LGBTQ

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual rights

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Sarah Jane Baker cleared. Now free her!

Sarah Jane Baker was cleared in court on 31 August of “intentionally encouraging the commission of an offence”. However, she is still suffering utterly disproportionate punishment, being held in Wandsworth men’s prison, because parole authorities have revoked her “licence”. It could be months before she even gets a hearing. The campaign to free her continues. There were a number of protests calling for her release across the country on the day of the court hearing. She was arrested on 12 July after a speech at London Trans Pride (4 July) in which she said, “if you see a Terf, punch them in the...

Free Sarah and change the left

Ryan ( Solidarity 682 ) is right to advocate that “Sarah Jane Baker should be released immediately”. Claureen also poses some good and important questions. He then ignores existing answers to these questions; instead throwing out a handful of straw men. In the article that Claureen replied to, and in both call-outs at Workers’ Liberty events for the campaign for Sarah’s release, the operative part of the speech was criticised. What she said in it — “if you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face” — was wrong. More on that below. Claureen requests that “[i]f we say parole was really revoked...

The New Section 28

The government is due to release guidance for schools around trans pupils, but it has been repeatedly delayed due to concerns it will not comply with the 2010 Equalities Act. What was initially meant to be advice for single-sex schools regarding the legality of refusing to admit trans pupils, now looks to be much wider ranging and incredibly alarming for trans youth and school staff. The guidance is likely to compel schools to inform parents if a child discloses that they are trans or questioning their gender; to establish the need for parental consent for a child to socially transition or...

If the Barbies aren't scissoring, is it even Barbieland?

• Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023) — BEWARE: SPOILERS! I went to see Barbie wearing pink. My friends were wearing pink. When we arrived at Peckhamplex in South London, almost everyone else was wearing pink. People walking past the cinema to do something else were wearing pink. Not since 'The Queue' has London given itself over to such an all-consuming cultural event. Variety reports that the marketing budget allocated to Barbie was a staggering $150 million — $5 millionmore than the film's production costs. Indeed, much of the film’s success can be put down to the fact that before it hit...

Sheffield's First Radical Pride

On 22 July over 300 people descended on Barkers Pool in Sheffield for the city ’s first ever Radical Pride. The organisers, Sheffield Radical Pride, are a group of grassroots activists from across the city. Their mission is to reclaim Pride and make it an anticapitalist protest again, without the presence of corporate pinkwashing or the police. The march set off, headed by blocs made up of QTIPOC (Queer, Trans, Intersex, Black and People of Colour), sex workers, migrants and refugees, as well as a bicycle bloc whose role was to block off streets and stop cars whilst the march progressed...

25,000 March for Trans Pride

Workers ’ Liberty activists joined tens of thousands of protesters marching in support of trans rights at this year's London Trans Pride on 8 July. The protest was an emphatic rejection of the Tories’ transphobic culture war and a vibrant show of solidarity with the UK trans community. At its peak, the demonstration was so large that organisers reportedly altered the route to accommodate the brightly dressed, politically-charged crowds which filled the streets as they marched from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park Corner. Placard highlights included “no borders, no binaries, no Tories” and (in...

Queer life in the Soviet Union

In May 1934, Joseph Stalin received a letter from a Scottish communist called Harry Whyte. Whyte was a journalist, working for the USSR ’s English-language paper in Moscow. He was also a gay man whose boyfriend had recently gone missing. His letter opened with a question, whose answer would shape the future of the Soviet gay community: “can a homosexual be considered a worthy member of the Communist Party?” Whyte’s decision to move to the Soviet Union in 1932 had partly been an attempt to escape Scotland’s anti-sodomy laws. The world’s first socialist state had removed all homophobic laws...

Harry Whyte letter to Stalin on the "criminal liability of sodomy"

The following letter was written to Joseph Stalin by Scottish communist Harry Whyte, in May 1934. Whyte lived in Moscow, and at the time of writing he led the editorial board of the English-language newspaper Moscow Daily News . Whyte was a gay man, and shortly before this letter a man he had been seeing for a while had gone missing. Whyte was born to a working-class family in Edinburgh, in 1907. He left school at 16 to pursue a career in journalism, and in 1927, in the aftermath of the general strike, he joined the Independent Labour Party. In 1931, he left the ILP for the Communist Party of...

Free Sarah Jane Baker!

Sarah Jane Baker is now on a hunger and liquid strike in Wandsworth prison. As well as being charged under the Public Order Act 1986 (for violent language, for which she has publicly apologised, in a speech at Trans Pride), Sarah has had her parole revoked from a previous life sentence from crimes over 30 years ago, and faces an utterly disproportionate risk of indefinite jail time. Her first demand is to be moved to a female jail. She had been housed on the vulnerable prisoners’ wing with male sex offenders. They were inappropriately touching her, making transphobic and intrusive comments to...

A letter to some comrades

If we think Sarah Jane Baker should be released immediately, as I do, we say and campaign for that. We are not in solidarity with the speech that got her parole revoked or on her convictions. If we say parole was really revoked for reasons other than those stated, say what they were. But you seem to make little of the punch-in-the-face speech. You describe it excusingly. But I understand that the speech had a very large circulation on video. Why do you do that? Surely from someone with her convictions the speech can’t be taken as meaningless, to be indulged. We may think and say the recall is...

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