A Lesbian Strength March and Rally was held in Leeds on Saturday 14th of September. Why? An organiser explains.
Before I start my article on the Lesbian Strength March and Rally which took place on 14th September 2024 in Leeds city centre, I feel it prudent to clarify what lesbians are and what lesbians are not. This is due to a sustained attack on our descriptor by the left-wing of politics and the transgender and queer movement.
Lesbians are exclusively same-sex attracted women. We are female homosexuals. Our exclusive sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, because we are a minority group who suffer prejudice and discrimination. Unlike gay men, lesbians suffer both misogyny and homophobia.
Our exclusive sexual orientation and inability to be inclusive of men sexually is not “sexual racism”, bigotry” or “fascism”. Lesbianism is no man’s land and is the only sexual orientation that is.
That is why it has been relentlessly attacked by the transgender movement. We are now no longer allowed lesbian-only pubs, we are no longer allowed lesbian-only groups and our dating pools are now festooned with predatory men, wanting a ‘lesbian” partner, which constitutes rape culture.
We are not man haters and I haven’t met a genuine lesbian yet who has chosen to be a lesbian.
Over the years, the word “lesbian” has been prefixed by ideologies such as “political”, “trans” and bisexual in an attempt to dilute our exclusive sexual orientation and subjugate us. Our sexual orientation is not an ideology. These pre-fixations of our descriptor, lesbian, all constitute an attack on lesbianism and are mere identity politics, rather than treating us as a protected characteristic under the aforementioned Equality Act.
In 2019, a group of lesbian feminists, myself included, organised an annual march and rally for other genuine lesbians in Leeds, due to the problems that we were having to face. This was because we were increasingly made unwelcome and excluded from Pride marches and the LGBTQ+ communities and venues locally and nationally.
Why? Because we would not accept that “trans-women”, (men claiming to be “lesbians”) were legitimate, because they were in fact men, whatever they were identifying as, or claiming to be. We set up Lesbian Strength as a pushback against the dangerous homophobic misogynistic narrative and emerging associated culture of the hatred and the targeting of lesbians, to seek to protect our descriptor and our male-free culture and spaces. Holding a yearly march and rally was a feasible way of doing this.
The LGB movement was a movement that had a roots in the fight for the rights of minority sexual orientations to be legally recognised and treated fairly.
The TQ+ (transgender and queer movement) are rooted in the promotion of bodily disassociation, the labelling of young children as “transgender”, the erosion of safeguarding procedures, gender identity and self identification. They have completely different aims and the LGB was forced teamed to the TQ+. Lesbian lives changed forever, for the worse.
A man who considered or declared that he was a “woman” or a “lesbian”, suddenly had rights under the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and all lesbian spaces, and our dating pools were slowly but surely colonised and dominated by heterosexual man with a sexual fetish for “lesbians”.
Even the famous Todmorden Women’s Disco which had been successfully running for 30 years fell to the pressure of these men and was colonised. Lesbians were banned for complaining about it and I’m proud to say that I am one of those lesbians that was banned.
So with our history and some context outlined, let’s concentrate on the Lesbian Strength 2024 event. The event was attended by around 100 Lesbians from all over the UK and Ireland. Lesbians’ ages ranged from 24 Years to 79 years. The atmosphere was brilliant and the march through Leeds city centre went really well. We were escorted by West Yorkshire Police and they made an effort to protect us, should the need to have arisen. It didn’t. We had an exceptional reception from passers-by who were clapping us on and that was really good to hear after the hatred and scapegoating that we have all been victim of over the last ten years.
I was very encouraged by the choice of the younger working-class speakers by the Lesbian Strength collective this year. These were young women that will take a fight for lesbian autonomy forward. Particular mention goes to Aja the Empress, Louise Woodward-Styles, Alison Ellis, Clean City Bird and Stella Foster. Most of these young lesbians are active on the platform X (formerly Twitter) and Alison Ellis can be seen on TikTok.
The Lesbian Strength event also received a personalised audio message from our hero Martina Navratilova! She supports Lesbian Strength and what we are accomplishing. We love her!
There was a protest to this event by Trans Rights Activists. About 40 of them protested our event from around 100 meters away, due to the Police imposing a significant “Buffer Zone” between our event and the deliberately and routinely noisy, aggressive protests. Prior to starting the rally, I walked down to the protesters to assess the risk of harm to our event and the women attending.
I also went to read the placards to see if they were overtly obscene or homophobic and also to note how many raging men (claiming to be “lesbians”) had gathered, as these men have physically attacked women and lesbians at similar events across the UK over recent years.
One homophobic placard read, “No Lesbian Strength without Trans Lesbians”. As already stated, whoever these men claim to be, trans or otherwise, they are not women and therefore cannot be lesbians. Translated, the placard said, “No lesbian events without men with fetishes for lesbians”.
After assessing the risk from this group of homophobic protesters I was handed a leaflet by a tall man in feminine attire. I took it, smiled and thanked him for it. It read,
“An event celebrating lesbianism should not be used as a veil for spreading hatred”.
This was one of the dangerous and misleading narratives I’ve already discussed and one we have sought to push back against whilst still maintaining our sexual boundaries.
I would like to show my appreciation for the hard-working and vigilant stewards for this event. They were very well trained and asked for advice when they needed it. Along with the pro-active policing, it made it safe to be at a lesbian-only gathering in 2024.
Live footage of the march taken on Saturday, the speeches and rally is available now on YouTube under Lesbian Strength 2024.
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