TRANS PRIDE IN IRELAND By Mx. Adam Khan (xe/they)
on 9th July 2022. This was followed by Trans Pride Limerick establishing and organising its first event on 25th November 2024. To complement the individual Trans Pride organisations the Trans Pride Collective was established in 2023, with the help of the Museum of Transology , during the first Trans Pride Assembly. The Assembly happened on the 11th and 12th of February 2023 at the Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre and the Bishopsgate Institute in London. 13 Trans Prides were represented, including Dublin and Northern Ireland. Work started on increasing communication, skill sharing, and strategizing. The second Trans Pride Assembly took place on 5th April 2025 at the Lethaby Gallery in London, which hosted the Museum of Transology’s 10th Anniversary exhibition, Transcestry. With increased membership, Trans Pride organisers at the second assembly reflected on heritage values within the movement and also co- created a vision for navigating the future as a movement. The Trans Pride Collective is also planning an Irish Trans Pride Assembly to skill share and strategize for the future, ensuring that trans communities across Ireland have spaces to make their voices heard. Other organisations have also created Trans Pride campaigns, such as FORT running a media campaign throughout 2023 where No Pride Without Trans Pride poster adverts were displayed on billboards across the UK. The Trans Pride Collective also launched a pioneering Trans Pride Journal in 2025, also entitled NO PRIDE WITHOUT TRANS PRIDE which documents the 25 Trans Pride organisations active across the UK and Ireland as of February 2025.
So, why have we seen a recent increase in organising in the name of Trans Pride? Multiple factors have galvanised the Trans Pride movement in Ireland and Northern Ireland. These include being subjected to neoliberal capitalist frameworks bolstered by post-2008 austerity measures the government implemented, which saw significant demonstrations across Ireland in the years since. Similar austerity measures impacted Northern Ireland from 2010 onwards. This hostile economic climate deepened the need for grassroots, community-based support for many communities, including the trans community. Simultaneously, since the mid-2010s, there has been increasing anti-trans rhetoric in the media, and especially in Northern Ireland, the government. Recent developments have included an indefinite ban on the prescription of puberty blockers for trans youth in Northern Ireland. Online, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) have been using their platforms to stoke these culture wars. These increasing attacks on the community heavily contributed to Trans+ Pride Cork’s establishment. These challenges are concurrent with increasing barriers to accessing gender-affirming healthcare. There are only two Gender Identity Clinics in Ireland, the National Gender Service in Dublin and the Brackenburn Clinic in Belfast. Waiting lists for first appointments have been increasing over the years, with current waiting times for people in Northern Ireland being approximately 7 years and current waiting times in Ireland being approximately 10 years. This further marginalises many in the community, especially those without access to the financial means to fund gender- affirming healthcare privately. Often these processes mean that trans people have to conform to the gender binary, as no laws in Ireland or Northern Ireland currently recognise non-binary genders. These barriers to accessing gender-affirming healthcare, coupled with the increased number of incidents of transphobic violence in Ireland, contributed to the establishment of Trans Pride Limerick. Combined with the isolation felt during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic, these factors created introspection in the trans community and increased mutual aid provision from within.
Divergence from the commercialisation of mainstream Pride events has also led to a focus on grassroots and intersectional organising, bringing the broader LGBTQIA+ movement back to its roots, such as seen in Gay Liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, and Lesbian Liberation in the 1980s. In Ireland, the Gender Recognition Act 2015 enables legal gender changes without medical intervention or assessment, and this is legally possible through self-determination for anyone over 18. Similarly, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 provides similar provisions in Northern Ireland. However, this is stricter as self-determination isn’t legal, and medical assessment is legally mandatory. Despite legal discrimination protections, there have been increasing levels of hate crimes and harassment against trans people across Ireland. This is one of the main factors in why Trans & Intersex Pride Dublin was established, as the organisers advocate for an informed consent model of healthcare access, which would empower trans people to make decisions about their transition themselves. Similar trends have been seen in the fight for same-sex marriage. In the Republic it was legalised in 2015, however, in Northern Ireland, it wasn’t legalised until 2020, six years after legalisation in England, Wales, and Scotland which legalised same-sex marriage in 2014. Trans Pride Northern Ireland was established in 2018 to harness the activism within the region during the Love Equality equal marriage campaign. Despite all of these challenges facing the trans community, Trans Prides organise with their local community in mind. They organise annual events as well as other events throughout the year to cater to the needs of the local community. These have included protests, vigils, nature walks, trans-inclusive sports events, and collaborations with other local organisations. Thus, we can expect to see even more trans prides establish and organise across more locations in ireland for the years to come, as many of these challenges are foreseen to endure for many years.
just one to dozens of core organisers, and each one holds unique events and campaigns, based on what matters to their local communities. Although often perceived as a new phenomenon, the roots of the Trans Pride movement predate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York. These roots go back to the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco and the 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Riot in Los Angeles. Both then and in the years since, the fight for trans rights has been inseparable from LGBTQIA+ rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights. Some of the first specific trans rights protests happened much later. These include the 2004 Trans March in San
Francisco, United States, and the 2009 Trans March in Toronto, Canada.
The first Trans Pride established in Europe was Trans Pride Brighton, which organised its first event on 27th July 2013. A few years later, the first two Trans Prides in Ireland were established. These were Trans Pride Northern Ireland , who organised their first event in Belfast on 2nd June 2018; and Trans Pride Dublin, who organised their first event on 28th July 2018. In 2020, Trans Pride Dublin rebranded to become Trans & Intersex Pride Dublin, becoming more inclusive and representative of the local community. A few years later, Trans+ Pride Cork established and organised its first event
There are currently 4 Trans Pride organisations across Ireland, expanding to almost 30 if we include England, Wales, and Scotland. There are even more all over the world. Despite having similar goals of fighting the interlocking forms of oppression, each Trans Pride organisation is unique and is organised differently. Their teams vary in number, ranging from
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