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We stand at a pivotal moment in 2SLGBTQ+ history in Halifax. We ask important questions: If our community spaces do not create a safe enough environment for our most marginalized members to contribute fully and we force conversations to continue on without them, who is being served? If our membership and decision making processes allow for violence, alienation and the silencing of queer and trans voices, particularly those of our Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) community, who is being heard?
This year, Queer Arabs of Halifax put forward a resolution at the Halifax Pride AGM after raising concerns of content that pinkwashes our current struggles and trauma were not addressed by the organization. Pinkwashing is the use of claims to 2SLGBT friendliness by governments, corporations or organizations to divert attention from their violations of human rights or policies. The resolution specifically targeted the pinkwashing of violations of international humanitarian law by foreign governments; violations many members have experienced directly, having been racially profiled and denied basic human rights. Violations many members continue to suffer from.
After demonstrating on multiple occasions how harmful the presence of pinkwashing is, no action was taken to ensure QAH and other BIPOC groups their inclusion. On the contrary, at the Halifax Pride AGM their voices were alienated further by the meeting’s oppositional format pitting sides against one another. The platform meant to allow the 2SLGBTQ+ community to make changes to our festival was taken advantage of. A strongly lobbied political view ultimately silenced and alienated the 2SLGBTQ+ members raising their concerns. The problem is not about the motion being defeated, it is about the way that its defeat was allowed in such a divisive, harmful and violent manner. Their voices were pushed aside and marginalized further on the expense of the already empowered and privileged voices.
We must allow space for our queer and trans BIPOC community to heal. But there are grassroots efforts underway to support our BIPOC community through donations of meals, assistance with chores and offering meeting spaces. We must organize. This will take time and exertion of mental and emotional energies. Especially on issues of inclusivity and intersectionality, white queer and trans people must listen, respond to and amplify the concerns of our BIPOC community. White queer and trans people must do the vital work of unlearning white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, anti-blackness and anti-Indigeneity without burdening the queer and trans BIPOC community with ownership over that education. White queer and trans people must act when approached directly by marginalized groups within the 2SLGBTQ+ community expressing concerns. In the case of Queer Arabs of Halifax’s concerns, this did not happen.
We stand at a crossroads: Down one path, we continue to attend the needs of our loudest and most privileged members. Down the other, we centre the needs of our most vulnerable members to ensure there can be justice and liberation for all. Pinkwashing lies at the core of queer-centred exploitation. It is not just an important matter in queer circles, but a necessary value for legitimacy. Once a queer-focused organization explicitly allows for pinkwashing to thrive within it, the spirit of the entire movement has been compromised and the cause is lost.
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This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2016.
Oh god… now I’m a 2sl? WTF is that? I have to be honest when I say that I didn’t even bother to read the article once I read “2SL…”. This expansion of the gay community is becoming absolutely foolish. Please stop trying to alter my identity. The rest of you can do whatever the fuck you want. I don’t care anymore.
As a white queer person, it is vital for us to be taking the lead on our own unlearning. There are so many opportunities popping up after the AGM — attend a workshop! Have conversations with other white people!
As a sidenote: the move to 2SLGBTQ+ is intended to centre Two-Spirit experience and not have it become an afterthought of the ‘+’. Two-Spirit experience is unique from our western understanding of gender and sexuality and deserves its full and adequate representation. A reminder that we live on unceded Mi’kmaw territory in K’jipuktuk.
It 2S, METHINKSYHZ, not 2SL. It stands for 2 Spirited. It’s not altering your identity, and it’s not expanding the community, it’s recognizing indiginous culture and gender tradition that has existed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Canada long before the colonialists came here and attempted to destroy it via oppression and assimilation. I’d say learn about it, but as you’re not willing to read an article that specifically promotes unlearning white supremacy and anti-indignity because of an extra 2 characters in an acronym that you decide to make about you I highly doubt that would happen.
Expansion = inclusion.
Pick the letter designation that applies to you YHZ. No one else’s sexuality alters your own.
For Methinksyhz: good news! Unless you’re indigenous and claim a Two-Spirit identity, you’re not 2S. Further good news: 2SLGBTQ+ is an umbrella term for a collection of different identities, so it doesn’t alter your own identity in the slightest, just articulates what the umbrella includes more precisely. It’s easy to be dismissive and resistant to change when the current term already includes you. Consider that if a tiny thing like a slightly altered acronym keeps you from hearing a very important message, you probably just wanted an excuse not to hear it in the first place. Sorry not sorry it’s so threatening to you to have other identities besides your own acknowledged and centred. As a white, queer person, I’m gonna be over hear listening.
Thank you, QAH, for making your voices heard once again despite implicit and explicit attempts to silence you. Instead of last week’s Pride AGM being remembered as a historical moment of recognition of long-standing issues between Pride and the queer, trans, and two-spirit BIPOC community, it will instead be remembered as the infamous occasion when Pride was hijacked by mostly non-BIPOC straight and cis people for their own interests. And the serving Pride board sat there and let it happen.
Most of us from the 2SLGBTQ+ community in that room that night wanted to move this event, and our community in general, forward towards something better. What is apparent now is that unless Halifax Pride radically transforms the way that it operates and who it prioritizes, the future of our community will be built outside of Halifax Pride.
We require spaces where BIPOC voices don’t have to compete with dominant white homonormative voices in order to be heard. We need spaces that explicitly value racial justice and decolonization. We need non-BIPOC folx in 2SLGBTQ+ spaces to take a seat for once. I believe we can work towards this, but Halifax Pride as it currently stands is not the medium through which this will happen.
No, it DOES alter my identity by claiming I am part of a community of which I am not. I am not a lesbian, bisexual, trans, two-spirited or even queer (whatever the fuck that is); and then there’s the “+” – *head explodes.
