Over 1,000 lesbians gathered in Rome on Saturday, October 3, for the Italian Dyke March, showing the strength of a movement that continues to grow. EL*C was there, represented by our Advocacy Dykerector, Ilaria Todde, to stand alongside Italian lesbian activists and reaffirm our solidarity across borders.
The march built on the momentum of 2025, when ELC’s fourth Lesbian Conference brought 750 attendees from 52 countries to Rome. Together with the city’s first Dyke March, the conference created a space for lesbian voices, experiences and activism from across Europe, Central Asia and beyond.
Addressing this year’s march, Ilaria connected that shared experience to the struggles we face today: the rise of the far right, attacks on our rights and spaces, and the urgent need for lesbian solidarity and organising. Her message was clear: Europe needs lesbians. There is no democracy without lesbians.
Read her full speech below.
Hello everyone,
I’m here to convey the greetings and support of EL*C, the lesbian community of Europe and Central Asia.
Last year (2025), we were already here in Rome for the fourth European Lesbian* Conference and the first Dyke March in Rome. We are proud to have brought together the struggles, experiences and bodies of more than 750 lesbian activists from across Europe and around the world. And the message that emerged from that conference and that Dyke March was clear: there is an alternative to deadly, genocidal, racist, ableist, lesbophobic, homophobic, transphobic and fascist politics. And lesbians are part of that alternative — indeed, we are a fundamental part of it.
We work every day with European institutions, and I can assure you that the far right is already in power. It does not always call itself by its name, but it is everywhere. It shapes public policy and media narratives. Even when it is not formally in government, it accelerates the neoliberal, racist and neocolonial processes that certain forces in Europe have long promoted — and that they are now no longer ashamed to openly call by their names.
As we are seeing these days in Turkey, when institutions remain silent, our rights die. Pride marches are banned, activists are arrested. We continue to say that this is not the Europe we want. Not the Europe of borders. Not the Europe complicit with Israel. Not a Europe that remains silent in the face of Trump.
The activists who came to Rome last year said it clearly: our solidarity is stronger than oppression, cultural barriers and borders.
In the months and years ahead, we will need the energy of this march and of all the Dyke Marches around the world. And we will need spaces where our lesbian lives can be expressed and lived freely.
We are here as a European lesbian organisation, standing alongside lesbians who put themselves on the line, activists who organise marches, organisations that provide services that would otherwise not exist, and social spaces that are also spaces of resistance.
We must stand up for this movement and for this identity. We are not perfect, and we do not have to be. Despite lesbophobic violence, despite invisibility, despite the increasing precarity of our lives, and despite the attempts by the racist and transphobic far right to dispossess us of our rights and our spaces, lesbians continue to be here.
Lesbians have always been here.
We are present in LGBTI rights movements, in feminist movements, in movements for Palestine, for climate justice, and in antifascist movements.
There is one thing I know for certain: we need lesbian activists. Europe needs lesbians.
There is no democracy without lesbians.
Thank you.
