No Pride Without All.

Over the last few days, reading my social media timeline has been heartbreaking to say the least. Today has been overwhelmingly upsetting. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on everything that's happened over the last couple of days.

Please be advised this post contains references to death, murder, and transphobic rhetoric

Firstly, it was Trans Day of Remembrance yesterday - a day in the year where we mourn those lost to violence and transphobia. It's always a very sombre day and the figures of how many people we've lost are staggering. Therefore, it was difficult to see the day either being mocked or appropriated by transphobic accounts on social media. One in particular came from "Green Feminists UK", who felt it appropriate to claim that Trans Day of Remembrance 'is part of a communications campaign to take away women's rights to our own safe spaces'. They also tried to hijack the day, claiming it to be "Female Day of Remembrance", despite the fact that International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women occurs in just five days' time.

This was bad enough. But then, we all saw the devastating news about Club Q in Colorado - an LGBTQ+ club that came under attack by a shooter. Let's be clear - this was a calculated attack against our community. When organisations such as 'Libs of TikTok' use their platform to draw attention to events in queer safe spaces and demonise them, they incite hate and violence against us. But as if this wasn't crushing enough, we then had to see the vitriolic LGB Alliance completely erase people from our community.

The LGB Alliance are a hate group. That conclusion can be drawn clearly from the fact they claim it was LGB people who were attacked, yet a trans man - Daniel Aston - died at Club Q. Daniel was a bartender there, and once tweeted: "Every single goddamn time I even have the slightest thought of leaving Club Q, someone comes up and tells me "you're the reason I love this bar" or "you and Derrick make me feel so safe and welcome here". I've always believed in the power of queer safe spaces and I know how great they can be... but reading that the place that was supposed to be safe came under attack broke me.

​Rest in Power, Daniel.

I thought our world couldn't get worse. For a second time, I was wrong.

I don't care about football. I've never liked it, I don't see the point in it. Seeing everything about the Euros in 2021 was somewhat positive: that our national football team were taking the knee at the start of games, however I find the fact they can't protest against a country like Qatar by wearing an armband is pathetic. The threat of an instant yellow card came from FIFA and they abandoned any thought of wearing it. As I said - I don't care about football, but for many queer football fans this could've been a moment where they see that yes: LGBTQ+ people are in the thoughts of sporting icons, and they will protest against anti-LGBTQ+ countries such as Qatar. Alas, they won't even bother risking a yellow card for us.

​So how do I sum all of this up? I can only bring myself to say two things. One: the last few days have been shit. They've been so shit. We've had to deal with transphobic vitriol, an attack on all of our community, and the fact football players won't bother standing up for us. Two:

This is why we need Pride.