Dazed: We watched activists disrupt a ‘gender-critical’ meeting dressed as clowns

Last night, members of The Dyke Project – a collective of cis, trans and nonbinary lesbians – unleashed a series of surreal disruptions at a trans-exclusionary lecture

You would expect to see clowns at any trans-exclusionary event, on and off the stage, but a panel discussion at UCL took a surreal turn last night when members of The Dyke Project unleashed a wave of disruptions.

Titled ‘What does the Supreme Court judgement mean for lesbians?’, the event was focused on a recent legal ruling on the definition of “sex” in the Equality Act. All of the speakers, including author and journalist Julie Bindel, are vocal and avowed “gender-critical” feminists, and several have previously argued that trans people pose a threat to their identity as lesbians.

The Dyke Project, a cis, trans and nonbinary dyke collective, was formed in opposition to this narrative. “Trans people are an integral part of our community and always have been,” Lindsay Lorde, a spokesperson for the group, tells Dazed, adding that lesbians are more supportive of trans rights than any other demographic whenever the issue is polled. “The real threat is the people, like those on the panel, who are using the banners of feminism and lesbianism to promote conservative values and align themselves with the far-right.”

The Dyke Project had given Dazed a head up beforehand, so I went down to UCL see it unravel and take some photos. The event took place in a sweltering lecture room, so stuffy that people were fanning themselves with phones and hats. It was, to me anyway, pretty easy to guess who was a Dyke Project member and who was a regular attendee, simply because they looked much younger and cooler (this was to cause problems later on.) The disruption unfolded in four waves: not long after the talk began, someone stood up and started shouting a short speech, followed by their fellow activists unveiling a banner which read “Lesbians against the EHRC”. The room erupted into a chorus of groans and jeers. One woman ripped away their banner and, veins bulging in fury, screamed “get out!!! Get out!!!” As the activists were escorted out, a former member of parliament heckled, “your boyfriends are waiting for you outside!”

After ten minutes, the clowns arrived. Bearing juggling balls, clown noses and kazoos, they cavorted and pranced around the room, chanting, “you’re not feminists, you’re all clowns!” The reaction was even more hostile this time, and it would be safe to say that most of the attendees didn’t find it funny: one of them screamed “you’re a pathetic removed!” at a clown.

As this subsided, the speaker onstage quipped, “is that what you call a second wave? Hopefully there isn’t a third wave!” Unfortunately for her, there was! After waiting long enough to lull the room into a false sense of security, activists clad in sportswear started running around, blowing whistles and throwing out red cards. This stunt was intended to highlight the exclusionary effect the Supreme Court judgement is already having on trans people in sport, such as the FA’s decision to ban trans women from participating in women’s football.

The atmosphere in the room had by now descended into a fog of paranoia. Who could be trusted? One gender-critical woman suggested that everyone in the audience turn to the person next to them, ask what they were doing there and, if they weren’t satisfied with the answer, demand they leave. Another tried to preemptively chuck someone out because they looked suspicious (I thought this was because they were young, which would have been funny, but a Dyke Project member later told me it was because they looked like they might be trans, which is less so.) A lone voice of reason in the audience cried out, “we’re not going to do an age-based witch hunt!”

The lecture proceeded uninterrupted for another ten minutes, and I was forced to listen to a very dry, very legalistic account of why people should be allowed to exclude trans people “[using] the evidence of their eyes alone.” When the fourth wave of disruptions finally came, I gave up trying to be subtle and stood up to photograph the last banner, which read “Trans Liberation = Women’s Liberation.” Once again, the room erupted into chaos: one of the attendees began following an activist around and waving a brown coat in front of her, in an apparent effort to shield her from view and silence her message.

Loads of gender-critical people in the room were snapping away and filming the events as they unfolded, but one woman got up in my face and started shouting at me to stop taking photos of her, despite the fact my camera wasn’t pointing in her direction and, as an organiser later confirmed to me, there was no policy against photography at the event. A security guard pushed me outside and wouldn’t even let me back into get my bag, simply because I was doing my job and exercising my democratic rights as a member of the press (spluttering “I’m a journalist!!!” is so goated when getting thrown out of an evil event is the vibe.)

“This is more than just a panel discussion for us,” says Lorde, explaining why the Dyke Project chose to target this particular event. “We want to disrupt it because it’s a symbol of the threat which these people in power have: their biological essentalist values and gender rigidity will roll back hard-won feminist victories, from abortion acess to queer rights.” One of the scheduled speakers for tonight’s discussion, although she dropped out at the last minute, was Akua Reindorf, a barrister and a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission – the public body which recently proposed new statutory guidance which would effectively exclude trans people from all “single-sex spaces”, from specialist services to public bathrooms and changing rooms. “The idea that the EHRC is neutral is a fallacy and I think this event proves that,” she adds.

The Dyke Project was set up in 2023 in direct response to the Lesbian Project, a trans-exclusive organisation co-founded by Julie Bindel. When the Lesbian Project hosted its inaugural conference, the group gathered outside the venue and staged a party, holding placards and dancing in the streets. Last year, it co-organised a protest with Transgender Action Bloc, targeting a conference promoting conversion therapy at the Royal College of GPs. While it was founded in reaction to trans-exclusionary feminism, its political vision is far more expansive: its manifesto calls for “a world without prisons, psych wards, borders or police”, “a world without gender clinic waiting lists and gatekeeper”, “a world without capitalism and the afterlives of slavery”, “a world where Palestine is free”, and a world “where we can fuck, dance, transition, move rest however we want to”. It recently replaced hundreds of adverts all over London with stories from queer Palestinians, which had been shared on the online project Queering the Map, and took part in a campaign demanding an end to LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall’s ties with the arms trade.

Tonight’s protest was intended to be campy and fun, which Lorde sees as being in keeping with a proud tradition of queer activism, including groups like Lavender Menace, ACT UP and the Lesbian Avengers, who in 1988 abseiled into the Houses of Parliament to protest Section 28. “We’re proud that we’re doing something which speaks to that history and stands on the shoulders of all of the queer people before us who have pushed back against right wing agendas,” says Lorde. But it’s not all fun and games. “We also can't underestimate the severity of this: trans people are facing more and more violence every day; they are being excluded from society and pushed further into the margins as a matter of policy.”

She expects the women appearing on today’s panel will complain about being silenced, but she rejects this narrative. “The reality is they have immense power and influence, and in contrast, not a single trans person was consulted in the Supreme Court judgment – they only heard from exclusionary groups,” she says. “We refuse that exclusionary narrative. This action is about showing who lesbians really are.”