With the recent Pride week and parade, the 30th anniversary of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (on through Aug. 19) and the City of Vancouver naming 2018 as Year of the Queer, there has been an increase in conversation around the rainbow – what it symbolizes and where it ought to be (or not).
The most proud are often the most loud, but amid the celebrations there has been a different ‘coming out.’
A quiet but vicious defacing of the new rainbow crosswalk in White Rock (not the only rainbow crosswalk defaced in the Lower Mainland) occurred just weeks after it was installed.
There are also questions that I believe are coming from a place of trying to understand what the colourful fuss is all about. Why are people talking about sexual preferences?
And why aren’t we painting crosswalks for all kinds of community groups within our neighbourhoods?
While it might seem like sexual preference and gender identity are nobody else’s business, there are some people hell-bent on making it their business, and making the lives of those whose preferences differ from theirs a nightmare.
It’s from a very privileged, cushy, heterosexual, mainstream seat we sit on that gives us the perspective that being gay is a private matter and one that nobody cares about.
People do care, unfortunately. And they are angry or uncomfortable or whatever judgmental feeling comes from not understanding that, underneath the difference in sexual preference or gender identity, we’re still talking about human beings.
As far as crosswalks for all community groups, this is something I address when people ask why there is a movement called Black Lives Matter when, indeed, all lives matter.
The reason we need a movement to remind people that some lives do matter is because historically, and even in the present-day, these lives garner less respect than others.
Sometimes even to a deadly degree. People are attacked because they are gay. People are turned away from establishments because they are transgender.
People are mocked because the pronouns they identify with are different from what someone else would prescribe them.
So, while it seems as though there is all this fanfare and hoopla around who people want to sleep with, a painted crosswalk is only a tiny show of support for our fellow human beings who have every right to be who they are – but who have been through hell instead.
Whether we are talking about homophobia or Islamophobia or racism, the familiar question of ‘Why is this a big deal?’ is one to be examined.
When people are demanding better treatment, it isn’t up to those of us who already have it to decide whether or not the other actually needs it.
When people are demanding more conversation and understanding around a social issue, it isn’t up to those of us who feel unaffected by it to decide whether a conversation deserves the space.
I’m glad the questions are being asked because it gives us all the opportunity to share, in a productive way, the perspective with which we are viewing the situation. From my lenses, we could definitely stand to talk about love a lot more.
Columnist Taslim Jaffer writes monthly on multicultural connections.