Workers Solidarity Movement

Around a thousand people took part in the second Dublin Transgender Pride Parade last Saturday, July 6. This is almost double the number that marched last year. Upon assembling at Parnell Square the colourful procession made it's way down O' Connell Street, through Eden Quay, Customs House Quay and Lombard Street, before arriving at it's destination of Merrion Square. It was watched by crowds of onlookers who offered encouragement and support in the form of cheering and applause.[video]

The parade participants bore flags and banners displaying slogans such as 'Trans rights are human rights', 'I'm marching for my trans friends who aren't out', and 'T.E.R.F.-free zone'. The acronym 'T.E.R.F.' refers to Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, a group who claim transgender women aren't actually women.

According to some of the parade's organizers Saturday's event was intended to bring attention to some of the forms of discrimination that transgender individuals in Ireland are forced to endure. These include having to wait for three years or longer to access hormone treatment, the absence of any surgical treatment in Ireland, and an increasing number of attacks on transgender individuals.

Thomas White, one of the organizers, said in an interview with the Irish Times that 'trangender people face challenges that gay, lesbian, and bi people don't. Being transgender goes much further against what society determines to be acceptable'.

The Dublin LGBTQ Pride website, which advertised the parade, states that 'neither sex or gender is binary. They both exist on a spectrum and we want to make that known. The societal expectations that the gender binary enforces act like a prison for all of us, not just gender non-conforming poeple, trapping us in outdated and often sexist gender roles which we are punished for breaking away from. Rigid gender roles have no place in the progressive society that we need to create if we want trans liberation'.  

Judging from the number of participants as compared to last years' parade, and from the enthusiastic support of onlookers, this years' parade was a great success.