The reason I tell you this story is not to brag, (well maybe just a little) not to shock you by throwing my sexuality in your face; I’m telling it because it holds great significance for me.
I grew up in rural Nova Scotia. I didn’t know any one who was queer, and if I did, I didn’t know it. …I had an uncle who was gay, but I heard so many negative things said about him, there wasn’t anything I could identify with, and I knew I definitely wasn't any of those awful thing that I overheard.
Deep inside, I always felt I had something to protect though, something to hide.
Skip ahead to my first women’s only dance, and I had never before seen so many women openly expressing their love for each other. I felt drunk with the freedom it allowed me.
I joined the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Halifax and marched in Pride parades, and they WERE marches at that time..
We were afraid of the RCMP who were known to take photographs and keep files on those who took part in political demonstrations. …But we marched anyway, and we proudly held up signs and sang songs like: we are gay and straight together and we are singing, singing for our lives. - And we really were.
But even though I had felt I had found my people, there was still something that didn’t quite feel right; I couldn’t put my finger on it though, so I just chalked it up to how I had always felt different.
I remember the first time I saw a group of butch women swagger into the club; they seemed strong and confident and I thought to myself, I want to be like them. Yet at the same time Im hearing the lesbians around me saying things like, why would you want to be like a man when we are celebrating womanhood and rejecting patriarchy and toxic masculinity?
Butch women weren’t the only ones unwelcome, Trans women and drag queens were also given a hard time, they for wearing the trappings of femininity that feminism rejected. I understood the feminist arguments, and I admit, at that time, I too felt uncomfortable seeing masculine bodies wearing the clothing and makeup I so adamantly rejected as sexist.
….We’ve come a long way.
But the truth is, Trans folk have never really been fully accepted by the lesbian and gay community, even though there’s a T in LGBT, and even though the movement began in rebellion to the frequent raids and arrests of gender non conforming folks at the stonewall Inn who weren’t wearing at least three articles of clothing of the sex they were assigned at birth.
The movement took up the Love is Love slogan. In the name of respectability Gender nonconformity was placed on the back burner; it made too many people uncomfortable.
It wasn’t until this current decade, or decade and a half, when I began to see young trans people freely and boldly expressing their gender that I started to really question my own identity. I saw in them something positive that I could relate to, something that I longed for as well, and I finally came to embrace and celebrate my own mix. Now when I look in the mirror, I see me.
Jump ahead to the present and there is an obvious push back against all this free gender expression and not just by the Trump administration. It’s here in Canada too. Statistics Canada has reported that in 2023, hate crimes targeting the LGBTQI community has increased by 69% from the previous year. -Imagine what the increase is this year with all the anti trans hate speech so freely circulating.
There’s a political dark cloud hanging over the heads of our beautiful young trans folk. Those who showed me how to become myself are now being threatened with erasure, with having their rights and services taken away and their freedom curtailed. And I fear for their future if we all don’t do whatever we can to put a stop to it.
Without having seen positive examples that I could identify with, my self actualization was stilted. Its taken most of my life to know myself. My very existence has felt like a protest; I can only imagine who I’d be if I had been given that freedom right from the get go; if I didn’t have to fight for it every step of the way.
It makes me sick to think of all these beautiful and free young people having to hide themselves, having to suffer anything of what us older queers experienced, what I experienced. I know what’s at risk.
We can’t go backward.
So this year I will be walking in the Pride parade for them; for the young queers, for their future, as many of us in the community will be.
I think that’s what an ally is, someone who recognizes what’s at stake and how it affects us all. Someone who doesn’t leave us alone to defend ourselves and uses their privilege to speak up against those who speak with hate against us, against any of us, really. Someone who educates themselves because they care, and who lends their support however they can, with words, and with action.
For after all, we are not just fighting for our own rights, we are fighting for everyones, each others even. The right to freely be who we are in a world that pushes conformity and expediency.
I keep thinking of how true that saying is: that we are not free until everyone is free, ...everyone under the rainbow. May it be so, and Happy Pride!
(As given at the UUCV Pride service on Sunday June 29th)
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