To mark the start of Pride Month, activist and RSA LGBTQIA+ Network Lead Saba Ali reflects on the fight against conversion practices, the importance of UK Black Pride, and why true feminism must defend trans lives.
As someone who advises on hate crime, VAWG (violence against women and girls), and LGBT+ inclusion, I’ve come to understand that liberation isn’t linear but layered. The work I do sits at the intersections of race, gender, culture and queerness. And at those intersections, the same message keeps echoing that conformity is being enforced, and difference is being punished.
Take conversion practices. Often reduced to an LGBT+ issue with a focus on trans inclusion, which it should be, but these are a form of ideological violence that extends far beyond gender or sexuality. Rooted in fear of deviation, they target anyone who challenges normative boundaries, whether it is neurodivergent people, those with disabilities, trauma survivors, women who defy patriarchal expectations, and those from non-Western spiritual traditions.
At its heart, conversion “therapy or torture” is a method of erasure dressed up as concern. Ending it is not a niche demand, it’s a matter of justice. A humanity issue. A liberation call for anyone living at the edges of what society deems acceptable.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of UK Black Pride (UKBP), an organisation I’m deeply proud to be a part of, a chosen family. On Sunday, 10 August, we gather not just to celebrate the 20th anniversary of UK Black Pride, but to resist. UKBP is a sanctuary and a stand, a space carved out for Black and POC queer people in a world that too often overlooks us.
As corporate DEI budgets shrink, our survival now depends more on community support. Funding UKBP means funding safety, joy and visibility. It means amplifying voices that are too often left out of the mainstream Pride narrative.
Finally, I want to speak clearly as a woman with lived experience of gendered violence. The threat to women does not come from trans women. It comes from patriarchal power, from men, often familiar, often protected, who weaponise silence and societal blind spots.
Pride was never meant to be polite. It was born in defiance, dressed in glitter, and armed with truth.
To scapegoat trans women is not just wrong, it is dangerous. It derails our shared struggle and leaves the roots of male violence untouched. Feminism that does not defend trans lives is not feminism at all, it’s fear masquerading as principle.
So this Pride, let us remember celebration without resistance is hollow. And protest without joy cannot sustain us. Pride was never meant to be polite. It was born in defiance, dressed in glitter, and armed with truth. We march not because we are free, but because we believe one day, we all will be.
Saba Ali is a public speaker and activist specialising in intersectionality, cultural abuse and the lived realities of marginalised communities. She is the RSA LGBTQIA+ Network Lead, Trustee for Blossom LGBT+, Safety & Met Liaison Manager at UK Black Pride, and Interim Chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition.
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