Pride Month!

Written by: Madeleine Homer

Formed in 1970 in honour of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, Pride month is an annual celebration of 2SLGBTQ+ rights and a way to remember the sacrifices made in the fight for love.

To learn more about how to show our Pride, we had the pleasure of speaking to Ms. Salerno, one of the leaders of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) at Blakelock, about Pride at TAB.

INTERVIEWER: How has the level of acceptance towards the 2SLGBTQ+ community changed throughout the years at TAB?

MS. SALERNO: I'm very new to TAB. Having been hired in 2021, my experience with this has been limited as it relates to TAB. However, I do believe that visibility and conversations about issues faced by members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community has become more mainstream in recent years. The mainstreaming of these conversations, conversations we have been having comfortably within queer spaces for years, makes it so that acceptance is easier to facilitate in public spaces. It also makes it safer as an individual to hold people accountable for their homophobia and their choice to be bigoted. Many people are new to the idea that acceptance is more than tolerance. Some of us still have a long way to go, but now we are in a moment where it is much safer to demand better of them.

INTERVIEWER: Has it been a struggle in past years to organize celebrations for Pride at TAB?

MS. SALERNO: Absolutely. We are all trying to figure out how to foster and create communities in Covid/post-Covid. You have to accept that there is a level of activism and labour involved in being a member of any 2SLGBTQ+ space; many of us have struggled in even keeping our local lives organized (personal responsibilities, work, friends, family etc) let alone organizing an event associated with Pride across a broader community. We have a group of students who have been and are committed to our GSA meetings and I think about how that alone is a powerful thing. Holding space for people to simply be out and actively present in an affirming space is something to celebrate.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think the Blakelock community could do to further our acceptance of 2SLGBTQ+ people?

MS. SALERNO: It's hard to answer questions like this succinctly, because I don't think it's fair to simplify the complexity of "acceptance" by making it sound like there's a silver bullet that will put an end to there being "a lack of acceptance." We are all responsible for how much or how little we choose to know about something. For how much or how little we choose to empathize with experiences that don't mirror our own. My fear in answering questions like this is that it puts the onus on me, a queer person (who admittedly is a very palatable/privileged member of the queer community), to solve/resolve "acceptance" for cis people who aren't doing their own homework. What I can do is model respect and acceptance through my own actions. What I can do is live without shame and not accept that anyone believes there is any room in our school for anything but acceptance.

To decorate and raise awareness for Pride Month, library volunteers made rainbow hearts out of card stock. Julia Sheppard, a library volunteer and member of the Tabloid, commented on the creation of the hearts.

"We got a bunch of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple pieces of paper, and we made them into little hearts. We put them up around the library and the school. And we did that to promote positivity around 2SLGBTQ+ and show our support for Pride Month.¨

To make your own pride heart, follow the instructions on the link below:

https://www.twinkl.ca/resource/rainbow-heart-paper-garland-pride-crafts-t-tc-1654505556