‘Pride is for love, for hope, and for the amazing talents people can show us if they do not have to hide themselves or any details about their lives.’
‘Romford Pride-Help us build the kind and decent society we all want to live in.‘
Mark Whiley is a campaigner with the Green Party in Squirrels Heath and Gidea Park. Today, he shares his visit to the Romford Pride event at the Mercury Mall and its importance in our society.
Drinks, snacks, and dressing a little more fancifully than usual for watching a Facebook livestream during the pandemic. Hoping that my message on how to support LGBTQIA+ colleagues at work made it into the final video package—it did. This was the reality of my last Romford Pride, an enormous logistical challenge for its organisers, led by Stephen Freeman, in 2020.
This year, the LGBTQIA+ support group Kaleidoscope worked with their young members to organise a new Pride event at the Mercury Mall in Romford. The initials of this ‘alphabet soup’ of sexuality and gender diversity stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer (some may also suggest Questioning), Intersex, and Asexual. It’s not crucial that you remember that unless your regular pub quiz night is doing a Pride round this month.
I think it’s so important to create safe, encouraging spaces for people from all walks of life to share their stories and have fun together, so I was delighted to hear of Pride’s return and grabbed some suitable attire for Pride at the Mall. Performances at the event included comedian Frank Bertoletti, who, through quips and one-liners, told a funny yet intimate story of his experience as a trans man.
What I really want to put across to Havering Daily readers, though, is this: help us build the kind and decent society we all want to live in. Where none of us fear violence or discrimination based on who we are. Where we can be our authentic selves without judgement. If that’s how you feel too, and you may also feel similarly in your lives, you are so welcome to attend.
Pride is very important to me. It is a day when my friends, who are facing all kinds of troubles just being themselves in public, can all be together and feel supported. I’d like that for everyone.
While Pride has elements of joy, elements of making serious points about the tiresome level of daily attacks on trans people in our media and by politicians, which are used to deflect from their inaction on the broken state of services we all rely on, it’s also a time of reflection.
Pride is for the funniest person I’ve ever met, my friend Ronan, who, faced with living a life freely as a gay man in Germany or returning to India to be forced into an arranged marriage, disappeared. Pride is for my former housemate, who told everyone that she’d had a motorcycle accident when actually she’d been attacked. Pride is for the trans person I know who is now living rough on the streets of Havering, and for the trans friends who fear walking out of their houses to do something as routine as going to the supermarket. Pride is for the queer people I knew from the pub in my University town who were murdered in Forbury Gardens, Reading, in June 2020.
Pride is also for love, for hope, and for the amazing talents people can show us if they do not have to hide themselves or any details about their lives.
Thank you to all of the wonderful people who support me and to the organisers of Kaleidoscope Pride for providing a platform for local LGBTQIA+ people. While nothing is confirmed, I hope to work with them to ensure that there’s a bigger follow-up event next year. Consider this your invitation!
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Confused what the plus sign stands for twice, mark uses it after LGBTQIA and gives definitions of the previous letter if onyx sign means add everything then no point having the previous definitions
And Trand has a asterisks this a abbreviation? transitioning transsexual Transracial ,trans hander, this is actual thing of writing from one hand to another
To hr ibex authentic selves based on ignoring biology seems impossible
I thought “Bi” was now called “pan”, sexual ,
as there’s more then 2 genders , and if someone it attracted to both men and Women and others, then it’s offensive to say they’re just, Bi , as Bi means two and there’s more groups they can be attracted too?