June is a very busy month for Gay Prides worldwide. With some of it being a big party – drinking hard, sexy men, corporate sponsorships etc. – is Pride really being what it needs to be?
I remember attending my first Pride, a rally in front of city hall where speeches were made, and then we walked over to Bridgeland for a dance. This was back in the early ’90s. People were wearing bags over their heads, worried that their work or family might find out that they were gay. There were no corporate sponsors; attendance was roughly the same size of the Dyke and Trans March that happens now in Calgary.
It sometimes seems like ‘acceptance’ only applies to your typical gay men and lesbian women. Within our own community, people still make transphobic, racist, body shaming and other disparaging comments – both in public and on social media. As the gay community fought so hard to become accepted, why can it be so hard for some individuals to accept all members of the LGBTQ+ family?
For Lethbridge Pride, the city painted both a rainbow crosswalk as well as a transgender flag cross walk. A couple times, in the middle of the night, both crosswalks got defaced with skid marks and, one night, paint mixed with crap. Taber celebrated their first pride and had their rainbow flag set on fire. Our community and allies voiced our support. We did not want the haters to win. We are proud of the rainbow flag and the trans flag.
But also in the month of June, a variation of the rainbow flag was launched in Philadelphia. The colours black and brown were added. Members of our community had a fit that someone had changed our flag. Racist comments were used. The flag was created was because a segment of the black and Hispanic community in that city was feeling that they were not being accepted by the rest of the community. The flag was designed to be more inclusive of the LGBTQIA community within Philadelphia, not the world at large.
The original Pride flag was created as a symbol for the gay community in 1978: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic/art, indigo for serenity, and violet for spirit. Hot pink was removed because the fabric was unavailable, and indigo and turquoise were changed to be royal blue. The flag adapted.
Additional flags have been created to represent the different pockets within our own community, or different places around the world: the LGBT/Gay Pride rainbow, agender, asexual, bisexual, Bear Brotherhood, genderfluid, genderqueer, intersex, lesbian, lipstick lesbian, non-binary, pansexual, polysexual, transgender, Israeli transgender and genderqueer, Gay pride flag of South Africa, twink and more. There are also Gay Pride flag variations for the country celebrating pride, like the maple leaf as part of the rainbow flag, or stars for the United States.
Are some of us so closed-minded that as soon as an alternate flag comes out to represent a segment and/or locale of our community that we must attack them for it? Is the Gay Pride flag that sacred that we assume that it should cover everyone’s diverse needs? Or is the uproar reflective of a systemic racism?
There have been several articles that have been written about gay bars in the United States that were trying to exclude people of colour from their bars. You see comments on dating sites and apps that say, "No Blacks, No Asians". So maybe this flag creates a conversation, on what might be happening to pockets of the community, especially in certain areas of the United States.
At Lethbridge Pride, there was a ball that was dropped with an external party not arranging things properly for GayCalgary to do a travel article around Lethbridge Gay Pride. At the last minute a friend of mine – Deonie, who is part of Club Didi and manages Once Upon a Bride – made some quick arrangements for my transportation and accommodation.
That weekend in Lethbridge opened my eyes. As a gay white male, I might have come across some of these issues 15 years ago, but to hear that the transgender community still faces them made clear the fight is not over.
During the early years of running Men For Men BBS, I was working for a computer store on MacLeod Trail. Right before the Thanksgiving weekend, the general manager told me that I was going to be promoted to sales manager of the store and that the details of the promotion would be discussed after they got back from the long weekend. During that weekend, I was outed for being gay. The printers who printed the Men For Men trick cards decided to show up and drop them off at the store instead of letting me come pick them up.
When the general manager came back, they pulled me into the office and said that I would not be getting promoted because they did not want someone who was gay being manager in the store. I was extremely disappointed and thought that it was my fuck up, and the only way of proving her wrong was to continue doing what I did to make the sales for the store. But a couple of days before my three-month probation as a new employee was up, I was fired. Officially it was stated that it was because of poor performance but, in the office, they said they did not want someone who was gay working in the store.
Clearly I was discriminated for my sexuality and realized that – outside of the bars and gay businesses – I needed to keep my mouth shut and appear straight. Within six months of firing me that store closed; they had needed me to keep the doors open.
This happened in the mid ’90s and, because it happened during probate, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I eventually got hired to work at another computer store across the street from Chinook Centre. During the first several months I pretended I was straight. But again I got outed. Some computer hardware I ordered for the Men For Men BBS system came into the store.
I was again pulled into the office and already regretting the fact I was gay; that I was going to be fired. I sat down with the manager and they brought up the order. They asked me what Men For Men was about and I had to fully disclose – while pretty much having a panic attack. Once done explaining, they said the fact I was gay wasn’t of concern, but if Men For Men BBS would be a conflict of interest or competing business to the computer store.
I was beside myself. So no issues that I am gay. They said hell no. They said the lesbians who worked there outed me, and three of them were the top sales’ staff of the computer store chain. They wanted diversity in their stores. Within a year, I got promoted to sales manager and was given my own retail floor to run, which had a lesbian operations manager. The staff was amazing to deal with. For my birthday, we celebrated at Boyztown, and some male staff entered the amateur strip contest.
That happened about 20 ago. You would assume that employment would not be an issue today, but that is not the case for the trans community. Unless you are working for organizations that are actively part of the LGBTQ+ community, or you know everyone around is an ally, you could easily be slowly forced out of your job. If you start transitioning or you get outed for being trans, management can still find a way of moving you away from staff who are uncomfortable, or just figure out how to replace/fire you.
