During the week of Apr. 19-24, the St. Michaels University School Senior School engaged in Pride Week, a student-led week aimed to build understanding, reflect on identity and strengthen a sense of belonging across the community. Each week, students gather in the school chapel for a community time. Often student-led, it offers an opportunity for students to share perspectives and learn from one another. This week, the Pride Alliance Club led with student voice in both speech and song.
One of those students was Grade 12's Peyton Driscoll who opened the morning with a reflection speech on visibility. Below is part of Peyton's speech from chapel:
Hi everyone, my name is Peyton and I’ve been asked to preface you all on the theme for this week's chapel: queer visibility, and what that looks like to me personally. According to Google, queer visibility is “the active public presence of LGBTQIA+ people” and while, sure, that is important, I would argue that queer visibility stems past simple presence in media. I think that queer visibility, first and foremost, begins with education.
There is a common sentiment that reads along the lines of “it shouldn’t have to happen to you for it to matter to you” empathy should not be reserved for those you relate to and I think that notion is very important when thinking about queer visibility, especially for those of you who are not queer at all.
Now I don’t mean to make this sound heavy but we, especially those of you who aren’t queer, all have a responsibility to educate ourselves before speaking on matters that concern the queer community, and I mean this in two ways. The first is in terms of representation, queer faces in media don’t mean much if they are written poorly. If they follow stereotypes all they do is push already existing narratives that cause other people to view the queer community in a light that we don’t particularly want to be seen in.
The second equally important area where education is a necessity is if you intend to form a social or political stance that surrounds the LGBTQIA+ community. I want to preface this by saying that my and other queer people’s existence are not a matter for political debate, despite this they commonly are and all I can really do about the matter is urge people to inform themselves before speaking on the topics. If someone chooses to disregard, or thinks a person's identity shouldn’t be recognized by law solely because they don’t understand it, that’s arrogance. They do not have the knowledge or understanding necessary to form a proper opinion on the topic. Now I’m not saying that other people's voices are unimportant, quite the opposite, actually. The queer community needs allies but those allies need to be properly informed on the topics they choose to speak on.
So for the sake of queer visibility I urge us all to take a few moments out of our day to learn a thing or two. Read an article about things currently affecting the LGBT community. Watch a documentary on queer history. Ask me for some TV and movie recommendations that contain proper queer representation and I will provide an extensive list.
Abandon the notion that it’s embarrassing to be “woke” because I promise you there is nothing more embarrassing than speaking loudly on a topic you don’t fully understand.