I am gay. Period. The issues I face differ significantly from the issues faced by a trans person or even lesbians. The expectation that I will adopt this crazy acronym to identify myself is preposterous. Yet if I don’t, I’m seen as disrespectful.
No, go play in your crazy sandbox. I’ll take the beach.
Folx? BWAHAHAHAHA!
I think we finally ran out of acronyms…
Again, nobody is asking you to use the acronym to identify yourself, so I’m not sure why you’re so upset? If you’re only talking about yourself, go ahead and use whatever term applies. If you’re only talking about people exactly like you, use whatever term applies. This article is about a wider community, the Halifax Pride community, which does include more than the G, so it’s using the acronym that most accurately describes it. Your comment could be read as coming from someone who is upset that people besides gay people are included in Pride, which is…ridiculous and I hope not true, but that’s how you’re coming across.
Anyway, language is a beautiful thing that evolves to meet our ever-changing needs, I think that’s neat-o, sorry not sorry it makes you angry.
Another person’s existence does not negate yours in any way YHZ. Who thinks this way? Wow.
nicolem (sorry – forgot you): I am not part of the “G” in the 2SLGBTQ+ commuinty; never have been and refuse to be.
This is all very fanciful but to put it more simply: Queer Arabs of Halifax put forward a motion to have all mention and promotion of LGBTQ events in Israel removed from Halifax Pride due to QAH’s opposition to Israeli government policies. The problem with this logic is a) it seeks to silence those that QAH disagrees with and b) it implies that support for LGBTQ in a given country/area automatically means support for that government’s policies. We would find it ludicrous if a resolution was passed proposing to ban the mention of an LGBTQ in Boston because we are against the US government’s policies in Syria and Iraq, and yet this is exactly the same logic at work in the resolution. In addition to all of this, the LGBTQ community in Israel is a beacon of tolerance in a sea of intolerance throughout the Middle East. Instead of trying to stigmatize and exclude Israel’s LGBTQ community, we should recognize and applaud the positive steps that Israel ALONE among the Middle Eastern states has taken to protect LGBTQ rights, for example the right to adopt, the right to openly serve in the military etc.
While everybody was busy arguing about their big steaming tureen of tripe infused alphabet soup, did anybody bother to notice that this “statement” reads like an ultimatum? You may wish to think twice about banning police officers from your next parade, if you still take the concept of “safe space” seriously.
Of course it’s easier and safer to quibble about “pinkwashing” than to actually confront the execrable human rights records of those nations whose populations self identify as “Arab”
What cutesy term could you come up with for that? “Sandblasting” perhaps.
http://www.advocate.com/world/2016/5/27/12…
Man, who would have guessed trying to pass antisemitic motions in 2016 wouldn’t go over well?
Offshore politics have no business on Canadian soil. Here we all strive to get along and fit in despite our differences. Here, we embrace each other. We stand together. It is what makes Canada great. No self-interest group gets to change that. We are all Canadians first. With the exception of Indigenous peoples, one’s country of origin, its government, politics and religions are secondary. O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
The QAH wants to censor a group that does not agree with their views. I disagree with both of their views but they should be allowed to say what they want
Halifax Pride does not stand at a crossroads. This is over the QAH wanting a group and their views who they don’t like banned and that is clearly censorship. Let both sides say what ever they want. Halifax Pride should learn from example at Pride Toronto when a group known as the QuAIA was banned over their views and this is just the other way around. No one is saying the QAH isn’t welcomed but what they want. What they are wanting is nothing short of censorship.
In the interests of community cohesion, perhaps next year’s Parade could use The Beneficent Android Brewing Co.’s North End location as it’s starting point. So nobody feels unwelcome, or left out
I disagree Oceanchick. I for one do not get along (for the sake of being Canadian) and I don’t fit together with my community (for the sake of fitting in). I think that’s deluded reasoning…
“White queer and trans people must do the vital work of unlearning white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, anti-blackness and anti-Indigeneity without burdening the queer and trans BIPOC community with ownership over that education.” Well said!!!
“Unlearning white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, anti-blackness and anti-Indigeneity…”
That one statement paints caucasians with one brush. Assuming all white people align themselves with bigots and racists is racism.
Sadly, a true safe space for all can and will never be achieved. Why? It’s called the human condition. For every move to be inclusive of one group will alienate another group. It’s a noble and honourable cause… but sadly completely unattainable. I guess the moral is that we keep striving for perfection, but realize it will never come.
Name calling and blame pointing those who disagree with those have have different opinions on how to move forward is detrimental, but these days seems par for the course. Why discuss and debate when we can shut down and diminish opinions.
As A Gay man of 53, with citizenship in the US and CA., I have seen the transformation of the whole of pride become increasingly more mainstream to include all those who identify as alternative. But, in the same breath, become political in areas which remove it from its original inception of pride and power of people who fall out of the binary order of cis lifestyles. Somehow, the GL has been diluted and lost in a maelstrom of acronymic inclusivity. I was actively involved in the beginning of Baltimore’s GLCCB (Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore as well as HERO and the collaboration between the Baltimore gays and the DC gays in putting together the Pride festivals from the NY model. In addition I have been involved with COMPASS in West Palm Beach, and in all of those organizations, which had spread out from NY to San Fransisco. I have not once witnessed the dysfunction that is apparently rampant in the highly diluted mission of the Halifax Pride Organization. The only thing that I see from the reports making the media trail, is that, the pride that I attended 25 yrs. ago in Halifax that had an astounding 200 people in attendance has become nothing more that a paycheck for a few who want to reap off of those early Gay pioneers of Stonewall. Marketing, is great for revenue, but then, that wasn’t what Pride was created for.