In a bizarre scene Saturday, a group of “lesbian activists” disrupted and stalled the London Pride Parade, in what they called a protest against the event’s inclusion of transgender individuals.
“A group of eight women stormed the parade route,” reported Gay Star News, and unfurled banners reading “Transactivism erases lesbians,” and “Lesbian = Female Homosexual.”
Local media reported that the protesters stalled the parade for around ten minutes, and as they were carted off, one could be heard screaming that, “A man who says he’s a lesbian is a rapist” — an apparent reference to male-to-female transgender individuals.
Other activists from groups calling themselves Get The L Out, Object, Mayday 4 Women, Critical Sisters and Lesbian Rights Alliance, handed out pamphlets along the parade route, also claiming that the Pride event’s expanding scope left lesbians marginalized and coerced into believing their sexual preferences were abhorrent. One flier read, “The trans movement is … coercing lesbians to have sex with men. We firmly condemn this vicious form of anti-lesbianism disguised as progress.”
Another activist told reporters that, “Transgenderism is conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is wrong.”
She continued, “Only women can be lesbians. A man who has surgery can never be a lesbian.”
The incident is the latest in a string of clashes between activists who demand all sexes, genders, and sexual preferences be included under the LGBTQIA+ banner, and those who say they’re left feeling marginalized by gay rights groups’ shifting priorities. The lesbian activists who disrupted the parade said they’ve felt left out of Pride events this year, after noting to organizers that lesbians prefer sex with only biological females, not transgender men who might dress and live as women but who have not completed gender reassignment surgery.
“We don’t want any kind of penis in our bedroom,” an activist told media. “I’m really sad I have to reassert this again.”