Witch Fever have joined these voicing their opposition to Obtain Pageant’s obvious coverage concerning rest room entry for trans followers.
Earlier right this moment (Could 27), artists NOAHFINNCE and Pinkshift hit out on the rock and steel pageant for upholding a coverage that prohibits trans ladies from utilizing ladies’s loos and trans males from utilizing males’s services.
Pop-punk singer-songwriter NOAHFINNCE shared a screenshot that appeared to return from an e mail question to Obtain, displaying the pageant saying: “We’re pleased with the popularity the Obtain group has when it comes to range, and can at all times look to advertise the security and luxury of all pageant attendees together with transgender and non-binary prospects.
“We will likely be following the interim steering issued by the Equalities and Human Rights Fee (EHRC) on 25 April 2025 right here. Their steering states that ‘trans ladies (organic males) shouldn’t be permitted to make use of the ladies’s services and trans males (organic ladies) shouldn’t be permitted to make use of the boys’s services’”.
Hey @DownloadFest what the fuck are you doing. How have you ever obtained the gall to ask trans folks like me to play your pageant after which ban them from utilizing the bathroom? If the one means we will piss is by outing ourselves then you definately’ve created an unsafe setting… pic.twitter.com/W0oLIa5P4U
— NOAHFINNCE👹 (@noahfinnadams) Could 27, 2025
NOAHFINNCE responded: “Hey @downloadfest what the fuck are you doing inviting trans folks to play your pageant however not permitting them the easy proper of utilizing the proper rest room?”
“I had a good time enjoying final 12 months however won’t be attending once more if I’ve to queue up for the women’ rest room and my trans sisters should threat outing themselves within the males’s rest room. All this does is put trans folks at risk,” he added. “In case you’re enjoying @downloadfest, attending it and even simply conscious of it, say one thing about it.”
Now, Manchester band Witch Fever have additionally criticised Obtain. On their Instagram Tales on Tuesday, the band responded to the query: “Have you ever learn the Obtain Festivals coverage concerning trans followers rest room entry?”
They replied: “The risk to trans folks’s security by forcing them to enter bogs which might be assigned to a gender that they don’t affiliate with is an entire fuckin tragedy. We hope this choice will get modified.”
The band have been constantly outspoken on behalf of the rights of transgender and non-binary teams, they usually performed at Obtain Pageant in 2023.
In 2022, bassist Alex Thompson instructed NME: “Empowerment is at all times going to be on the core of something we do, as a result of that’s why we do that. We wanna present folks – particularly ladies and gender non-conforming folks – that you could specific your self in the best way you’ve been instructed your complete life you shouldn’t – and there’s an influence and positivity to doing that.”
NME has reached out to Obtain’s organisers for remark concerning the coverage.
The coverage outlined by Obtain organisers seems to narrate to the UK Supreme Courtroom ruling on April 16, through which judges unanimously dominated that the authorized definition of a girl relies on organic intercourse underneath the Equality Act.
As outlined by the Equality Human Rights Fee, the April ruling from the Supreme Courtroom signifies that, in locations open to the general public, trans ladies shouldn’t use ladies’s services comparable to bogs.
BBC later reported that over 1,000 cultural figures then signed an open letter which claimed that the ruling “overlooks the necessity to shield trans, non-binary and intersex folks from discrimination”. It additionally added that many leaders throughout the UK’s cultural sector have been “unwilling” to police which bogs folks select to make use of.
Charli XCX, Self Esteem and Wolf Alice are among the many many artists to have additionally signed an open letter of solidarity to the trans group from the UK music business. On high of that, quite a few figures within the leisure world expressed their assist for these affected. Those that have spoken out in assist of the trans group embody Scissor Sisters, Fragrance Genius, Rubbish, Rachel Chinouriri, JADE, Lambrini Women and Billy Bragg.
This 12 months’s Obtain Pageant takes place at Donington Park, Leicestershire from June 13-15. Inexperienced Day, Sleep Token and KoRn will all be first-time headliners, and different names on the invoice embody Weezer, Intercourse Pistols that includes Frank Carter, Jimmy Eat World and Poppy.
