News

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Transgender Day Of Visibility

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility 2019.

Levenshulme Pride celebrates all our trans friends today and reminds everyone of the amazing people that make up the trans community.

We hope to expand our trans focussed activities at Levenshulme Pride this year working in collaboration with other organisations including Sparkle.

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LGBT Teaching In Schools Event 3rd April 2019

This is a public meeting. Everyone is welcome. An opportunity to ask questions, seek clarification and find out what is really happening with LGBT teaching in schools (primary or secondary).

The event is hosted by Jeremy Hoad, Levenshulme Pride.

FORMAT

The format is an open conversation with contributions from various people and representatives to enable an informed and inclusive discussion.

PARTICIPANTS

Everyone is welcome to attend. Contributors to the discussion include:

EVENT DETAILS

DATE & TIME

Wednesday 3rd April, 19.00 start

VENUE

Levenshulme Old Library

Cromwell Gove

Levenshulme

Manchester

M19 3QE

Organised by Levenshulme Pride

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Levenshulme Pride LGBT Teaching Meeting MEN Coverage

Levenshulme Pride has been consulting with local schools, Manchester City Council councillors with responsibility for LGBT matters (Bev Craig and Chris Wills) and schools (Luthfur Rahman), Schools Out, The Proud Trust, Manchester Parents Group, the National Education Union and Carl Austin-Behan (LGBT Adviser to Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham).

We will confirm a date and time for the public meeting on LGBT teaching in schools very soon. In the meantime our initiative is receiving attention in the press as a positive way to address concerns. This is about opening up dialogue and providing clear and accurate information.

Read the Manchester Evening News article HERE

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Standing Together Against Hate

Thank you to those who came to the gathering on the Village Green this afternoon to show solidarity with our Muslim friends and neighbours against the terrorist attacks in New Zealand. It was a chance for people to reflect and talk about the horrific events.

Councillors Bernard Stone and Basat Sheikh were able to come as well as Laurence Hennigan (Levenshulme Traders Association) and John Commons (Levenshulme Community Association).

Several of us went on to attend the vigil at the Pakistani Community Centre in Longsight. Both Jeremy Hoad (on behalf of Levenshulme Community Association and Levenshulme Pride) and Lydia Meryll (Levenshulme Youth Project) said a few words there along with community representatives, councillors and Afzal Khan MP.

Levenshulme stands against all forms of hatred and violence.

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Meeting Against Hate: New Zealand Terrorist Attack

We woke this morning to hear the shocking news of a terrorist attack in New Zealand that targeted two Mosques and killed 49 people.

Levenshulme always stands against hatred. Our diverse community comes together to express its revulsion against and utter rejection of violence and hatred. Levenshulme Pride started in response to an act of hatred. We offer our sympathy and support for those dealing with an act of aggression and violence against another minority group.

Let’s stand together against islamophobia and the murder of Muslims. Let’s come together in a community gathering against hate and to mark an horrific act of terror.

We are all equal. We must all support each other when any of us is targeted with hatred.

Jeremy Hoad, Levenshulme Pride

Meet on the Village Green by The Bee With No Name on Stockport Road (opposite the station car park), 14.00, Sunday 17th March

The BBC report on the New Zealand attack is available HERE

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Stop “No Outsiders”!

We are grateful to writer Paul Magrs for letting us share this essay on the importance of LGBT visibility and equality in schools.

