University of Sheffield students demonstrated at the Student Union to encourage conversation about LGBTQ+ history outside of LGBTQ+ history month.

The ‘March For The Future’ is the final event in a series of celebrations which took place during February to share and bring attention to the stories of marginalised people.

Student Union’s LGBTQ+ officer, Jephthah Ekogiawe, said: “It’s an outcry. It is a protest, and it is also a celebration of LGBTQ+ history.”

Jephthah said that the event calls for “a future where trans+ people get the healthcare that they deserve, it’s a future where transmisogyny, trans hate, homophobia, biphobia, queerphobia, like everything is basically non-existent because our sexuality, our gender, our expression should not be a contested topic.”

According to a November 2022 Freedom Of Information Request to Sheffield’s Porterbrook Gender Identity Clinic, the average wait time for a first appointment was 220 weeks, with 1,865 people on the waiting list as of October 31st 2022.

Celebratory months like LGBTQ+ history month have been criticised by some for restricting celebrations of a group to a single month.

Student Union’s Liberation officer, Tomás Rocha Lawrence, said: “On Twitter they set their rainbow flag for the month and are like ‘we’re allies’ and as soon as the month is over they‘re like ‘okay bye see you next year’ and that is not what being an ally is, it’s not something that’s tokenistic.

“We’re hoping that the march, and all the events that have been run for LGBT history month, are more like a platform to open a continued conversation so it doesn’t just end at the end of the month because being LGBT does not end at the end of the month.”

Tomás encouraged students to get involved in running events, because “a lot of our plans and our ideas they’re not something that we just cooked up like by ourselves, it’s what students are asking for”.