Derek Bedry is a self-described ‘nerdy guy who never thought he would be in a pageant and is suddenly Mr. Gay Canada’.
"My initial reaction was, Oh my gosh! Me, in a pageant? That’s so unusual; I’d never thought of doing that! But I considered it, and it wasn’t very difficult to say yes: I didn’t think about it for too long. It was the prospect of making my way out to Malta (Where Bedry will be representing Canada in the Mr. Gay World competition), which is very exciting, as I have never been able to travel that much. And to talk about human rights, which is a subject that interests me deeply."
Bedry is, clearly, already looking like a good choice. Hot bod aside, he’s too diplomatic to venture a guess as to why Big Roger Events (in partnership with Whistler Pride) picked him to represent Canada at this year’s Mr. Gay World competition. But he does acknowledge, "I’m confident in my abilities as a speaker . . . have a great interest in human rights [and] have worked in various volunteer or activist capacities in Vancouver for the past six or seven years."
With a background in journalism, Bedry has often looked for opportunities to write about marginalized communities, and has developed a queer arts focused portfolio with volunteer, community and mainstream publications, and has been involved in other charity and fundraising work in the Vancouver area. He has been a busy lad!
GC asks if, since he wasn’t familiar with the pageant circuit before Mr. Gay Canada realized they had no one to compete in Malta, Bedry feels he is jumping out of the communications frying pan into the public-eye fire. "Yes, that would describe it!" he says, going on to tell us why this is fine.
"My social media presence is basically ‘Mr. Gay World’. That is to say, Mr. Gay World is basically just me taking my social media presence and putting it on a stage. I enjoy talking about social justice and queer issues, and I have [an online] presence that features me frequently taking my shirt off! . . . I don’t have any pageant preparation as such, but I’m already geared towards it.
"There’s nothing about it that scares me: I’m just trying to have fun and make friends."
Bedry is very comfortable with his ‘presentation of self’. Public speaking, for instance, is not a difficulty for him, which is of prime importance when representing a nation’s image on a world stage. GC asks where he thinks things might go afterwards, whether he becomes Mr. Gay World or not.
"What I hope for would be the opportunity to travel, and learn from the lived experiences of people who live in various countries that have [a] different human rights status than we do in Canada . . . Not to say that everything’s perfect about being gay in Canada, or that there isn’t discrimination, because there is! But we’re relatively privileged, and our federal government – at least – has a lot of sympathy and a lot of protection for gay people. So I want to visit communities in which that may not be the case, or in which people experience their queerness in a different way, and learn those stories.
"If there’s a way in which my activism can advance the needs in those places, or can provide some support to people who are living [there], legal or otherwise, then that’s what my interest is in winning."
GC feels like we have been listening to the victory speech of the Mr. Gay world event already: this guy’s good! Further on that, we discuss the success of ‘educating’ ANY community from outside, and how that tends to simply alienate people. It also presumes that we know better than they do. Instead Bedry mentions his interest in the exchange of knowledge.
"[We could], for example, tell them about legislation we have that’s successful in protecting queer rights: I think [the] leaders in the community are the ones that need to know, so that they can build a grassroots effort to make those changes. You can’t ‘beam’ human rights onto a population; I feel you have to start this kind of messaging at a community level."
Since Bedry clearly has opinions about his role in the rainbow community as Mr. Gay Canada, we ask him for the most and least favourite social aspects that he can address with this public stage.
"The best thing about being gay in Canada, for me, is I can go through my life with, basically, complete comfort. Now that I am an adult, and have ownership over my sexuality and have found a community that doesn’t make me explain that – or ‘come out of the closet’ every time I meet someone new – I’m very comfortable.
"But it has to be said: I’m an adult, I’m a white male, and I present masculine. Many, many of those things are not the case for queer people in general, and are not the case for my friends. As long as I have friends who are fem, or who are stigmatized by their own community or the heterosexual people who are not sympathetic or allied, I will NEVER be able to say that Canada is as advanced in human rights as a nation as I would like it to be."
And, in case you’re wondering Well, what about Trans too? Bedry points out that in B.C., unlike Alberta, it is legal to be discriminated against on the basis of gender presentation. Believe it or not, transgender or trans-sexual Albertans have a better legal environment than those in B.C.! We are on the leading edge of legal gender recognition!
"As you can imagine, it is extremely legitimizing for transgender people, or people who are gender variant, to have legal rights enshrined in language that’s specific to them. Without that – even if the protection can be argued in a court of law that it exists – without that language, it’s an erasure of their legitimacy."
Yep, this guy’s serious – inside and out!