Stop ‘No Outsiders’!
I had a good education. I went to a Comprehensive School in the 1980s and we were taught to think for ourselves. I grew up with a healthy disrespect for received wisdom, dogma and cant. A lot of the stuff I learned at school was a waste of time, naturally. Too much learning by rote, perhaps, too much stuff about arable farming and crop rotation. I could have done with more time for reading, of course.
One thing missing from my education was any acknowledgement that LGBTQ people existed anywhere in the world. It was a huge absence in every lesson, every school assembly, every form of communication sent out by this mostly progressive, modern establishment. It was a great big Queer elephant in the room.
At the time it was illegal, of course, for a school or its teachers to say or present anything that normalized homosexuality or anything that wasn’t hetero. Any utterance suggesting that queers of any stripe were in any way normal was deemed to be ‘promoting’ homosexuality and therefore forbidden in our schools.
This was a big thing to grow up with in those years and it was all thanks to Mrs Thatcher and her government’s pernicious and weirdly puritanical commands. And it lasted all the way until the early 2000s, this strange state of affairs: thou shalt not speak of Queers in the classroom.
It meant that, when we were all taught about relationships, sex, bodies, feelings – all that stuff – it was always, only, about what mummies and daddies did to make babies. That was the kind of cursory and rudimentary attention that the breadth and complexity of human sexuality and emotions received. All of that glorious stuff was something that could be taught – clinically, quickly – during one Tuesday afternoon.
Elsewhere… in discussions of art and literature and history, queers were routinely swerved round, or their kinks were straightened out. Michelangelo daubed muscle men’s bottoms and willies over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but you could never really talked about why. Oscar Wilde went to prison but, even in the 1980s, we got to discuss the ins and outs even less than did maiden aunts reading the news back in the day.
The only time queers got mentioned via horrendous schoolyard bullying and braying. Oh, and of course, our primate PE teachers screaming at us on the playing fields, calling us puffs and nancies. Curious, the unerring gaydar of the PE teacher. While other teachers turned a blind eye to the whole topic, their primitive, lumbering track-suited fellows always seemed to know just who to shout their homophobic abuse at. It might almost make you think that the official silence about Queers encouraged and licensed the abuse and the bullying outside the classroom. Funny that, isn’t it?
And the Eighties was such a tricky time for queers anyway. The Sunday papers we got at home were horrible tabloid ones, full of salacious stuff about vicars and tarts – and also queers and AIDS. Really vicious, nasty stuff about gay men. I read it all and grew up completely terrified at the thought of growing up gay and the horrors it would entail.
And the Eighties pop charts were full of queers and what were then called ‘gender benders.’ Some in the closet, some out of the closet. Some hugely brave and successful and lauded. Other sneered at and disparaged. Many of them dying, dead, gone forever.
A complicated, terrible time in many, many ways.
I feel I must repeat this: our schools were wonderful. But they did nothing. Absolutely nothing to help us understand. They did absolutely zero about enabling LGBTQ youngsters to orient ourselves and operate in the adult world.
Nothing about safe sex, even.
Nothing about asking for help.
Nothing about fitting into the world, or finding your tribe, or finding someone to talk to, or even that such a thing was possible.
Nothing. They really did nothing.
Some of us were lucky enough to go into further education. But only a very small proportion. We got to move away from our little town and go and living in a city or a campus. There, things were a bit different. You could learn at a lot at college. There were GaySocs and Nightlines and all kinds of ways to start learning. But there were a lot of peers who had grown up in the same ignorant set of circumstances that we had. We had a lot of the internalized homophobia to deal with, because of the cockeyed way we’d been brought up and educated.
Still, there were adventures to be had and mistakes to be made.
I always felt, as a gay man who came out at twenty that I was years behind my straight friends. It’s a running joke amongst my friends that gay men in their early twenties run around like girls do in their teenage years. They’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
We can be shouty, brilliant, gorgeous, arrogant, silly, bullish, proud, angry, joyful, depressed, manic, crazy, addled, unwise, confused, messy, destructive, superficial, wild, marvelous.
Sometimes all in the space of one night.
But what queers of this particular generation are – the ones who grew up in the shadow of things like Clause 28 and all that weighty, embarrassed silence – is neglected. That’s what I think we are. We grew up and we had to figure out everything for ourselves.
By the time a LGBTQ person finds their first significant lover and has those big conversations and shares their backstory with each other… there is a lot of backstory to share. They are the product of a culture that has willfully ignored them. A culture predominantly straight, and a culture that saturates all available space with explicit heterosexual imagery everywhere you look. (Strange, all this brainwashing. You’d think the predominance of heterosexual stuff would turn us, wouldn’t you? All that aggressive promotion, eh? Surely it’s going to turn our heads and turn us straight..? Is that how this stuff works, hmm?)
So I always think: hurray. Good for you. Especially for the LGBTQ adults who grew up in those dark years when their schools didn’t teach them anything and wouldn’t listen to them. Good for you. You dragged yourself up and you got into the world and survived.
Many didn’t.
This kind of neglect can destroy lives and foster homophobia.
And there can be no going back.
We must never let bigots, homophobes and their dopey, backward ideas creep back into education. They can do terrible damage to people’s lives.
There’s nothing wrong or shameful or dirty about the L or the G or the B or the T or the Q or any of the other stripes we’ve added to the flag we’re waving. We’re equivalent and we’re equal to everyone else.
Hearing bigots spouting off about education sends shivers through me. The very thought that the government or local councils or schools might cave in and kowtow to ignorant people’s ideas about what should be taught brings back awful memories of the things we had to put up with.
I love the fact that there is a course called ‘No Outsiders’ in that Birmingham school, and it places everyone on equal footing, and that pupils will learn that human nature is more complex and wonderful than religious bigots would like them to think. It sounds such a kind and thoughtful course, too.
I think it’s important to demystify these things. We grew up in such fear of the unknown. As LGBTQ kids of the 1980s we felt we were part of the terrifying unknown ourselves.
We can’t go backwards into this ignorant stuff. We can’t indulge bigotry. People must be told: no. This is the curriculum now, in any civilized society.
I had a great education – in terms of thinking for myself, and being trained to question authority, cant, dogma and received wisdom. But there were huge things missing from it. The great big Queer elephant in the room sat there waiting. All that has been addressed and sorted out since, thank goodness and we have courses called things like ‘No Outsiders’.
No matter how shrill or fervent the bullies are, we really, really can’t go backwards.
Copyright Paul Magrs 2019

