by Dr Finn Mackay, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, UWE
All around the world, June and July are Pride months; here in Bristol our Pride march take place on Saturday 13th July, assemble from 10am at the bandstand side of Castle Park. Pride celebrates LGBTQ people, communities, culture and contributions, as well as continuing to call for our human rights in all areas of life.
Pride as a feminist cause
Pride is a feminist cause for many reasons, the main one being that feminism is a movement for women’s liberation and women can be lesbians, bisexual, queer, trans and gender diverse.
One of the founding Seven Demands of the British Women’s Liberation Movement was dedicated to lesbian rights. From 1971 to 1978, at annual, national conferences held around the UK, women formulated Seven Demands and built a feminist womanifesto. The sixth of these demands calls for: an end to discrimination against lesbians and for the right of all women to define their own sexuality.
The herstory of lesbian and gay liberation is intimately connected with the Women’s Liberation Movement. The Second Wave of feminism in the West emerged at the same time as other iterations of new social movements in that period – Gay Liberation, Black Power and campaigns against war and militarism.
Many of the architects of those movements had their feet in all of them, and their footsteps have left bridges between all social movements that we need to maintain into the future if we have hope of change.
Freeing ourselves from patriarchy
In 1971 the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto proudly called for women’s liberation, stating that freedom for lesbians and gay men would only be possible if everyone was freed from patriarchy.
Sexist stereotyping and the limiting binary gender system was identified as holding everyone back, the manifesto looked to new ways of building families, communities and raising children.
“The long-term goal of the London Gay Liberation Front, which inevitably brings us into fundamental conflict with the institutionalised sexism of this society, is to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression” (1971:15).
In 1977 Black Feminist, socialist and lesbian activists and scholars in the US wrote the famous Combahee River Collective Statement. An early explanation of intersectionality, the authors weaved lesbian liberation, socialist revolution and anti-racism into their political vision – “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression”.
A revolutionary movement for liberation of all society
Like lesbian and gay liberation, women’s liberation is a revolutionary movement for the liberation of all society by the removal of patriarchy as a form of social governance. LGBTQ culture and campaigns are part of imagining and building a society where sex does not equal rank, where who you date or who you build a family with does not dictate a denial of basic civil rights and protections.
All women and all minorities know only too well what these mean, thus, uniting together, at Pride and beyond, will benefit us all.
About Dr Finn Mackay:
Dr Finn Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at University of the West of England. With over twenty years of experience in feminist activism and policy, Finn Mackay is an experienced media commentator, writer and public speaker. Finn is the author of ‘Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars’ from Bloomsbury and ‘Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement’ published by Palgrave.
For more information, please visit: https://www.drfinnmackay.co.uk/
Bristol Pride
The Bristol Pride parade march takes place on Saturday 13 July. Bristol Women’s Voice will have a stand in the Community Area on the Downs.
Bristol Pride parade details: https://bristolpride.co.uk/parade/
