The protest outside the V&A last night was utterly awesome. Although there was a protest against us, they were small in number: someone said “look at Julie’s 12 disciples over there, it’s pathetic!” and I pointed out that twelve was a little on the generous side, whilst we had 30 people and our numbers were growing - eventually we had about 150 on “our side”. Even the protestor with the “Bindel for Pope!” placard decamped to our side in the end, bringing their placard with them, and shortly after that the LFN gave up and went home.

Before the protest began, though, I walked past their little group and spotting one of them point at me, listened to what they were saying, and heard “hey, look, she’s got good tits for a trans person!”
As someone else said later, if you didn’t know any better you’d think I was all woman… I now have a t-shirt on the way that says “Julie Bindel’s Fanclub Likes My Tits”. Win!

There was a good sized army of us by the time the guests started arriving including several people outside the barricades handing guests flyers about the idiocy of Julie Bindel’s nomination and those inside the barricades were all singing and shouting - “L, G, B - where’s the T?” and Stonewall? Hypocrites!” seemed the most popular chant, along with a song penned by Roz Kaveney:

Stonewall Was A Riot
(sung to the tune of My Old Man’s a Dustman - sort of.)

Stonewall was a riot,
drag queens and butch dykes,
not the sort of demo
Ben Summerskill likes!

Stonewall threw dustbins,
hurled bricks at the law,
Summerskill throws parties
and don’t hurl bricks no more!

Stonewall rioters went to jail
fighting for their rights!
Summerskill serves cocktails
and goes to gala nights!

That was real Stonewall,
now it’s just a name.
Summerskill leaves transfolk out
and never feels the shame!

We are the trans nation,
we won’t take crap no more!
Summerskill can hear us
so shout outside his door!

There were placards reading all manner of things from SOME PEOPLE ARE TRANS, GET OVER IT!, TRANS PEOPLE FOUGHT AT STONEWALL TOO! and my personal favourite, suggested by friend-of-tofu, CUP OF T, JULIE?, which I can be seen holding in the photo above (with thanks to onequeerone).

Sadly, Vaux Von told us on the facebook group that inside the venue, Ben Summerskill was telling guests that the police had sent us packing, which actually, couldn’t be further from the truth. Two policemen thanked me (and I them) as I left at around 8pm, too cold to stick around, for a peaceful protest and there are even photos around of the police talking to us in a friendly manner and posing for the camera with us.

A journalist who came up telling us off for being inappropriate was swiftly told off by several of us - they asked “why don’t you just talk to them?” - we pointed out that plenty of people have asked them to be more inclusive plenty of times, pointing out that since they use up a large chunk of LGBT funding in the UK, they should do something with it other than throw awards ceremonies and put up posters for a few days about the rights of one part of the LGBT spectrum - but Stonewall consistently ignore the voices of the people they are supposed to be representing, and so there we were, transfolk and allies alike. Maybe now, they’ll start paying attention.