A group of anti-trans protesters who disrupted the London Pride parade over the weekend have been howled down on social media.
According to reports from , the group of around 10 women lay down at the front of the procession until they were convinced to move on by local authorities.
Labelled 'TERFs' (trans exclusionary radical feminists) by their critics, members of the group carried banners with anti-trans messages including “trans activists erase lesbians” and “a male can never be lesbian”.
PinkNews reported: "The group, organising under the Twitter hashtag '#GetTheLOut,' numbered about 10 people who were presumed not to be cleared to march in the heavily numbers-restricted London Pride... the group led the march all the way to Trafalgar Square, uninterrupted, while handing out extremely transphobic leaflets."
A by members of the the group read: "The trans movement with the complicity of ‘queer’ LGBT politics is coercing lesbians to have sex with men. We firmly condemn this visions form of anti-lesbianism disguised as protest."
It also labels the "trans movement" as "a conservative movement which reinforces sexist sex stereotypes."
LGBT+ Liberal Democrats Chair Jennie Rigg demanded an apology and resignations from London Pride organisers.
This is a betrayal of the thousands marching.
“I am appalled that transphobic protesters were allowed to lead the march and the crowd asked to cheer them on," she said.
"This is a betrayal of the thousands marching. The Pride organisers should resign and offer a full apology.”
According to , a spokesperson from London Pride responded to growing outrage with the following statement: “Every year people come to Pride for reasons that matter to the community. As we found in our recent Pride Matters report, 24 percent of people say a Pride is protest, 78 percent said it was a celebration. We are pleased that the parade set off as planned and that hundreds of thousands of Londoners are demonstrating that Pride still matters.”
The statement continued: “We do not condone their approach and message and hope the actions of a very small number people does not overshadow the messages of the 30,000 people marching today.”
