Last weekend was Birmingham Pride , I’m sure that many of you were there and had an incredible time. This year the parade was back on properly after its change last year, and Coalition had another ‘Pride is a Protest’ walking float which was a great success with loads of people marching from various different universities around the Midlands- UoB, Aston, Birmingham City, Derby, Coventry, Warwick and Newman (sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone). This year was my first Birmingham Pride, and I’ve never been to a Pride so big before, and I had a lot of fun. But I find it questionable whether fun should be the main aim of Pride. If you look in the a variety of gay magazines, Pride is much more often called such things as ‘pink party time’ than ‘pink politics time’. In an entire 13 page ‘Pride Guide’ there is not one mention of the politics behind the party, the main need for us to have Pride at all.

Our Fight For the Right to Party banner

As we have gained more rights as a community, our freedom has undoubtedly, by many, come to be taken for granted. Surely Pride is a perfect time for the community to come together, and as well as being glad for how far we have come, thinking about and shouting about when we don’t have and what so many others around the world also lack. I am not claiming that I am some kind of martyr for the cause, but simply someone who wants to see change, and, next year, will do her back to try and see it come to fruition.

The theme for this year was, it has to be said, a significant improvement on last year’s ‘Pink and Green’. ‘Equality through the Decades’ could have been historical, informative, political, and radical. It could have been so much more, but all it really was manifested itself as were a few loosely themed floats in the parade. After all, why does Pride need to have a theme, per-se? Surely gay rights are the theme of pride, and whether or not they have been achieved. When every LGBTQ person in the world has the same rights as every straight person, then we can have themes that celebrate this change.

The men hired by Seflridges last year to participate in London Pride

Pride has become a corporate sponsored, capitalist, money making opportunity. This cannot be doubted. A big party is, of course, a great deal of fun, but for a community (for that is what we are) who used to pride itself on its incredible voice, its power to change society, we have lost our drive. It would of course take immense amounts of effort, of time, to change pride even partially back to the way it was, but why do so many doubt the possibility? Thirty years ago, Harvey Milk stood up at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade and inspired a message of hope to the tens of thousands of people there. This year, Lady Gaga stood up and did exactly the same thing (Although it has to be said, her public speaking doesn’t really compare), to over 1.2 million listeners. If we really did had reached equality and could warrant a completely commercialised Pride, then this wouldn’t even have been necessary, and despite her popularity, so many people would not have turned out, they would have cared more about the alcohol than the atrocities.

Maybe Gaga is a little high to aim for Birmingham Pride, given that this year we bagged The Cheeky Girls, but why not, in the future, do what we do best? Fight back, protest, and have a bloody good time while we’re at it. Just give it a decade and I can but hope.

Ticket prices are the same at £6.00 in person and £6.00 plus a 40p booking fee online. There is a DEADLINE for buying your tickets which is by the 5th March. After this date, tickets will still be on sale, but we cannot guarantee your t-shirt or travel. So buy now so that you get the full HIG Experience…

As before, we will be starting the night in Joes Bar in the University of Birmingham at 6.45pm. We will travel by coach to Hurst St to two awesome bars where we have free shots and Happy Hour. We will then move to Chic, where drinks will be just a pound, to party into the early hours. Profits from the night will go towards funding campaigns against discrimination to LGBTQ students. All are welcome to the event, remember: You don’t have to be a bender to come on one…

*To buy*
- For University of Birmingham Students, Tickets will be on sale in Joes Monday – Friday between 12-2pm except on Wednesdays where they will be sold in Coffee Afternoons. They are also sold at all our events.

- For Warwick Students, you need to get in contact with Katie. k.mann@warwick.ac.uk

- For Coventry Students, speak to Tom Fisher. lcars47a@hotmail.co.uk
-ONLINE Email your name, email address and the number of tickets you require to CRO783@BHAM.AC.UK

If you have already purchased your ticket, then don’t worry. Your ticket is still valid for the new date. But please contact cro783@bham.ac.uk to confirm that you can still attend. If you are unable to attend then email (same address) and we will organise your refund.

Apologies again for the change of date. But it looks to be better than we had ever planned for. Be there or be heteronormative.
We’ll see you very soon,
Emma Xx
(On Behalf of the UoB LGBTQ Association)

Many of you may have noticed a facebook campaign recently more relevant than usual to the LGBTQ. ‘Un-Ban Dominic Scaia’ was a campaign set up because he uploaded photos onto facebook of his recent top surgery and was banned for this.

Obviously, it is not unfair for facebook to remove photographs that are considered pornography, i.e. topless women. However, they do not go around taking photos on men’s chests off the internet and banning those members; we live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable for men to be topless, which is fair enough. As a site used every day by millions of people, facebook have a right to respect people’s differences, to respect their decisions and their feelings, and not to marginalise the minorities they have within their users. Many of the people using the site, who are trans, will have had similar surgeries, and to feel as if by uploading photos afterwards they are doing something wrong, will only serve to break down self esteem and marginalise another minority even more.

What, I feel, makes it even worse, is that when his account was disabled, Dominic contacted facebook to ask why, and if it was to do with the post-op pictures, to complain. No one got back to him. So even if there had been other reasons that he had been blocked from facebook, he wouldn’t have known them, and would have been kept in the dark until the time came when he was finally unblocked. And let’s face it, the images that can so easily be stumbled upon on facebook, and especially upon the internet in general, are significantly worse than anyone, bigoted as they may be, can describe these as.

Thankfully, Dominic’s account has now been unblocked, he has been apologized to about the incident, and facebook have changed their policy regarding allowing post-op chest photographs. But that does not stop the fact that it happened in the first place. Many people think of social networking sites as a platform for speech, sharing of lives. If this was allowed to happen once, what is to say that it will not happen again, to another group, for another, equally unjustified reason? Maybe not just this policy, but many others used by facebook, need to be examined to see just how fair and justified they really are.

I have met many people recently who have been of the opinion that as a community we have nothing left to fight for. In this country we have legal equality and civil partnerships and, usually, the ability to be who we are all of the time. But it is small incidents like this, as well as large, shocking incidents such as the beating and murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square last year, that should help to push home to people who say this, that even in a Western, democratic society, yes, there is still a lot of injustice to be fought.

The campaign group can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=240719433565&ref=ts

An article including the photo which got him banned can be found here: http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Facebook_reevaluates_decision_to_censor_trans_mans_postop_chest_pics-8127.aspx