Does my Bi look big in this?
A Queer Femmes feelings on sharing the love and wearing it purple.
Did you know that this week is Wear it Purple Day? I’ll admit, up until a few months ago, I didn’t know much about it either...
Wear it Purple Day occurs annually, this year on the 26th of August, to spark conversations, celebrate LGBTQIA+ diversity and empower young queer voices to speak loud and proud. Undoubtedly, it is an important day for Australia, one that promotes positive wellbeing and whole-being within our Queer communities, especially for young people, while also inviting allies and parents to open their ears, hearts, and learning minds.
As a 28-year-old bisexual woman who went to a public performing arts high school that celebrated queerness, identity and individual expression, I’m shocked that Wear it Purple Day is only recently becoming an important calendar date for my workplace (and wardrobe!).
You see, as a queer white woman who grew up on Gadigal Land in metropolitan Sydney, I am privileged in more ways than my whiteness. I am privileged because throughout high school my friends never questioned my bi-sexuality. My peers never bullied me when they found out that I kissed girls and boys. And from my memory, the teachers never hassled my friends who preferred to wear the opposite sex school uniform (thankfully, they have gender-neutral uniforms now, because how on earth is forcing someone to wear a skirt meant to be conducive to learning anyway?!).
I suppose it’s fitting under the trope of a performing arts public school that the teachers allowed students’ full expression and the adolescents used this to run wild. I’ll admit I was never one for running, but I deeply enjoyed letting the freak flag fly. It may seem strange, but I have warm and loving memories of school because this glorious gay and inclusive environment enabled me to thrive.
Sadly, when I step outside the bubble of my personal experience, I’m reminded that I’m one of the fortunate ones who were able and supported to embrace their truth.
According to Minus18, a youth-led Queer advocacy group, in Australia, up to 21% of current high school students identify as LGBTQIA+ and while this number is growing, it is likely much bigger when we shine the light through the shame. Of the young people who identify as LGBTQIA+, 66% report experiencing bullying or harassment due to their identity. It is important to recognize that consistent harassment and bullying negatively impact on a young person's wellbeing, including their sense of worth, safety, and hope.
With bullying, hate, discrimination and aggression masked as “just jokes”, these tactics of fear and oppression are easily lauded at queer youth from within the home, school, and public spaces. With high rates of bullying towards sexually and gender diverse peoples, it is unsurprising that LGBTQIA+ youth face alarming rates of mental health conditions and sometimes, ideations towards suicide. Indeed, when we look at the fact that LGBTQIA+ young peoples are over four times more likely to engage in self-injury, it is clear that Australia is still far from creating a safe community that values and celebrates diversity.
Intersectionality further impacts young queer people's experience of safety.
Transgender peoples aged 18 and over are six and a half times more likely to engage in self-harm, reminding us that we need to keep listening to and amplifying these voices. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Queer peoples, the lived realities are even more concerning, due to the intersectionality of Aboriginality and Queerness in a colonial heteronormative nation like Australia. These voices are too often excluded at the margins, which stifle inclusion, enables violence to escalate and reduces adequate care to health and safety due to racism and discrimination.
Young people need leaders that inspire and create an inclusive world that gives them hope; to be themselves and to love whoever their heart tells them to love.
I wish I knew about Wear it Purple Day when I left high school. Leaving the safe theatrical confines of my school community hadn’t prepared me for university, for a hierarchal world that preferred to make my bi-sexuality invisible. For a time, it was hard to find my worth. For a time, it was hard to find my voice. For many years I would look into a mirror before going out, stressed about how to make my bi-sexuality more obvious, more acceptable to the sweaty hetero-men on the dancefloor whose advances I would deny that night, or more confident on a dancefloor next to the woman of my eye. While I was encouraged to embrace my true self at school, that still didn’t make it easy to trust myself in a world designed for heteronormativity. Fortunately, I still had a supportive friend group who knew me and helped me navigate the woes and wins of embracing and exploring my full identity. I also had the economic power and educational privilege to seek the voices of people who I needed to hear, those that allowed me to explore my identity and find comfort and unapologetic self-love within it. Many young queer people don’t have those luxuries.
Amongst the recent divisive media that has been souring our community values of inclusion and eroding LGBTQIA+ young people's rights in schools, or debating our right to love and marry, in recent years, it can become a whirlpool of negativity and hate - within the world, and within the loneliness of our identities. In this turbulent media scape, Wear it Purple Day, is a day of pride, a step closer to creating the world our young people need to thrive.
This week, I’m grateful to embrace Wear it Purple Day and to use it as a way to spark conversations with colleagues and community members. It is a day that gives the power to young voices to share what they need and what they want from our future. I hope you’ll be listening.
But more importantly, I hope you’ll be learning and unlearning so the incredible LGBTQIA+ people in your life can use their valuable energy to love, accept and celebrate themselves.
