I would like to welcome you all to the first Trans crossing in the UK.
As you may well know the 17th of May is the 'International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia and the day we remember those people who have been abused through intolerance and for no other reason than their sexuality or gender.
So this crossing comes at a time when anti-trans hate crime and abuse has increased as much as 81% and here at the Sutton LGBTQ+ we have always supported our Trans community and in 2019 set up the TranSutton Group.
We offer support advice and engage with the Trans community not only from Sutton but its neighbouring boroughs. Our hope is that this Trans crossing will hopefully pave the way for more Trans crossings around the UK which in turn would help bring inclusivity in our society at large.
We would like to thank our Ty Ashby who suggested the crossing and worked hard alongside Cllr’s Jake Short and Cllr’s Steve Cook in making this happen and look forward to continuing our work with them.
The Sutton forum will celebrate 10 years in 2022 and it operates totally by volunteers and funding from the National lottery. We have held brunches, movie nights, women’s coffee groups, a youth group, an older people’s catch-up group and marched at London Pride.
Our recent projects include the LGBT training “Pride in Practice” to be arranged for some of the Sutton GP Surgeries also working with our local St Helier Hospital on zero tolerance regarding hate crime and why the NHS Rainbow badge is so important and last year supporting our local mental Health team at Sutton Uplift to host webinars on anxiety and staying calm during the pandemic.
Rachel Simpkins x
TranSutton Project Lead
Many thanks to our Design Manager Nick, Gary and Emily from Metro Bank, Cllr Jake Short, Rachel from the James O'Riodan Medical Centre , and of course our very own Rachel for making this a special day.
London Trans Pride 2021
Saturday the 26 was Trans pride London and we went down to show our support, the sun shone for us as thousands of people got ready to march.
It was so good to see such a great diverse crowd of people with a brilliant display of support from all sides of the LGBTQ family for Trans related issues and shouting our message of "Trans rights are human rights".
