Imagine being afraid of losing any new friend you make because of whom you love.
With heterosexuality being the default in society, Kaitlin Sitko finds it frustrating when everyone assumes she’s straight, and it can be tiring “coming out to people time after time,” she said.
For the most part, people are okay when she tells them she is a lesbian, but there is always that moment of trepidation as she’s about to make the big reveal.
“It’s a very sad thought to wonder, this person, this co-worker, this friend at school that I was getting along with really well, are they going to give up on me once I divulge this piece of information?” she said. It’s a topic that comes up in any friendship.
“Eventually the conversation will fall to relationships and I will have to subtlety sneak it in and wait for people’s reactions,” Sitko said. This involves assessing every new relationship to try to figure out whether the person is going to be supportive or not, and the fear she will have to “say good-bye” to this new friendship.
Sitko has sat through several public meetings where her identity as a lesbian has been questioned, including the school board’s SOGI policy meetings and, recently, a council meeting at which the proposal to paint a permanent rainbow crosswalk on Minoru Boulevard was discussed. For almost two hours, speaker after speaking argued against the crosswalk.
Public meeting humiliating
“It’s an incredibly humiliating and degrading experience to sit and hear person after person stand up, go to the microphone and basically explain why they think you don’t really matter as a person, why your rights don’t matter, (why) your freedom, your happiness, your well-being should not be valued,” she said.
At the recent council meeting where about 20 people spoke against the City of Richmond painting a permanent rainbow crosswalk leading up to Pride Week, people weren’t saying outright they were against the crosswalk, Sitko said, but they used “flimsy arguments” like the cost of $15,000, the fact it would be permanent, that it might be a distraction and that not enough consultation was done.
“You could tell they were looking for excuses, something to cling onto to argue against it without saying they didn’t want it there because they didn’t want a pride symbol in a crosswalk,” she said.
Sitko said she’s lived a sheltered life, surrounded by supportive family, friends and teachers. The only homophobia she’d been exposed to was online and “everyone’s mean online,” she added.
So when she first went to a SOGI policy meeting, the arguments against the LGBTQ2S community came as a shock to her.
Arguments against the SOGI policy included saying sexual orientation is a private family issue and that there already were anti-discrimination laws protecting all youth, be they gay or of any other minority group.
Sitko’s knee-jerk reaction is to get angry at anti-LGBTQ2S rhetoric. It’s hard to be civil with people who are “blatantly attacking you for no reason,” she said.
But if she could calmly respond, she would ask how the fact someone is LGBTQ2S affects anyone else’s life. Everyone else is still able to enjoy their life with friends and family, and it doesn’t infringe on any of their rights, Sitko said.
“These people – my people – the LGBTQ community, getting the rights and protections that we deserve, it isn’t going to make your life worse in any way, it’s not going to change anything for you, but it will make all the difference for us,” Sitko said. “So I don’t understand why you’re so against us, if it really isn’t going to affect you in any way.”
Myths fuel misconceptions
Sitko said she used to be confused when she encountered homophobia because she couldn’t understand the logic. When she dug deeper, she found a lot of misunderstandings, myths and stories, for example, that gay people choose to be gay, that gay people are pedophiles, or that exposure to gay people can rub off as a “virus or disease” or make children gay, Sitko explained, and she finds it hard to convince people otherwise.
“You can try arguing with these people, but in the end, it’s just like talking to a brick wall or an inanimate object — they just won’t receive anything you’re saying,” she said. “They just tune you out and stick to what they believe.”
For Jaiden Dunham, who goes by the pronoun “they,” all that the LGBTQ2S community wants is to be welcomed and accepted, not to get any special privileges. Dunham said, every once in a while, they get challenged, and, at first, they try to remain polite because people are curious and often don’t have the right information.
But other times, the conversation veers off into an argument where people try to convince Dunham of their point of view.
“Sometimes they don’t want to understand, they keep asking you to see their point,” they said.
What’s important, though, is that Dunham’s family has always supported and accepted them.
“That’s what matters to me,” Dunham said.
The first time Sitko saw a rainbow crosswalk was in Portland, and she was thrilled to see it. While it’s just paint on a crosswalk, its symbolism made her feel loved, accepted and welcomed into the community, she said.
Natalie Caras, who describes herself as pan-sexual (meaning attracted to people regardless of their sex or gender), said it was the “coolest thing” to hear Richmond, her hometown, was getting a rainbow crosswalk. She likes the one on Davie Street, a neighbourhood where she says LGBTQ2S people feel safe because they are accepted.
“By Richmond doing that, it’s a way of Richmond saying ‘we accept you, too,’” Caras said.
Sitko’s mother, Lisa Descary, said her daughter has always had a supportive family and friend group. But as the co-sponsor of the Rainbow Club at Steveston-London secondary, Descary sees some kids who don’t have that same kind of support in place.
The first time her heart really stopped because of homophobic attitudes was at the first SOGI policy meeting she attended with her daughter — the contempt for the LGBTQ2S people in attendance was obvious, she recalls.
The second one, in June 2018, was worse as people were yelling, booing, banging sticks against the bleachers and speaking out against a policy meant to protect LGBTQ2S youth.
Descary’s “mama bear” instincts kicked in.
“I started to question bringing vulnerable teenagers to meetings where person after person after person gets up to the microphone (to speak against the SOGI policy),” Descary said.
The City of Richmond painted its rainbow crosswalk this past weekend. The only councillor to vote against it was Chak Au.
Descary said she was surprised Richmond got a rainbow crosswalk because she believes it to be a fairly conservative community.
But such symbols are a way to move societal perceptions. When kids from her rainbow club heard a rainbow crosswalk was being created in Richmond, they were so excited.
“People kind of pooh-pooh it, but it’s all part of being able to point to it and say look, deal with it, this is where society is now,” Descary said.
