**This was taken from my old blog**

Following Pride Toronto's decision to censor the word "Apartheid" from the festival I've found myself feeling increasingly angry. This just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel like what Pride is supposed to be about. It's been causing me to reflect on my experience of Pride.

At 16, I went on a camping trip with my family and I brought along my girlfriend at the time under the guise of "best friend" because I wasn't out to my parents. I forget what happened but my Mom made a comment that perhaps we should "be at the parade". I said I had no idea what my Mom was talking about and though she doubted me, it was the truth. Later that night, laying in a tent in the middle of a provincial park, my then one year old daughter tucked safely in a sleeping bag, my girlfriend told me about the Pride Parade. I was flabbergasted. Living in Brantford, a small town with even smaller ideals, I had no idea that such a thing existed. Over the next few days I sat huddled in the dining tent while my parents were at the beach reading the Toronto Star's extensive coverage of Toronto Pride including a centerfold-type spread focussing on queer youth. As I read about events like the Pride Prom and looked at pictures of other queer kids, I took a secret vow that the next year I would be at Pride.

Over the next two years a lot happened. I came out to my parents, I was more out at school and I got gaybashed repeatedly. Finally one night I got beat up, left lying in a park while all my friends took off. The only thing that stopped my basher was two women leaving a bar who saw her repeatedly kicking me in the face with her steel-toed boots who called the police. When I returned to my apartment I found everything of any value missing, everything was trashed, and the words "dyke" and "queer" were scrawled across my walls in blood-red markers. My Dad came and helped me and a friend put all my stuff in a van, took it all to my parent's house, and leaving my daughter in my parents care I caught a 4am bus to Toronto. 

I squatted, I lived on the streets, I stayed in shelters and finally got too sick living on the streets and had to return home. I hid in my parents house for a couple months and then moved back to Toronto where I got an apartment with my daughter and my girlfriend. This all happened just in time for Pride 1998. 

For me that year, Pride was a dreamland. I kept finding myself welling up with tears as I walked down Yonge Street marching surrounded my thousands of proud, sexy, queer women. I still remember them, and the impact they had on my sense of self worth. Some of them I can now call friends even. I had never seen such strong women, unabashedly showing the world that they were queer and proud and that they didn't care what others thought. And it wasn't just about queerness. It was about sexuality, body acceptance and sisterhood. I'll never forget seeing Leanne Heartline in a leopard print outfit with a thong waving a paddle at anyone who dared to get close to her. I was so inspired in that moment to love myself. Finally.

Over the years Pride looked different. The next year I was part of Canada's first queer Scouting group and we arranged with the help of U of T to open the courtyard in University College to allow queer kids coming from other cities who had little resources to set up tents so they could camp instead of paying for hotels and we provided pizza. The year after that I was the curator for the Fruit Loopz Pride Youth Stage, my first real job. In the following years there were so many moments, organising the U of T Genderqueer group to march on bikes, reading spoken word during the Gen X Bears stage, performing drag, doing burlesque, going topless, drinking vodka and slushie mixtures out of nalgenes. But the one thing that always remained constant was that moment, the same one I felt my first pride, where I step back for a second and really stop to take in what's going on around me and realise how lucky I am. How privildged I have been to have a community that was willing to stand up for what it believes in. A community where we walk proud of who we are and we support one another. The parade is a pretty magical moment. Dykes with tykes marching next to Totally Naked Toronto, followed by the Student Christian Movement. 

Last year I got to march with Maggies, Toronto. When we rounded the corner from Bloor to Yonge, I laughed to myself as fifteen or so police officers doing crowd control took a moment to stop and stare at our large group of several hundred sex workers and their supporters. I thought to myself, wow, here are the people that are the biggest threat to sex workers rights and through our strength in numbers, there is no threat. We were able to carry signs that read slogans like "Decriminalise Sex Work Now" and "You say Whore like it's a bad thing", wave them in the cops face and there was nothing they could do. It was our parade.

But this year Pride feels different. For the first time ever I have to stop and think about what I'm allowed to say or wear and what sign I'm allowed to carry. I have been explicitly told that if I wear a shirt saying "Queer Against Israeli Apartheid" I will be removed from the parade. I don't know if I'll have that goosebump-inducing moment where I stand at the top of the parade, look down Yonge Street and think, "yes, this is my community and this was created for me". No, this year I will think that this looks like oppression. This was not created for all of us. I feel like Pride has lost its magic.

I worry about the kids, you know, sitting in a campground with their parents and their girlfriends. The kids who are gonna get beat up, verbally assaulted and feel like their lives aren't worth living. The kids who are gonna pick up a paper and instead of finding a glimpse of paradise compared to their small towns, are gonna find another place that feels eerily familiar. A space where they are told what is and isn't acceptable, what they can and cannot say, and how they can and cannot express themselves. I wonder if they will feel the same excitement that I did, a desperate need to experience freedom, or if they will find that Pride, like other places is willing to bow down to the powers that be, all in the name of funding and corporate sponsorship. And I hope that as a community we can change that reality. I hope that we can reclaim Pride as our own and make it what it started off as in 1981-a political movement based on freedom. I hope that we can return to our roots and make Pride become what it was meant to be.