We have some voices from Pride Edinburgh and accounts of the day:

The first person to scream at us was carrying a sign about getting corporations out of Pride. This is something she and I could have chatted about because we would be in agreement. Instead there were three instances in which she started shouting ‘terfs out’ to which we replied ‘women in’. A handful of people joined her. But this is what I thought was interesting. We were surrounded by different groups from financial services cos and law firms like Burness Paull, Ageon, Kames Capital and Black Rock. I didn’t see her shout at them once.

There was a moment when one young woman gave us the finger and started shouting ‘Fuck Terfs’ when we were standing directly in front of the Parliament and waiting to join the march. She got quite a number of people to join in. Some people made a point of taking photos of us. I don’t know why. Two police officers got near this woman just to be ready if something escalated. It didn’t and the chanting died down. Several blocks into the march in a different mix of people, the same woman came over & shouted that we were making people feel uncomfortable. I didn’t see any other group – either protesters on sidelines or participants in the march – targeted and shouted at. We heard the following: ‘transwomen are women’ ‘fuck terfs’ ‘terfs out’ ‘no terfs on our turf’ a lone ‘you’re an embarrassment to homosexuality’ and a lone ‘I’m a lesbian and you don’t speak for me’. We also had someone make a point of playing a cowbell as loud as possible and within the personal space of some in our group just to annoy us.

As we were waiting to march, we waited for the anti-capitalist ‘terfs out’ person and the group that joined in the ‘fuck terfs’ chant to pass before joining in the march. We purposely followed the ‘Scouts Pride’ group because they were respectful and calm.

One person in our group did make a point to speak to a police officer prior to the march – not sure what she said to him, but she came back to us and said ‘you can never be too careful’.

We pulled out of the march near St Giles Cathedral because some of us had to leave and they were concerned that the remainder wouldn’t feel safe in a smaller number. Rather than continue, the remainder of us — sevenish people– held our banner at the sidelines of the march. As the march wound down, we started to walk against the flow of traffic towards North Bridge. We managed to catch the Lothian Bus which had been the speaking platform for the speeches earlier–this was clearly an official Pride bus. We held up our two fabric banners: ‘Lesbian Equality’ and ‘Lesbian, not Queer’. A couple of people on this official bus gave us the middle finger.

#LesbianNotQueer