19/11/2021
The Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar, was a night of stars, laughter and partying. But it also gave the Attitude Magazine Foundation a huge boost.
More than 650 people were at the Roundhouse, in North London, on 6 October where a raffle raised a staggering £12,000 for the charity arm of Attitude magazine. That’s more than a 50 per cent rise on previous years’ totals.
Mind you, maybe that’s not so surprising given that the top prize was two upper class return Virgin Atlantic flights to Miami, where the winners then join a Virgin Voyager cruise for four or five nights aboard the Scarlet Lady as she visits the Caribbean.
The second prize, donated by Jaguar Land Rover, was two tickets for next year’s men’s quarter finals at Wimbledon.
Every penny from the ticket sales went to the foundation, which has raised almost £300,000 to date, before handing out money to beneficiaries large and small.
Before any of the awards were handed out, Attitude Magazine proprietor and MD Darren Styles OBE took the opportunity to point out the dangers posed by the supposed advocacy group LGB Alliance.
“Attitude may be a brand targeting gay and bisexual men, but it has always stood for more than that – our cover stars, going back decades, have been gloriously LGBTQIA, topped up with straight allies. One big, rainbow community,” Darren pointed out.
“The T is not a delete option. Never has been, never will be, not on my watch. The organisation that currently has so much to say on transgender issues while claiming to speak only for LGB people is unworthy, is contemptible and is dangerous. Their narrative, that transgender people aren’t part of our community, come from a different place and are somehow a drag on the equality cause, is lunacy.
“They speak of ‘needing to protect the children’, of our ‘diminishing the rights of cisgender women’, of our ‘misogyny’. They use the language of bigotry, persecution and exclusion. And those who seek to counter them are labelled paedophiles [and] perverts.”
Darren continued: “I don’t give a shit what they say about me. I’m white, middle class, older, have done OK – the privilege I carry washes away any harm they might seek to inflict. But my trans friends are fucking terrified.
“This nasty little group are being given airtime, all the time, much of it unchallenged. And their tropes are beginning to echo across our community.
“To assault my children, they say, a man only has to wear a dress and say he’s transgender to gain access to a leisure centre changing room. You must have a birth certificate or a cervix to get in [they say]. Like Rose West, perhaps? Or Myra Hindley?
“They are describing the acts of paedophiles and murderers, not transgender people. They are creating phantoms and demons and some are listening. We must all be prepared to speak out.
“The American satirist Jon Stewart once said of equal marriage that the only reason to be against it is if it was compulsory. The same applies to transitioning. Trans people are just people, trans men just men and trans women just women. And if your concern extends to what bits other people have, you don’t need a Twitter account or a hate group, you need help. And you are the biggest threat to your children.
Darren went on to ask everyone to be vigilant and outspoken on behalf of our trans siblings.
And turning to trans people themselves, he concluded: “I say to all of you here and watching beyond, this is your tribe, we are your family. And know that we send our love, in any glorious form it may take.”