Sometimes We Get Lost…

In Pride Parades with a thousand gay and lesbians marching a couple of hundred of trans people marching gets lost in the crowd and sometimes we don't feel welcomed, so now there are Trans Pride in some cities.

London to host its first Transgender Pride festival this year
The Independent By Katie O'Malley and Joseph Cowell
26 April 2019

London is set to host its first ever Transgender Pride festival.

Earlier this week, performers Lucia Blake and Finn Love posted a Facebook event to announce the festival, which is scheduled to take place in the capital on Saturday 14 April in Hackney, east London.

According to the social media page, the festival will include “live music, performances, a series of stalls from LGBTQIA+ organisations, panels/talks from inspirational trans people, artwork that explores our identity and much more”.

Organisers state that festival – which is known as London Trans Pride 2019 – is specifically aimed at trans, non-binary, intersex and gender nonconforming people “as well as all gender identities”.

“It is for people that think they might be trans+, but maybe aren’t sure,” a segment from the page reads. “It is for anyone who needs to escape the transphobic hegemony of cis-patriarchy.”

The festival’s organisers said they felt inspired to create the event following the “hijacking” of Pride in London 2018 by anti-trans campaigners.

At last year’s event, a group of campaigners carried banners and flyers stating “transactivism erases lesbians” and describing the trans movement as “anti-lesbianism”.

“Last year’s transphobic protests and the all too familiar centring of cis-white gay-male narratives at Pride in London certainly informed our decision,” London Trans Pride 2019 told PinkNews.

My only comment is that I hope that even though we make up only a same percentage of the marchers I hope that trans people march in both parades because we cannot surrender to the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF).

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Some of our history has died, remembering the founder of PFLAG. It was foundered as a LG organization but later on it also included the gender and sexual orientation spectrum including trans people.

Remembering Jeanne Manford: 'The mother of the LGBTQ ally movement'
Manford, who famously marched with her son in the 1972 NYC pride march, has inspired countless moms since founding LGBTQ rights group PFLAG four decades ago.
NBC Out News
By Julie Compton
May 11, 2019

In 1972, a petite but determined mother from Queens, New York, marched alongside her gay son in the New York City pride parade. She hoisted a sign that read “"Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children.”

Before a roaring crowd, Jeanne Manford, an elementary school teacher, became the first mom to publicly support her gay child, according to Liz Owen, director of the communications for PFLAG, the nation's first and largest organization for LGBTQ people and their families and friends.

“She really is the mother of the LGBTQ ally movement,” Owen told NBC News. “She is the mom who made it OK to love your LGBTQ kid.”

In 1973, Manford went on to found PFLAG, which originally stood for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The first meeting, held in the basement of a New York City church, welcomed 20 people, according to Owen. Word began to spread, and parents whose children had come out to them were coming to meetings desperate for support. The organization would eventually grow to over 400 chapters and 200,000 members nationally.
[…]
In January 2013, Swan sat by her mother's hospital bed and told her that then-President Barack Obama had awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.

“She squeezed my hand,” Swan remembered, “and I think she understood that she was getting it.”
[…]
Days later, on Jan. 8, 2013, Manford died. Swan accepted the award two months later on her mother’s behalf.

Swan, who lives in Daly City, California, said her mom kept families together and fought for LGBTQ people during a time when no one else would.

“She was the bridge,” Swan said.

As our leaders die out it is important to remember our history.