UWE UNISON Pride Season

This year Bristol’s Pride is going Virtual from the 1st of September to the 12th.

Not only have we put together a programme of events for Pride we also wanted to share some of our members’ first experiences of Pride.

Here is a trailer of what to expect!

View our calendar of virtual pride events here

Tamsila Tauqir – LGBT+ Officer:

My first experience of a Pride march was decades ago when I was a 16 years old ‘baby dyke’ in a hijab. I got on a train to London from my small home town without telling anyone where I was going and I was both terrified of being spotted by someone I knew and excited at finally not being the only gay. This was a Pride where I found myself surrounded not only by queer people for the first time in my life, but a sea of trade union banners and activist groups like lesbians and gays against fascism (LGAF).

A couple of decades later, one of my most recent experiences of a Pride march was being racially and Islamophobically abused by a couple of queer men who told me to “go back to where you come from” and who also threw their glasses of beer at my then wife who wears a hijab. Onlookers, either stood silently or added to the insults, it was only a passing South Asian taxi driver who offered help.

Not everything changes for the better. Pride has increasingly become a vehicle for Capitalism as it vies for the ‘Pink Pound’ and aligns itself with the police.

With the recent Black Lives Matters movement and the apparent social awakening, I sincerely hope we as queer people can find our way to making Pride a protest again for social justice.