President’s Message for pride month 2025

Dear IUTA members,

Falling in June, Pride month coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that instigated a unified queer liberation movement and the first pride march on the 28th of June 1970. 

In 2023, I had the privilege of visiting the Stonewall Inn and the surrounding Greenwich Village neighbourhood. To stand where the riots took place and walk the streets that hosted the first pride march was a deeply moving experience. To feel connected to such pure expressions of queer rage and defiance in the face of an all-encompassing oppressive force was inspiring to behold. Though who actually started the riots is somewhat disputed, the pivotal role Black trans women, like Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, played is quite clear.

But too often now, corporations, institutions and companies that claim to be in support of Pride disregard its radical roots and instead view the movement as an easy means of extracting a little extra profit. Despite having been a major sponsor of Pride events in the UK, Barclays was one of the first companies to succumb to the EHRC’s non-statutory interim guidance and impose trans-exclusionary bathroom policies on its staff and customers. 

Universities across the UK are far from innocent on this matter too. If you are a student, I am sure that you have seen your university claim that it is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment for its trans and non-binary staff and students and yet the majority also seem committed to following the EHRC’s statutory guidance which, if it is anything akin to the interim guidance, promises swathes of archaic setbacks to the trans community’s ability to fully participate in public life. 

If our universities are truly committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment to their trans and non-binary students, they would reject the guidance. Instead we are presented with milktoast ‘reassurances’ that are remarkably devoid of any tangible reassurance. 

History does not look kindly upon the establishments that enforced racial segregation even if they were ‘just following the law’ and I suspect that, in years to come, institutions will be compelled to apologise for their complicity in this latest transgender segregation. 

The key point here is that we cannot rely on the support of institutions like universities that will drop us the moment our existence poses a threat to their profit margins. It is therefore pointless to capitulate to their cisheteronormative gaze.

Pride 2025 should be our most obnoxious yet. 

Now is the time to be truly loud, truly proud and unapologetically queer in all of its most weird and wonderful forms. Now is the time to prove to the forces trying to erase us that we will not disappear; we will not conform and we will not ever be silenced. 

As the acting president of the Inter-University Trans Association, I promise to you that I will do my small part in this wider movement to advance trans rights in UK universities. All I ask from you is to support these efforts in any way you can but most importantly, provided it is safe for you to do so, be unashamedly; unequivocally yourself. 

Happy Pride!

Yours most sincerely,

Evie Batchelor (she/her)

Founder and acting president of the IUTA