Recap | Pride Talk Stories Show Diversity
On the afternoon of June 16, Pride Talk 2019 officially kicked off at M Glam. The Pride Talk team invited 9 speakers from around the world to share their stories from under the rainbow.
Ms. Katrina Harrigan, the Acting Consul General of the Australian Consulate General Shanghai, gave the opening remarks. She recognized ShanghaiPRIDE’s efforts in promoting social diversities, while saying that Australia is honored to support ShanghaiPRIDE for two consecutive years and to help the LGBTQ community express themselves.
From Australia, Douglas talked about the difficulties he and his same-sex partner faced while living abroad in Hong Kong and Shanghai and the solutions they found. Holly, a lesbian American with autism, saw rainbow as spectrum of all colors melting together instead of blocks of fixed color. Everyone could be treated as a minority some time in life, no matter if you are LGBTQ, have autism or other identities. Hence, acceptance and understanding are vital to the diversity of communities.
Sex educator Gaochao illustrated her journey of self-identity and found that there was no short cut in discovering your own gender and sexual orientation. Felipe, who is also an educator, shared how the experiences of LGBTQ students vary in different cultural and national contexts, the difficulties of LGBTQ education, and the future he envisions. He talked about the Gay Straight Alliance Club in Guangzhou’s international school while proposing a solution to help the society better understand the LGBTQ community as a whole: the systematic adoption of an inclusive curriculum that recognizes LGBTQ subjects across disciplines (history, literature, and sex education) thus encouraging students to think more about themselves, their peers, and diversity.
Papaandadult, who made the audience laugh the most, gave a humorous speech which impressed the audience with many useful off-line flirting tips.
The second section started with Lydia, an Australian, who explained sex fluidity with her anecdotes of coming out 3 times. Xiaoyu, who also lived in Australia, shared three stories of coming out and self discovery, and encouraged everyone to express himself/herself proactively. Former ShanghaiPRIDE and CnPRIDE organizer, Stephanie, reflected on her volunteer experiences with ShanghaiPRIDE in the past five years.
Finally, Zhao, a dancer and a director, narrated the story of combining gender minority and art works through the creation and promotion of his work: Two persons. He thinks that sex and gender are just symbols. The connections between people are worth more attention than the symbols themselves when discussing love. He explained his understanding of love through an improvisational dance using the the theme song of his film, which was screened at the ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival (ShPFF) this year.
Special thanks to Australian Consulate General Shanghai and M Glam for supporting Pride Talk.
