Welcome to the month of June, one of the biggest and colorful months of the year! This month is aimed to celebrate the diversity and inclusiveness of everyone within the LGBTQ+ community and celebrate the strides that have been made to bring the community to what it is today. If you are not sure entirely who that includes, this would be anyone who identifies as trans, gay, lesbian, asexual, and so on and so forth. The community takes pride in including every one of all shape, form, color, and condition. But some of you may be asking, "why does this community get their own special month to celebrate?"
Well, let me explain why that might be.
Individuals within this community have fought to earn just some of the rights they have today, and if you believe their fight ended ten years ago, you would be mistaken.
LGBTQ+ members are constantly fighting for more basic human rights, some of these including using the bathroom safely and using public transportation. In London on June 7th of 2019, a lesbian couple was traveling on the public bus when they started being harassed by a group of four men in their late teens. These men said vulgar language to the women, including different sexual positions and asking sexually based questions. After a while, the boys insisted that the girls make out for them so they "could watch and enjoy". When the women refused, the boys started attacking them. The girls suffered bad facial injuries that put them in the hospital and one of the women commented that she could not remember is they passed out during the beating or not.
To live in a world where being anything that is considered outside of the "default" is greeted with these sorts of interactions is outrageous.
Members of this community fight against situations like this every day and most of the reported incidents go unnoticed by the public. The fact that these young men felt that is was okay to establish their dominance over these women because they were not "properly amused" means that they have not been exposed to this completely normal relationship. Had the couple been a heterosexual pair, the boys would have left them completely alone.
Queer women often meet this kind of harassment due to their intersectionality, meaning that they are usually harassed more often than their counterparts due to both being queer and a female. The intersectionality grows in regards to class, age, race, and so on and so forth. The bottom line is, this harassment is continuing to happen every day everywhere around the world. The fight is far from over and individuals in the community take the month of June to celebrate who they are in safe and inclusive events all around the world.
So the next time you question why there is not some big, fun, straight pride parade to march in or "straight-friendly" events for you to go to with your friends and significant other, think about the obstacles LGBTQ+ members go through to be themselves and think about the privilege you have, being classified as the "default."
