any "content". Some other people had come over to make sure I was OK and they said they appreciated the way I handled the fascists. Sadly the buses were screwed up and it took us a long time to get home, and we were both too tired to go out to the trans show at Contact we'd planned. Still, it was a good day!

The next day, I saw pictures of the fascist march. A smaller group, all waving the same flags, looking miserable and practically outnumbered by their police escort. Of course they got all the press coverage again. But we had the better day, the better cause, and the better lives.

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.