JK Rowling's friend hits back after she was REMOVED from Cardiff pride
‘We have the right to be there’: JK Rowling’s feminist activist friend hits back after she and other lesbians were REMOVED from Cardiff gay pride parade due to ‘confrontation’ with trans groups
- Police removed lesbians who crashed Cardiff pride parade after a ‘confrontation’
- An officer told anti-trans lesbian activist group Get The L Out UK to step aside
- Clip showed a lesbian and a transgender woman shouting at each other in a road
- Activist Angela Wild has now accused LGBT of ‘working against lesbians’
- She insists ‘we have the right to express ourselves’ after she was removed
A feminist activist friend of JK Rowling has hit out at a decision to remove her and other gender-critical lesbians from a gay pride march in Cardiff due to a ‘confrontation’ with transgender marchers.
Angela Wild, from the activist group Get The L Out which ‘stands against transgenderism’, has insisted that ‘we have the right to be there and we have the right to express ourselves’.
It comes after footage emerged of a police officer asking members of the group to leave the march on Saturday.
She and other gender-critical activists, including another of Ms Rowling’s friends Lianne Timmerman, initially blocked the march for ‘about three minutes’, displaying banners reading ‘transactivism erases lesbians’ and ‘lesbians don’t like penises’.
The march then resumed, before further footage showed two rival marchers shouting at each other on St Mary Street.
Police subsequently intervened and threatened the removal of the gender-critical group from the march.
But speaking to GB News last night, Ms Wild accused the LGBT community of ‘working against lesbians’ and described the ‘myth that the LGBT is this great family’.
She said police had asked the group to move to the back of the march, but added that this is ‘a very dangerous place for us’.
The activist said: ‘We started by walking in front of the parade with our banners to be visible to the marchers and also to the people in the crowd. We stopped the parade effectively for about three minutes.
Activist Angela Wild (right) has accused the LGBT community of ‘working against lesbians’
Ms Wild is a friend of Harry Potter JK Rowling (right), who has been repeatedly targeted by trolls over her views
Ms Rowling recently hosted a lunch with some of the country’s most prominent feminists and women’s activists, including Ms Wild, for a self-confessed boozy lunch in April
‘The police then came and asked us to move, we said we have the right to be here, then they asked us to move to the back of the march.
‘From experience, we know that if we move to the back of the march, it is a very dangerous place for us, so we maintained that we wanted to stay at the front where we are safest.
‘We marched for about ten minutes, then became surrounded by both the police and transactivists who were becoming more and more hostile towards us.
‘The police then said we were obstructing the march and they are going to remove us. They threatened some of us with forceable removal, they threatened some of us with arrest.’
She continued: ‘We are there, we stand our ground, we have the right to be there, we have the right to express ourselves and in a pride march it should be the place where lesbians can celebrate our same-sex attraction.
‘That is what most people understand a pride march to be about.’
Organisers of the event, Pride Cymru, have since claimed the lesbian group had ‘interrupted’ the march, and were not officially registered to attend.
The police officer could be heard saying to the women they are ‘causing confrontation between different groups of people’.
He said: ‘At the moment, your march, this group of people is causing confrontation between different groups of people.’
Women are then heard replying ‘we’re lesbians, it’s Cardiff pride’.
The police officer replies, saying ‘whatever you are… at the moment, is causing confrontation’.
Setting out the aims of the group’s participation in the march, Ms Wild said they wanted to talk specifically about how ‘we do not want to have relationships with men who identify as women’.
Ms Wild added that it was ‘not the case’ that she is hateful towards transpeople.
She added: ‘If some of these men want to identify or call themselves women, that is on them. If they think that makes them women, that is fine.
‘We don’t have to believe that and we don’t have to agree and we don’t have to be coerced into having relationships with people we don’t want to. People can believe whatever they like.
‘Equally, we can believe whatever we like. Nobody should be forced to embrace an ideology to make somebody else comfortable.’
In the clip, the police officer can be heard saying to the women that their group is ‘causing confrontation between different groups of people’
The group were holding banners that said ‘transactivism erases lesbians’ and ‘lesbians don’t like penises’
Get The L Out UK, a lesbian activist group that ‘stands against… transgenderism’, shared footage from yesterday’s Cardiff Pride event
A police officer told one of the women: ‘To make sure you’re safe, we are going to remove you from the road’
Ms Rowling has previously lent her support to Ms Wild after she became embroiled in a free speech row when she was banned from her Twitter account for posting: ‘All men should be banned from women-only spaces – and they are’.
The Harry Potter author – who has become a leading feminist voice on social media – shared her support by retweeting a post from Ms Wild’s friend about her situation.
She also hosted some of the country’s most prominent feminists and women’s activists, including Ms Wild, for a self-confessed boozy lunch to support the ‘Respect My Sex’ campaign in April.
The author posted a series of pictures to her 14million-follower Twitter feed giving a glimpse of the incredible meeting at The River Cafe in Fulham.
