“Out of the closet, into the streets!” – Pride Month, Political Belonging, and Queerness

OPSEU/SEFPO looks forward to celebrating Pride Month for the entirety of June alongside our 2SLGBTQIA+members (two spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual), community, and their allies.

The history of Pride is an oft-repeated narrative of protest. The first brick thrown at Stonewall has been cemented as a narrative icon for the political origins of Pride. But even before Stonewall, the Compton’s Cafeteria riot of 1966 San Francisco is an earlier historical marker of everyday people rising up against the routine police violence wielded against drag queens and trans people, particularly trans women. Across the pond in France, gay activism was inherently bound up with an anti-capitalist perspective. Groups like the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR) and the Red Dykes (Gouines Rouges) exercised an expanded political imagination informed by workers’ struggles against poverty pay and broader struggles against poor housing conditions and racism.

This year marked the 43rd anniversary of the violent Toronto Bathhouse Raids. During a coordinated raid by Toronto police, patrons of four bathhouses in downtown Toronto (The Barracks, The Club, Richmond Street Health Emporium, and Roman II Health and Recreation Spa) were brutalized and humiliated.  Nearly 200 officers stormed the facilities, ensuring massive destruction to the venues ensued and  maximum trauma resulted, before marched patrons out. Local media had been tipped off and eagerly featured the raid, “outing” a significant number of these people. The operation, named “Operation Soap,” was organized by the department’s Morality Squad and saw 286 men charged for being found in a common bawdy house (a brothel), yet not one charge of prostitution was ever laid.

Operation Soap marked a turning point for the Toronto queer community, which pronounced it would take “No More Shit” (a popular slogan) from the public, media, and police. Par for the course, people took to direct action and mass protest against what has been referred to as “Our Stonewall” and linked the fight to decades of police brutality faced by Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities.

History teaches us that queer organizing has never unfolded in isolation from social struggles. The silo’ing of our struggles is undoubtedly a symptom of the present moment: to make them easier to market, to categorize, to classify for grant application or corporate sponsorships. In such a context, queerness may appear as an individualized identity – instead of a community, a dynamic history, and a way of relating to each other and organizing the world.

It is the frame of our shared queerness, as a 2SLGBTQIA+ community, which allows us to understand the pressing issues of our time with greater clarity. This clarity illuminates that colonial violence, the siege on the Palestinian people, and oppression everywhere are a worker issue and a queer issue. Our hearts have broken seeing the last words of queer Palestinians in Gaza immortalized through the “Queering the Map” project – and this month, we invite OPSEU/SEFPO members to read our statement from May, “Solidarity with Palestine: A 2SLGBTQIA+ Perspective.”

Our interconnection is our strength. Our liberty is bound together in shared struggles because the roots of violence are always entangled. The struggle for queer liberation is connected to every struggle as it requires a total transformation of a society which has Othered queer people for decades.

The recent onslaught in Canada and the United States on queer and trans people has been adopted not only by right-wing organized hate, but also everyday people – our neighbours, colleagues, even coworkers. When power is under threat, there is always a need for a scapegoat at fault to keep us divided. The needle may spin from drag queens to immigrants or welfare recipients, but the intention is the same: to distract us from unequal wealth distribution and corporate monopolies; to keep us from taking our power back; to prevent the people from transforming from a mass into an organized force to be reckoned with.

Pride Month reminds us that the single most important task of our lifetime is to build the bonds of solidarity. Queer history teaches us that when we learn to see a shared fight reflected in each others’ struggles, the power to transform our living and working conditions becomes limitless.

Find and join a pride event near you –

Bay of Quinte Pride Downtown – Belleville, ON June 1-8, 2024 https://bayofquintepride.ca/

Brantford Pride Mohawk Park – Brantford, ON June 15, 2024 https://brantfordpride.com/

Brockville Pride Hardy Park – Brockville, ON June 3-9, 2024 https://www.brockvillepride.com/

Chatham-Kent Pride Chatham-Kent, ON August 10–17, 2024 https://www.ckpride.com/

Durham Pride Arbour Park – Durham, ON June 2, 2024 https://www.pridedurham.ca/

Elliot Lake Pride May 31 – June 1, 2024 http://www.elpride.ca/

Guelph Pride Guelph, ON June 6-16, 2024 https://www.guelphpride.com/index.html

Pride Hamilton Pier 4 Park – Hamilton, ON August 10, 2024 https://www.pridehamilton.com/

Kincardine Pride Downtown – Kincardine, ON June 22, 2024 https://kincardinepride.ca/

Lanark County Pride Perth Pride Parade – Perth, ON June 1, 2024 https://www.queerconnectionlanark.ca/

Pride London Victoria Park – London, ON June 12-21, 2024 https://www.pridelondon.ca/

Pride Niagara St. Catherines, ON June 1–9, 2024 https://www.prideniagara.com/

Pembroke Pride Upper Ottawa Valley Heritage Centre – Pembroke, ON June 2, 2024 https://www.instagram.com/pridepembroke/

Peterborough-Nogojiwanong Pride Peterborough, ON September 20-29, 2024 http://peterboroughpride.ca/

Capital Pride Ottawa, ON June 17-25, 2024 https://capitalpride.ca/get-involved-2/

Sault Prie Sault Ste Marie, ON July 20-21, 2024 https://www.saultpride.ca/

Pride Toronto Main Parade – Ramsden Park – Toronto, ON June 30, 2024 https://www.pridetoronto.com/

Thunder Pride Waverly Park – Thunder Bay, ON June 15, 2024 https://thunderpride.ca/

Windsor-Essex Pride Fest August 6-11, 2024 https://www.facebook.com/events/760327132937194

York Pride Newmarket, ON June 14-15, 2024 https://yorkpride.ca/