Pride has always been important., Right now it’s more than important – it’s urgent.
Are we at a tipping point; perhaps one as pivotal as the Stonewall riot in the US or the Section 28 protests in the UK? Certainly a cultural moment is upon us, and the stakes are high.

Over the past year, transgender people – particularly trans women – have been vilified, politicised, scapegoated, and dehumanised in ways that feel both familiar and unprecedented. Two years ago, transgender people were often treated as curiosities, relegated to novelty segments tucked between television listings and the funnies. Today, ‘trans’ is front-page news. But rarely are those stories positive and almost never are they truthful.

Much of this anti-trans rhetoric has been driven by gender-critical cisgender women (ie women assigned and certificated female at birth). But not all. A great deal has come from cisgender men, who reinforce their own privilege by lecturing cis women on how they should view trans women as if women must be told what to think. But again, not all.

Some of it has come from within the LGB community, where people understandably feel their own rights are once more under renewed, undeserved and unjustified scrutiny.

Something has changed – and recently. In just the past few months, the mood has completely shifted. The voices of trans people have grown louder as a natural and necessary response to efforts to erase them not just from health records and public life, but from history and the future. It’s not just trans voices – those of allies are being heard too.

At Pride events all around the country the blue, pink, and white stripes of the trans motif has become much more prominent. Not carried only by trans people, but by lesbians, gay men, straight allies, cis people, nonbinary and intersex individuals – women and men. Increasingly, the fight for trans rights is being recognised for what it truly is: the frontline of a much larger contest over equal human rights.

A very small minority, trans people are easy targets; because of their gender identity they are portrayed as existential threats where no further proof is required. Branded as predators, without evidence. This manufactured fear becomes a ready-made rallying cry for those who seek to impose control, not just over trans people, but over many others who do not ‘conform’ to earlier binary views of the world.

These echoes of the past are getting louder. The Stonewall riots of 1969 that were the birth of Pride as protest are still within living memory; and let’s not forget it was trans women who led that insurrection. Although I wasn’t there, I was already born back then. The first UK Pride march took place in 1972; though I didn’t yet know that I was on the path to my eventual transition, I was already walking it.

We must remember that LGB rights were under attack long before the “T” was included in the acronym. Now, it is plain to see: if trans people are erased, others will follow. When extremists have power and influence, basic human rights are not lost all at once, they are eroded piecemeal, starting with the most marginalised.

Right now, bodily autonomy for all women, including those assigned female at birth, is under threat in ways not seen in decades. The chilling idea that someone else can claim ownership of your body is no longer hypothetical. “Your body, my choice” is not just a slogan – it is a warning.

This is why a line must be drawn. Not later, but now! If we fail to draw the line and stand shoulder to shoulder behind it with and for trans people today, there may be no one left to stand when they come for others tomorrow.

Pride began as a riot. It became a protest. Then, in time, it grew into a celebration. Right now, with little to celebrate but our shared compassion and humanity, it’s time to reclaim Pride as protest: peaceful, unified, determined.

Pride matters as much now as ever it did. Not just for trans people, but for all who do not belong or subscribe to the views of a privileged, patriarchal, conforming, socially regressive world.

Pride is and always has been a stand against oppression. A peaceful protest for dignity, equality – and the right to exist and live as we choose.

For everyone.