Read more from Paul Magrs on his blog HERE

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No Outsiders: LGBT teaching in schools Public Meeting

Over the last few weeks there have been demonstrations at Parkfield School in Birmingham with people objecting to any LGBT content in the curriculum. The specific programme objected to is run under the banner of “No Outsiders”. It covers a wide range of topics such as race, ethnicity, religion, identity, safety and different families a well as an understanding of LGBT people in the community. The overall theme is difference and diversity and all topics are taught in an age appropriate way.

This week a post was shared on Facebook about a meeting held at a business in Levenshulme also objecting to “LGBT being taught” in local schools. Videos and material posted showed a clear lack of understanding about what is being taught in schools as part of pupils’ personal development. The fact such a meeting has taken place with completely false allegations being made has caused considerable consternation and even fear in our community. That is not acceptable.

To counter the misinformation being spread in our community we will be organising a public meeting so people can better understand the reality of the situation and not rely on incorrect rumours being spread.

Levenshulme is a multicultural home to people with all kinds of beliefs. The mutual support, tolerance and understanding within our community must not be undermined by ignorance and groups attacking each other. That can only lead to tensions, distrust and fear.

Levenshulme Pride is the largest community Pride in Manchester. We strive to be inclusive and welcoming to all regardless of any personal characteristic. Levenshulme Pride also strives to celebrate the diversity and difference within our community. Challenging misconceptions and promoting equality and respect for all LGBT people is at the heart of what we do. We started in response to a homophobic attack and we will continue to resist attacks on the LGBT community through celebration, community cohesion, information, education and acts of inclusion and understanding.

Further information and details of the meeting will be announced as soon as arrangements are confirmed.

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Manchester Bee Proud Awards

Why not nominate a person or a group in Levenshulme for a Be Proud Award to recognise and celebrate people who make a difference in our community?

The Manchester Be Proud Awards close at midnight on Sunday 9th September.

Nominations can be made HERE

“This is our chance to celebrate the volunteers and unsung heroes who work hard to make ‘Our Manchester’ so great. We know that these groups and individuals make a big difference in our communities and help to make Manchester the thriving, friendly and buzzing city it is. Be Proud is our chance to say a big “thank you” and celebrate their work.

Do you know a group of people or a person who really stands out in your local community? Show you appreciate all they do by nominating them in this year’s Be Proud Awards.

This year there are twelve categories to choose from, and our lucky finalists and their nominator will be invited to a glittering gala dinner and award ceremony in November, held at the beautiful Midland Hotel.

Roll out the red carpet, sound the fanfare and get nominating your unsung heroes and dedicated volunteers!”