Today, on International Pride Day, Anna Dituri, Board President of Up North Pride, shares thoughts on safe spaces and mutual respect. As told to Jeff Smith.
When I think about this day, International LGBT Pride Day, the thing that first comes to mind is the need for a safe place and safe communication. Even if you don’t know a person, you can still be kind to them. Even if they come from a background that is different from yours, you can still be kind to them. You can create safe dialog. There has to be a base level of human decency in our every interaction. And I think that’s such a struggle these days, just being kind to one another. And I don’t mean just within the queer community … it feels like that for anybody and everybody. We have to respect each other. We have to care about other humans, or we’re not going to like where we’re headed.
At Up North Pride, where I’m board president, the public was constantly asking us to help them find safe spaces, safe people to deal with in different fields, like doctor’s offices, law firms, Realtors … and we were realizing that instead of just responding one by one to people with our recommendations, we could have a directory. There was a directory that already existed, created by a wonderful small group, but it needed some growth. And so now we have a resource directory on our website where people can go just to get those lists and names of safe spaces.
The average person in Traverse City might be surprised to learn there’s a whole group of people in our community that has to take special steps to feel safe and wants and needs a directory of people to help. For example, I might get an email that says, “My child wants to meet other children like themselves, and I have no idea where to go. What can we do?” I get that request monthly. We’ve had requests where somebody doesn’t feel comfortable contacting a Realtor to look for a home when they have a same sex partner, or same sex spouse. So it’s those kinds of things. Yes, same-sex marriage was legalized 10 years ago, but we are constantly under threat through legislation to walk that back. It’s those kinds of aggressions that are contributing to people not feeling safe with certain people or in certain situations.
Another local example that happened recently. A salon owner made a statement on social media that members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community were not welcome in her space and then made a really derogatory comment about people in that community. It made national news, and I don’t want our community to make national news for hatred.
That was a really clear indication to our community that we were not safe in a specific business. That went through the proper channels of a lawsuit, but that was a really clear example of how a business owner wanted to challenge the law because there was a national hot button topic that convinced her that she could be openly hateful. So we have that close-to-home example of how the tone in our nation has shifted politically, where people are more comfortable being open with their hatred. Locals organized around it, and people got legal representation and went through the proper channels. But that all reiterated the fact that not every space up here is safe and we have to be mindful of that. Not everybody feels safe even walking down the street, just stepping outside of their house. If you happen to have privilege and are not part of a marginalized community, you might not think about it, but we all need to challenge and question our privilege often.
When I think about where we are in the trajectory of progress, I feel we are at a plateau. We’ve changed so much in the past 10 years, but when the pendulum swings one way, there’s going to be the inevitable push back on the other side. And I’m scared that that’s where we are now. But when you are in a plateau, you just have to go deeper. And frankly you have to start breaking down the areas of privilege that are causing that plateau.
Just because we have come so far doesn’t mean that we don’t still have so much further to go, because we absolutely do. We have to be on guard all the time because opinionated people are becoming louder and louder, and they’re dangerous. That kind of rhetoric only alienates communities, marginalized communities, even more. So, yes, I think we just have to double down and keep going, even if we think that things are so much better than they used to be.
When I think of International Pride day and the importance of safe spaces, I think of an event we have each year at Iron Fish distillery, in Thompsonville. It’s called Drag Bingo, and Iron Fish donates this beautiful barn to host the event. And it’s just such a wonderful, loving evening. It draws people from places like Manistee and Lake City and Benzonia—places that are more rural than Traverse City and that have even fewer safe, queer-friendly spaces. And when I think about this day, I think about having so many happy people together in a room where they can all just be themselves, maybe even for the first time this year, because where they live they don’t have another safe space, or have even less of a loving community. I loved it so much, it’s hard for me to talk about it without crying. And that’s the vibe I will think about and continue to ruminate over on International Pride Day.
So on this International Pride Day, I encourage you to have conversations with people who you don’t generally talk to about these kinds of things. That is opening the door in the right direction. It could be as simple as a question, like, “I don’t understand this … can you explain it to me?” I also encourage people to just be themselves. And if they need to be in the presence of other people, then they should do that. And if they need alone time to reflect, then they should do that. It’s really all about being true to your authentic self, and I want as many people as possible to experience that in a safe place called home.
