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Photo by Mrs E Harris

Pride Week

Ms J Lach —

June is international Pride Month, and during this time, in Aotearoa, we are celebrating National School’s Pride Week. Our Rainbow Youth group discusses why celebrating Pride is important.

For the LGBTQ+, Queer or Rainbow community, talking about Pride and why it is important is obvious. But for some of us, it can be a confusing concept. Some people may wonder, “why do we need to celebrate Pride?”, “Why don’t we celebrate straight Pride?”, or “what are all those different flags for anyway and why does it matter?”.

To answer some of these questions, we need to first look at History. In the past, people were arrested, abused, and sometimes even killed based on their gender identity and sexual orientation. Laws were passed which made people in the Rainbow community excluded from experiencing even the most basic human rights such as access to health care. People were literally suffering solely because of how they identified and who they were attracted to. So the Rainbow community had to fight just to feel safe and gain the same rights as heterosexual, cis-gendered people. Although there have been many achievements, such as legalised same-sex marriage in New Zealand in 2013 and the international monitoring of the inclusion of gender and sexuality-diverse human rights in 2007, the Rainbow community are still experiencing exclusion not only globally but in Aotearoa as well.

So, we still have Pride month because gender and sexuality-diverse people still have work to do in terms of gaining equal ground with straight, cis-gendered people. Even in our daily lives, we can still hear voices saying that Rainbow identities do not matter and are not valid, which is further evidence that more understanding is needed. This is also clear in our national statistics which show just over 50% of gender diverse youth suffer from depression or anxiety due to the exclusion and harassment faced in their communities.

The great thing about gender, however, is that it is completely defined by society. So, in order to improve the mental health and overall wellbeing of our Rainbow community, all we have to do is learn about diversity and be inclusive of diverse people. It is that easy! That is why the Rainbow Youth group has created the flag display in Girton - so that we can learn about the various possible identities and recognise the diversity in our community.

If you would like to learn more about how to be inclusive of various genders and sexualities, visit InsideOUT’s website, and feel free to ask questions with some of our Rainbow Youth leaders. If you are a parent and want to know more about how to discuss these ideas with your gender or sexuality-diverse child, there are some helpful ideas in this InsideOUT Q&A resource here.