They cheered a speech by Sarah-Jane Baker, a violent ex-convict who reportedly ate his own testicles. They professed love while holding placards calling for violence against TERFs. Legions of men proudly exposed their hormonally swollen chests, while bearded women bound theirs down to reveal their ‘authentic’ selves.

True to the inverted logic of transgenderism, the organisers celebrated these shameful scenes as a triumph. Lewis G Burton, a founding member of London Trans+ Pride, was jubilant. He told ITV: ‘Every single person who marched today is proof that we are not going anywhere, that our joy is louder than their hate, and that London Trans+ Pride will keep fighting, keep loving and keep growing until every trans person is safe, seen and free.’

That inversion of victim and oppressor is now echoed by Britain’s political class. London mayor Sadiq Khan stopped short of squeezing into a frock himself, but he echoed the sentiment. To ‘every trans Londoner’, he offered this syrupy message:

‘You should be free to live as yourself, without fear or prejudice. You are loved. You are wanted. You belong here.’

Let them march by all means, but no sane society should celebrate this pantomime on its streets. For years, trans activists preferred to wield power behind closed doors, lobbying institutions while avoiding public scrutiny. Now journalists are reporting what they say and do, and the law is beginning to reassert the sex-based rights they sought to erase. The activists have mistaken equality before the law and reasonable pushback from opponents for oppression.

Michael Kerr, founder of Detransition Pathway UK and a gay man who identified as trans for seven years, described the march as ‘heartbreaking’. He said: ‘It was littered with fetishistic, porn-filled males pretending to be women, alongside multiple trans-identified females with physical disabilities that can be attributed to taking cross-sex hormones.’

The footage bears him out. One marcher smiled while holding a placard reading: ’90 per cent of pigs in the UK are gassed to death, but TERFs still exist.’ Another carried an image of JK Rowling and Queen Camilla beneath the slogan ‘Off with their heads’. Most disturbing of all was a marcher, fake blood dribbling from his mouth, carrying a sign reading ‘Vore all transphobes’. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘vore’ is a pornography genre centred on the sexual fantasy of consuming another person.

As Kerr put it:

‘The signs on display were horrific, vile and dangerous. Some glorified cannibalism directed at women who stand up for their rights in law. To allow the glorification of this kind of behaviour in public is reprehensible and deplorable in the society in which we all live.’

Perhaps the most haunting image to emerge was a phalanx of wheelchairs occupied by bearded, morbidly obese women. To the social-media shock jocks of the US right, they are merely libtards to mock – a checklist of septum piercings, crap tattoos and silly hair. But however odious their views and ridiculous their appearance, these are tragic figures who have been let down.

The prevalence of wheelchairs raises uncomfortable questions. Is this simply another expression of an ideology that encourages people to collect identities and diagnoses as badges of oppression? Has ‘transabled’ thinking blurred the line between disability as a medical reality and disability as an identity? Or are we seeing the long-term physical consequences of cross-sex hormones? The NHS still refuses to release the data that might answer those questions.

Saturday’s carnival of confected grievance revealed two very different groups: men dressed as the pornographic caricatures of women they goon over, and women desperately searching for community. It exposed a bitterly ironic truth: nobody believes in sex more fervently than trans activists. If they didn’t, men wouldn’t grow moobs, women wouldn’t try to hide their breasts, and an entire movement wouldn’t exist to imitate the opposite sex. Every costume, every hormone, every surgery and every slogan is an admission that sex matters. Perhaps that is why they are so furious all the time.

It is hard not to feel a flicker of sympathy for Saturday’s marchers. For decades, they have been sold a ‘trans truth’ about themselves – what most of us would simply call a lie. Now, whether they realise it or not, these deluded activists need politicians with the balls – and the ovaries – to tell them the actual truth: you cannot change sex.

Jo Bartosch is co-author of Pornocracy. Order it here.

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