Another issue is dealing with law enforcement. When someone decides to transition, it takes years to do. There have been issues where law enforcement will use the old pronoun and name from a person’s driver’s license, even though they ask repeatedly to be called by their current name and pronoun. It becomes insulting.
I have had issues where I have been talking to a telemarketer or call-centre on the phone and they start calling me "miss" or "madam", or they ask several times if they are talking to Steve. How many people in the LGBTQ+ community are recognized with the wrong pronoun? Do you get offended? Do you laugh it off? But think of that happening when you are carded by an officer, or written a ticket, or even in a courtroom. It is a lack in diversity training that perpetrates this disrespect.
Another issue faced is suicide. Once you start transitioning to the gender you are most comfortable with, a lot of worry is generated in how people will react. Look at how much of a controversy it is just to be allowed in the proper bathroom. We know about it because it gets headlines and everyone talks about it, but suicides and the emotional struggles don’t get the same attention. The daily harassment, attacks and murders of trans individuals are, many times, overlooked by the gay and lesbian community.
Amid the early years of running the BBS, I was over at my aunt’s place helping her with a house party while my family was away on summer holidays. The day after the successful party, she thanked me. Then she brought up that someone had commented to her that I might be gay. I asked her why? She grabbed a knife and said that if I was gay, I should kill myself; that gay people don’t procreate or contribute to society. She was dead serious. I quickly bullshitted that I had a girlfriend, using a name from the "Anne of Green Gables" novels, the last thing I watched. I expressed to her that – since she works in the cosmetic industry selling perfumes and makeup – without the gay community, she would be out of a job. She said that would not be the case, I said I beg to differ.
After that I did whatever I could to avoid visiting her – if she called I said I was busy – until, after Rob and I started dating, my mom demanded that we go over for my uncle’s birthday. She told me that she knew Rob and I were dating and, now, had no issues with gay people. She had seen the Carly’s Angels show in Inglewood and thought it was great. Then she asked Rob and I who wears the dress in the relationship? We both stated neither of us do. She asked who does the cooking, cleaning and house work? I said I do the cooking, Rob does the cleaning, and we both do the other house chores.
As coming out as gay, lesbian or queer becomes generally easier, we forget that it is still not easy for others. Are we there for those people, or are we turning a blind eye? In Lethbridge, speaking openly with many trans individuals around a dinner table – about their relationships, problems in the community, if they are happy in their relationships with their partners – made my weekend. Though I know many trans people in the community, we don’t ever get a chance to just go for dinner or go over to each other’s homes and, if we are out in public, we always talk shop. Deonie and her friends helped start a dialogue; awareness of what we still need in the community.
At Edmonton Pride, it was great to see the Indigenous community finally included on stage, helping to open Pride. Gay Pride has been so focused around gay white men that sometimes we forget about the two-spirit community, as well as rest of the LGBT+ community in Indigenous communities. When GayCalgary set about researching the history of two-spirit roles within Indigenous communities, we found it very difficult to get information. Much of it was lost due to the cleansing of the Indigenous culture/forced assimilation that occurred in Canada. Christian missionaries played a big part in trying to wipe that away and, just like the hatred that was created towards the gay and lesbian community, they tried to remove references to two-spirit in the Indigenous culture.
As the LGBTQ+ community rallied around the "It Gets Better" campaign for queer youth, and create awareness about queer youth suicide, youth including queer youth, are committing suicides in the Indigenous community. We used to comment on social media every time we heard about another suicide of a LGBTQ+ youth, but have we forgotten that suicides are still happening? Do we, as a community, not care that youth are committing suicide in the Indigenous community, where some of the individuals could be also from our community? Do they suffer from a lack of support services? How can things get better for them when it feels like the discussion around youth suicide does not continue unless the headline pairs "Queer youth" and "Suicide" together?
After such a positive weekend in Lethbridge I returned to a rude awakening. Several times, as I was explaining the positive experience that I had there, different individuals who I was having conversations with made transphobic comments. They said how disgusting it was that they don’t "complete" their surgery, that trans individuals should expect to be attacked, that they should make up their mind on what gender they are, and more. There is still hatred within our own community towards others; towards being sexually fluid or gender fluid.
We fought to be accepted because the majority stated that we should all be straight, but we have a long way to go. Maybe it will take more open discussions, away from social media and distraction. We can write about these things, but I don’t know how much gets through. Pride, Fairytales Film Festival, Coming Out Monologues and other events are a way of getting a message out and educating the community, but we need to go further in conveying our support and acceptance, or we become no different than the people saying that being gay is wrong.
When I called the magazine GayCalgary, I felt that would be an umbrella term for the entire LGBTQ+ community. Only in the past ten years has the word queer become more recognized. When we started using it in the magazine, we faced backlash because people thought it was derogatory; people were put into mental institutions for the mental condition "queer". I know that if I had started the magazine calling it QueerCalgary, most businesses would not give us the time of day. It was hard enough just being GayCalgary. As the community evolved, I was smart enough to register queercalgary.com, queeredmonton.com and queeralberta.com about ten years ago, and have them pointing to the GayCalgary.com website.
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Contributor Steve Polyak |
Locale Calgary | Edmonton | Lethbridge | Taber |
Topic Calgary Pride | Community | Edmonton Pride | Gay Pride | History | Lethbridge Pride | Publisher's Column | Taber Pride | Transgender |
