On Thursday 9th June a march will be held through Wellington city to stop homophobia and transphobia on our streets.
Queer the Night was inspired by the Reclaim the Night philosophy and initiated in response to a couple of recent incidents where members of the queer community were assaulted in central Wellington. To many, these were a shocking reminder that although we've come far, there are still dangers to those who are or are perceived as being outside heterosexual norms. To others, dealing with homophobia or transphobia on the streets in an everyday experience. Either way, it is unacceptable that any of us are made to fear physical or verbal abuse in our city.
At the same time, we want to celebrate the gains made in this area, and offer our solidarity to those fighting homophobia and transphobia in places it may be even more potent; in their schools, their homes, their workplaces and throughout the world.
We will be marching on Thursday 9th June, meeting at 7pm at Waitangi Park (formerly Chaffers), traveling to Cuba St where there will be guest speakers and an open mic. Please bring glow sticks, torches, etc to light up our city. All supporters welcome.
5 comments:
If you don't support trans people or trans rights or think that trans people aren't 'really' the sex/gender they say they are, then please don't come.
Great stuff! Love the poster too :-)
We seem to have lost at least one comment on this post while Blogger was playing up - V (and anyone else) please feel free to comment again, sorry about this. Thanks I/S and anthea for pointing out the problem.
Thanks, I'll elaborate a little further than I did in my previous post:
Queer the Night is a march against Homophobia AND Transphobia.
If you think homophobia is wrong, but don't care about transphobia, then please don't come.
Same goes if you don't think trans people are really the gender/sex they say they are or if you think this would be a superduper chance to go along and pester trans people with questions about being trans, questions about their transition, questions about their genitals or any other cis fuckery that you think might be appropriate, due to having an essentially captive audience.
We are going to get enough of that crap from members of the general public without the people on the march contributing to making us feel uncomfortable or threatened.
But if you are cool with trans people and can support us while being respectful to our identities and also think that transphobia is really, really wrong, then please come along.
Thanks Julie for sorting this out and V for taking the time to repost/expand.
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