Dr Fiona Bisshop

It’s Pride month in Queensland, with rallies, marches, fair days and celebrations. In Brisbane this Saturday 24th the community will come together for a day of festivities. What does Pride mean to you? I used to wonder about the concept years ago, thinking, why should I be proud of who I am? It’s not like it’s an achievement or an accomplishment. But then I started really thinking about it, and of course eventually the penny dropped, that it’s not about who I am, but the fact that I dared to be that person in the public domain. For me the real pride was in being able to be myself without caring what the world thought. But to be able to do that, I realised, I was standing on the shoulders of giants. The legends who weren’t afraid to speak out, when it was hugely perilous to be openly gay, trans or queer in any way.

I was there at the very first Brisbane Pride march in June 1990. Queensland had just escaped nearly 3 decades of right-wing government under Joh Bjelke-Peterson, and homosexuality was still illegal. The AIDS crisis was at a peak, and the community was staging kiss-ins and die-ins in public places to draw attention to the stigma and discrimination that dominated public discourse at the time. We lay on the ground outside the Courier Mail office drawing chalk circles around the bodies, a symbol of the toll of HIV/AIDS and a protest at the disgusting homophobic commentary being published at the time in that newspaper.

In New York in 1969, the Stonewall riots started as a protest led by trans women of colour who were sick of being treated with contempt. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were at the forefront. Marsha is often quoted – “How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race?”, and perhaps more famously “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”.

Looking back at the history of Pride, trans folk were there from the very beginning. Along the way the message became very much about gay rights and HIV/AIDS, but in today’s transphobic climate the message has circled back to be very inclusive of the trans community. No doubt you are aware of the trans-exclusionary “LGB without the T” movement, a nasty terfy group who want to make sure trans people aren’t counted, but they represent a minority within our broader community.

For me now, Pride is about being visible and speaking up. Not everyone is able to do that, for reasons of safety, mental health, lack of support, so it’s all the more important that the privileged amongst us stand up for them. Sometimes that means speaking up when someone says something discriminatory, sometimes it’s offering to be there, sometimes it’s as simple as wearing a badge or a shirt that identifies you as a supporter of the community. Pride provides hope for the future, especially for LGBTQ youth who may easily feel overlooked in the current world climate. Pride shows the world that we exist, that we’re not going anywhere, and we demand respect, healthcare and inclusion. I hope to see many of you at the rally this weekend!