By Kim Vance-Mubanga
Recently, after 17 years running an international human rights organization, I have begun working with Egale, Canada’s leading organization for 2SLGBTQI people and issues. While I still primarily work on international issues, I am much more immersed and engaged in what is happening across Canada. This feels a little like “coming home,” as I began international work through my involvement with Egale in the early 2000s.
During Halifax Pride this year, I was also invited to speak at the 25th anniversary of the Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project (NSRAP), a group I helped co-found when I was much more engaged in local/provincial/national advocacy around the same time (late 1990s early 2000s).
Being more in tune with local, provincial and national issues, after almost a 20-year gap, has allowed me to reflect on the gains we’ve made over this time, and some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. The gains are substantial, there’s no denying that. Public opinion in Canada on issues that concern 2SLGBTQI communities has shifted remarkably, and well beyond what can be accounted for just through generational change. Legislative and policy advancements have transformed the landscape for our communities in a relatively short period of time.
These normative equality gains are significant and not always easy political “wins,” but they are often easier to achieve than true change across the spectrum of our communities that requires a much deeper commitment to, and investment in, substantive equality measures.
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a litmus test for how far we’ve truly come, and the picture isn’t as pretty as Canada likes to portray within our borders and across the globe. In 2020 and 2021, Egale published two national research reports demonstrating that 2SLGBTQI people are highly and disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in most areas, especially Black, Indigenous and racialized members of our communities. It has never been more important to ensure adequate support for our communities, especially in the area of mental health supports and economic security.
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a litmus test for how far we’ve truly come, and the picture isn’t as pretty as Canada likes to portray within our borders and across the globe.
It’s important to embrace the reality that, as we move into the future, solutions to inequality do require a more meaningful, impactful and intersectional approach. Understanding the true reality for the full spectrum of 2SLGBTQI communities helps explain some of the tensions that we’ve witnessed around police participation in Pride events, for instance, or calls for the Black Lives Matter movement to be explicit in their recognition of violence targeting Blacks trans people. Tensions arise when normative gains paint a picture of equality that still remains aspirational for many members of the communities who are supposed to benefit from those gains.
It’s also important to view intersectionality not just as exploring linkages among groups of people, but also linkages in our response as a human race to the ongoing climate crisis. If you can’t see the links between 2SLGBTQI activism, look no further than the numerous news articles that pop up every time there is a climate emergency like a flood, wildfire or hurricane. High-ranking elected officials, religious leaders and influencers continually blame 2SLGBTQI communities for these disasters. Our communities are deeply impacted by these climate change deniers and blamers at the same time as we are disproportionately affected by the climate emergency itself. Living in coastal communities like Atlantic Canada, this could become a dangerous double whammy if we don’t adequately consider 2SLGBTQI communities in our climate change planning and response.
Along with the challenges and opportunities of an intersectional future, there is also a growing demand for the future to be “fluid” in its approaches to gender and sexuality. Fewer and fewer young people, and even those in my generation, are willing to accept a future that defines and restricts them according to limited ideas of gender or prescriptions on how to express (or not) their consensual emotional and erotic connection to other human beings. Even though I identify as a woman and use she/her pronouns, that doesn’t mean that I feel it’s appropriate for most things in my daily life to hinge on that. Gender markers on IDs, forms, surveys, etc. are rapidly changing and the United Nations has indicated that the bar for the inclusion of such personal information must be relevant, reasonable and necessary. Similarly, the letters and numbers in the ever-expanding 2SLGBTQI initialism will likely continue to expand as people feel freer to explore and express their true and evolving relationships to their own bodies and to others.
Rather than fear, or feel exhausted by this, I embrace a future of confident and radiant human beings in tune with themselves, their communities and the planet.
Kim Vance-Mubanga has spent much of her personal and professional life fighting for equality at the local, national and international level. She is a mother, spouse, non-profit director and proud member of the 2SLGBTQI community whose Nova Scotia roots run deep (she’s the great-granddaughter of a Bluenose captain). Email [email protected]
