Hastings Alt Pride 2026

Transcript of my speech at Hastings Alt Pride 2026 - 30th August 2026 

Happy Pride! 

It’s rad to be here and part of Hastings Alt Pride. Massive thanks to the team for making this happen and for all of you for making it out tonight.

My name is Victoria, my pronouns are she/her and I’m from Trans Pride Hastings. If you don’t know me, come say hi. Let’s be friends. 

I wanted to talk a little bit today about why I think we’re here and why this space matters. 

We're here because Pride was never meant to be comfortable.

Pride cannot be bought. It doesn't belong to corporations.
It doesn't belong to politicians. It doesn’t belong to faceless committees.

And it certainly doesn't belong to institutions that celebrate us when it suits them and but go strangely quiet when our communities are under attack the rest of the year.

Pride belongs to us. To the people who built and build it.
To the people who fought and fight for it.


And to me that's what Alt Pride is about.

It's about remembering that Pride isn't simply a celebration. It's a movement.

And movements don't survive because people put flags up once a year, or an All Welcome sticker in a window.

They survive because people show up.

They survive because ordinary people decide that something isn't good enough anymore, and then decide to do something about it.

They organise.
They campaign.
They look after each other.

They refuse to let other people decide which parts of their existence are acceptable.

And that's particularly important right now.

Because trans people are being asked to accept less and less while being told it's all perfectly reasonable. We're having endless arguments about toilets, changing rooms, sport, healthcare and who is supposedly entitled to exist in which space.

Spaces that’s are rapidly disappearing.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that are actual people who just want to get on with their lives. People who want to go to work, see their friends, go out, use a public toilet, see a doctor, and exist without every part of their lives becoming a national conversation.

The EHRC guidance around single-sex services has violently damaged that. And whatever your interpretation of the law, we shouldn't pretend that these debates don’t have immediate impact.

They affect whether people feel safe. They affect whether people are safe. 

And right now trans people feel like their own country has decided they're a problem to be managed rather than a vulnerable group to be protected.

And I think we need to be honest about something.

You can have a complicated conversation about law. You can have a complicated conversation about policy. You can disagree about how services should work.

But none of that requires us to stop seeing each other as human beings.

Human dignity isn’t complicated.

We don't have to dehumanise people to have a debate. We don't have to make somebody's identity the punchline. And we certainly don't have to accept a world where the people most affected by these decisions are the people least listened to.

Yesterday the Welsh Gender Service cancelled and paused referrals and scheduled gender-affirming surgeries for trans adults with sudden and immediate effect. This happened because the service was operating too well in the eyes of those that oppose us and now needs “review”.

And when something like that happens, when another canary dies, Pride can't just say, "That's unfortunate," and carry on dancing. It can’t issue a statement that pride is just a local issue.

We have to do something.

And I mean that literally. We need direct action. We need to campaign. We need to protest.

We need to write to politicians and challenge them when we receive the same bullshit copy pasted response. 

We need to support trans-led organisations. We need to turn up when people are being threatened or excluded. We need to make it politically impossible to ignore people who are being pushed out.

And direct action doesn't have to mean that every single person does the same thing.

Some people can organise demonstrations. Some people can lobby politicians. Some people can raise money. Some people can volunteer. Some people can offer lifts to appointments. Some people can help somebody fill out a form. Some people can simply be the person who answers the phone when a friend says, "I'm struggling."

All of those things matter immensely.

Because movements aren't built by a handful of people doing everything. They're built by lots of people doing something.

You don't have to be the loudest person in the room to make a difference. You don't have to know everything or have the perfect words. You just have to be willing to show up.

If the only time we care about marginalised people is when social media tells us to, we're not doing enough.

Solidarity has to cost us something.

Sometimes it costs time. Sometimes it costs money. Sometimes it costs social capital. Sometimes it means having an uncomfortable conversation with someone you know. Or standing up in a room where you're the only person doing it.

Sometimes it means being willing to be unpopular. Because solidarity has never been about doing what's easy.

It means being there.

For trans people. For disabled queer people. For queer people of colour. For migrants. For people living in poverty. For people whose identities don't fit neatly into the version of Pride folks find easiest to sell.

For the people who are still figuring themselves out. For the people who haven't come out. For the young person sitting somewhere tonight wondering if there's actually a place for them in this world.

There has to be.

And it means recognising that our struggles are connected.

Queer liberation has always been connected to fights against racism, poverty, ableism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny and every other system that decides some people deserve less freedom than others.

We can't say we believe in liberation and then start putting conditions on who deserves it. We can't say "all of us" and secretly mean "all of us who look like me." We can't demand freedom for ourselves while ignoring somebody else's.

Because the moment liberation becomes conditional, it stops being liberation. It’s just another hierarchy. 

That's why we also stand in solidarity with Palestinians and with civilians everywhere living through violence, displacement and injustice.

Because human rights don't stop applying when a border begins. Compassion shouldn't depend on whether someone is politically convenient.

And we should never be frightened into silence simply because somebody tells us that caring about human beings is somehow too political for Pride.

Of course it's political.

Pride has always been political. The right to exist is political when somebody is trying to take it away.

And if we're told that we should keep politics out of Pride, maybe what people really mean is that they want the celebration without the demands.

The rainbow without the protest.

They want the party without the politics that created the party in the first place.

I’m not doing that.

Pride is protest. Pride is community. Pride is refusing to leave the most vulnerable person behind just because their struggle is harder to explain.

It’s action.

It's not accepting that  "that's just the way things are."

Because most of the rights we have today exist because somebody, at some point, refused to accept that sentence. Somebody put their job, their reputation, their safety, or their freedom on the line.

And other people joined them. That's how change happens. Not because somebody in power suddenly has a change of heart. But because enough ordinary people decide that they won't accept something anymore.

And now it's our turn. 

Not because we want to recreate the past. But because we have inherited something incredibly powerful.

Movements are not museums.

We're not here simply to remember what other people did. We're here to decide what happens next.

So ask yourself:

What are you willing to do?

Who are you willing to stand beside?

What are you willing to challenge?

What are you willing to change?

Maybe it's something huge. Maybe it's something tiny.

But don't wait for somebody else to fix it. Because somebody else is always waiting for somebody else. And that's how nothing changes.

I’ll say it again, 

Our Pride cannot be bought. Our Pride cannot be censored. Our Pride cannot be divided.

And our Pride cannot be conditional.

We don't want a Pride that's acceptable. We want a Pride that's free.

A Pride where solidarity isn't a hashtag on Instagram post. But something we live.

So celebrate today. Be loud. Be joyful. Dance with your friends. Fall in love. Take too many photos. Stay out too late. Enjoy being surrounded by people who understand you. Because we fucking deserve that.

And when you go home, don't just remember the party. Remember the people. Remember the history. Remember the reason we're here.

Remember that somebody fought so that you could stand here today. And remember that there is somebody else who needs you to fight for them tomorrow.

Don't just leave here feeling inspired.

Find your people. Find your campaign. Find the thing you're willing to fight for. And then show up.

Because Pride isn't something we're given. Pride is something we make.

Together.

Free Palestine. Thank you.