Guests included Professor Kathleen Stock, who resigned from her University of Sussex job after being accused of ‘transphobia’ and Helen Joyce, who penned Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
It comes as ‘gender critical’ groups and transgender rights groups continue to clash – with LGBT+ activist charity Stonewall being dropped by the Government’s Legal Department, the Cabinet Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the BBC, Channel 4 and Ofsted.
Public bodies including the police and NHS, as well as private firms, are facing pressure over their association with Stonewall, following growing awareness and concern over its ideology.
In July, the controversial charity and lobby group faced huge criticism for a tweet claiming children as young as two can tell if they are transgender.
‘Trans ideology’ and the concept of self-ID, which promotes the belief that anyone – regardless of their sex at birth – should have the right to determine their own gender without medical intervention has sparked huge anger over male-born trans women having access to female-only spaces like changing rooms, toilets and refuges.
Vocal opponents, like Ms Rowling, 57, have been repeated targeted by trolls over their views.
Last month, it was announced that the NHS’s controversial child transgender clinic will shut its doors after a damning report found it was ‘not safe’ for children.
Instead, the gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust will be replaced by regional centres at existing children’s hospitals, which will provide more holistic care with ‘strong links to mental health services’.
The video has sparked an online row about the decision, with some people suggesting that Get The L Out UK were not registered members of the parade, and had ‘crashed’ the event
Video showed a lesbian and a transgender woman shouting at each other on St Mary Street during the LGBT+ march yesterday
‘At the moment, your march, this group of people is causing confrontation between different groups of people,’ the officer said
‘If they need protection for their own safety, then the police should march with them and protect them,’ one commenter on Twitter said about the video.
‘Lesbians. In danger. At a Pride march. And the police tell *them* to get out, instead of dealing with those who are doing the threatening. What has Pride become? What have the police become? I can hardly believe what I’m seeing,’ another person said.
Writer Andrew Doyle added: ‘The police removing lesbians from a pride parade. The pride movement no longer supports gay people.’
Activist Laurence Fox said: ‘Anyone still in any doubt that #PRIDE has anything whatsoever to do with Gay and Lesbian people? The woke virus feeds on minority groups as cover for it’s insidious, nasty and divisive political agenda. It didn’t work with Build Large Mansions. It won’t work with this either.’
Former professional tennis player Martina Navratilova shared the video, adding: ‘This shows just how ridiculous and sideways things are going in our LGBT community. Erasing the L…Wow…misogyny is alive and well.’
The video has sparked an online row about the decision, as Get The L Out UK was not a registered member of the parade, and had ‘crashed’ the event
Author Julie Bindel added: ‘When I came out as a lesbian in the 1970s it was pretty tough. The misogyny was off the scale, and men would shout at us about how all we needed was a good f**k. Police were rarely sympathetic when we were victims of bigotry and abuse. Thank god those days are over. Oh, wait….’
However another questioned: ‘If you want to ‘get the L out’ why go to an LGBT event?’
Welsh actor and LGBT+ activist Scott McGlynn said he is sad the confrontation happened at yesterday’s event
‘Most women and lesbians cheered when you were moved on. You don’t represent their majority view. You attended solely as an anti-trans group,’ a third person said.
Welsh actor and LGBT+ activist Scott McGlynn celebrated Pride yesterday. He said: ‘I feel disappointed this has happened it’s a day we all come together as a LGBTQ+ community celebrating Pride together as a family.
‘All the organisers and volunteers at Pride Cymru has worked very hard for months putting this incredible celebration together for all of us and it sad this has happened its no place for hate, we stand together with and within the LGBTQ+ community.’
‘Removing homophobes and transphobes from Pride is good,’ someone else added. ‘Even if they themselves are LGBT Homophobes and transphobes are not welcome at Pride as it is a protest against that very thing’.
‘They were removed because they went there specifically to spread hate about trans people,’ a further commenter said. ‘But of course you are using this to make it seem like the opposite, in order to further hurt the trans community. Because you’re not a good person.’
Chair of Pride Cymru, Gian Molinu, confirmed that Get The L Out UK interrupted the march
Another added: ‘They were removed because they stood in the road and stopped the pride parade from continuing, not because they were lesbians. It was because they were disrupting the event.’
Chair of Pride Cymru, Gian Molinu, said: ‘Today’s Pride Cymru parade was all about celebration and LGBTQ+ rights.
‘Despite a small group of people interrupting the march, they were drowned out by shouts of solidarity and the community and spectators. There is no place for hate at Pride.
‘And as our parade said today loudly and clearly, “trans rights are human rights”.’
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: ‘We worked closely with the local authority and Pride Cymru to facilitate a march through Cardiff City Centre on Saturday, 27 August.
‘During the event, officers were required to engage with a small protest group who had assembled themselves on the route to block the procession.
‘To ensure no further disruption to the event, officers asked the group to move to an alternative location nearby which they agreed to do.
‘Officers explained why they needed to move, provided guidance about protesting lawfully and offered to facilitate a lawful protest.
‘The group was cooperative and left the area shortly after.
‘Contrary to some social media reports, nobody was arrested or forcibly moved by officers.’
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