Celebrating Pride Month

Celebrating Pride Month

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Celebrating Pride Month

It’s the time of the year to celebrate the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and reflect on the past and present struggles.

While progress has been made, recent years have seen a rise in anti-trans and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ rhetoric and legislation across Canada, the United States, and around the world. Trans people, especially trans youth and trans women of colour, continue to face disproportionate levels of discrimination, loss of medical care, political scapegoating, and violence, including murder. Recently, governmental political statements and bills in the US and the UK have threatened trans folk’s ability to safely live and exist in public and have posited trans people as enemies of the state. As such, these attacks are deeply concerning. They impact us all, as trans people continue to immigrate to safer US states, to Canada, and even to the UVic campus.

However, these are also reminders of why Pride continues to matter, as a commitment to stand beside one another and defend the rights, safety, and dignity of everyone. It’s important to recognize that the ability to live openly, love freely, and find community has never come without struggle. From the first drag queen in the 1880s who fought for the right to assemble to the Stonewall riots in 1969, led by some of the most marginalized within the community (specifically Black and Brown trans women and butch/gender non-conforming lesbians). While not the first or only resistance against discrimination, it marked the beginning of Pride.

Following the Stonewall riots, there were gay rights groups all across the world working to fight for a better life through struggles that disproportionately affected them such as criminalization, police violence, workplace discrimination, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The rights and protections many people benefit from today were not freely given, but won through decades of protest, organizing, and community care. Pride has always been intersectional. As activist and community organizer Marsha P. Johnson said, “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” The fight for queer and trans liberation has always been connected to broader struggles against racism, colonialism, ableism, misogyny, and economic inequality.

While we have come a long way and have reason to celebrate, we still have work ahead of us. This Pride month, we encourage everyone to celebrate and support local Pride events with the UVSS Pride Collective and other community organizations, and continue showing up for one another as advocates and allies. Learn more about the history that came before and the rights people are still fighting for today with the resources linked below.

Happy Pride,

UVSS Board of Directors

Resources / Events:

Notable Quotes:

“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us”

Quote from Marsha P. Johnson, a notable Queer and Trans Black Woman, activist, and community organizer.

“Social protest is to say that we do not have to live this way. If we feel deeply, as we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will, within that feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, we can love deeply, we can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. And when they do not, we will ask, “why don’t they?” And it is the asking that will lead us inevitably toward change.”

Quote from Sister Outsider: Essay and Speeches by Audre Lorde, a famous Black Lesbian poet, author, and scholar