Witch Fever have joined these voicing their opposition to Obtain Competition’s obvious coverage relating to 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 bogs and trans males from utilizing males’s amenities.
Pop-punk singer-songwriter NOAHFINNCE shared a screenshot that appeared to return from an e mail question to Obtain, exhibiting the pageant saying: “We’re happy with the fame the Obtain neighborhood has by way of variety, and can at all times look to advertise the protection and luxury of all pageant attendees together with transgender and non-binary clients.
“We might be following the interim steerage issued by the Equalities and Human Rights Fee (EHRC) on 25 April 2025 right here. Their steerage states that ‘trans ladies (organic males) shouldn’t be permitted to make use of the ladies’s amenities and trans males (organic ladies) shouldn’t be permitted to make use of the lads’s amenities’”.
Hey @DownloadFest what the fuck are you doing. How have you ever bought the gall to ask trans folks like me to play your pageant after which ban them from utilizing the bathroom? If the one method we are able to piss is by outing ourselves you then’ve created an unsafe surroundings… 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 straightforward proper of utilizing the proper lavatory?”
“I had a good time enjoying final yr however is not going to be attending once more if I’ve to queue up for the women’ lavatory and my trans sisters should danger outing themselves within the males’s lavatory. All this does is put trans folks in peril,” he added. “In the event 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 relating to trans followers rest room entry?”
They replied: “The risk to trans folks’s security by forcing them to enter bathrooms which are assigned to a gender that they don’t affiliate with is an entire fuckin tragedy. We hope this resolution 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 Competition in 2023.
In 2022, bassist Alex Thompson advised 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 – you could categorical your self in the way in which you’ve been advised 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 relating to 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 lady is predicated on organic intercourse beneath the Equality Act.
As outlined by the Equality Human Rights Fee, the April ruling from the Supreme Courtroom implies that, in locations open to the general public, trans ladies shouldn’t use ladies’s amenities resembling bathrooms.
BBC later reported that over 1,000 cultural figures then signed an open letter which claimed that the ruling “overlooks the necessity to defend 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 bathrooms 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 neighborhood from the UK music trade. On prime 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 neighborhood embody Scissor Sisters, Fragrance Genius, Rubbish, Rachel Chinouriri, JADE, Lambrini Women and Billy Bragg.
This yr’s Obtain Competition 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.
