The first time I ever attended a pride parade was through the company I was working with at the time. I went in solidarity with other friends who I worked with who were part of the LGBTQ+ community to show support. I always thought I was just an ally to the community, but never fully part of the community. At this time, I thought I was a straight woman, however, a few years later that would change. I had always thought women were attractive, but never really paid it much attention because I could not imagine myself being in a relationship with a woman, nor could I ever imagine marrying one. In my mind, this must have meant I was solely interested in men. That was until I came across videos on “compulsory heterosexuality” on YouTube. 

Through these videos, I discovered that many women had the same experience I had. These women found other women attractive, but never considered having a relationship with a woman because they assumed they could only really like men because that is the norm in society. These women had always been in relationships with men, but later decided to explore their sexuality. The videos really opened my eyes and made me reflect on my own sexuality. Later, I discovered I was not straight, but I was actually bisexual. 

Making the discovery that I was bisexual was scary at first. When I was in high school, people still called things “gay” in a derogatory way and were not always welcoming to people who were different. Being gay was becoming more acceptable, but it was still relatively uncommon to know many gay people. I had also never heard of the term “bisexual” throughout high school.

That is a reason why I think sex education for youth is so important.  It is astounding that today, there is still so much resistance around sex education in school. Ontario’s Conservative government went so far as to try and rescind education on topics such as homophobia, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc., which was thankfully not done (MacDonald & Dobrowolsky, 2020). In fact, the government was warned that reverting to 1998 sex education could potentially be viewed as outdated in comparison to what the Liberals introduced to the 2014 curriculum in Ontario (MacDonald & Dobrowolsky, 2020). We should be encouraging youth to explore and find out who they are, not setting out a status quo that simply does not exist for everyone. Sometimes I wonder if I had been introduced to bisexuality through sex education in high school, maybe I would have made the discovery sooner and would not have struggled so much to come to terms with it on my own.

Having a community to go to was very relieving, because even if no one in your family truly understood how you felt, at least there was the LGBTQ+ community there to support you… sometimes. Every community has its flaws, the LGBTQ+ being no exception. As a bisexual, at times you feel left out or excluded for not being “gay” enough. There are times when you are told by your own community that you do not belong because you may be in a straight passing relationship.

With the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), we have also had to see the LGBTQ+ community stand up to try and support people of colour within the community a little more as well. BLM has called for many pride parades across Canada to remove police presence from the parades to make it a safer environment for people of colour in attendance (DeGagne, 2020). People of colour, Indigenous peoples, and gender, non-conforming people are often more likely to experience policy brutality than their caucasian counterparts in the LGBTQ+ community (DeGagne, 2020). Everyone deserves to feel safe at a pride event, but there has been resistance from Pride organizers to meet this request.

We should also be encouraging people from the LGBTQ+ community to enter politics, as they are grossly underrepresented in our current government. The underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ peoples in government leads to less representation in public policy (Ashe, 2020). I feel like a lot of action taken on behalf of the government sometimes appears as tokenism. The government attempts to seem inclusive and may pass policy that they may think we want on our behalf but speaking on behalf of a community is much different than including the community in these decisions.