Elisabeth Kubler-Ross once wrote “the most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people don’t just happen.”
As a rainbow people (GLBTTQI), these words ring very deeply and very truthfully to all of us. For over 80 years our combined work as a community has been summed up by pain and struggle and beauty and joy. We’ve fought for rights together, marriage together, indeed the very ability to be a part of a culture that has fought against us to see us as second class citizens. When we work together we are a mighty force to be reckoned with – with the power of Lesbians to organize, Gays to bring a little fairy humour, Bisexuals to walk the road between two worlds, and transgendered people teaching us the greatest lesson of all – to be who we really are.
It is strange to me, however, that we also have an ability to take the force that was once used against us, and turn it inward. Indeed is strange that ostracized people ostracize people. We reject our own rainbow people and bully them as easily as we were once rejected and bullied. I suppose the old adage rings true: hurt people hurt people.
I see this every day in comments I hear in our bars, community activities, and in my work with HIV Edmonton. We so easily turn on each other – gay against lesbian, ability versus disability, people living with HIV and AIDS, even Edmontonian Queers against Calgarian Queers. Indeed we know how to hurt and exclude. I’ve even watched as some drag queens belittle others who are perhaps more vulnerable because of disability with comments about how the individual looks like a clown.
Shame on me, shame on you, shame on us.
At a conference once attended I overheard an Aboriginal elder refer to HIV and AIDS as a conscious spirit. It is neither good nor evil but a sentient being that is here to teach us. It is here to teach to work together as one people. If we are to carry on the tradition of our Rainbow ancestors, to continue to do the work we have to learn to be as welcoming as we all so desperately seek to be welcomed.
We need to change our words and our attitudes. For if our own wounding becomes a mechanism for breaking people down to feel better about ourselves we will all be destroyed – some through suicide, others through isolation, and the very destruction of our community.
How do we change this? The way to escape the pedagogy of the oppressed is for the oppressed people to rise up and liberate their oppressors. So, we have to work to heal our oppressors and in so doing learn to not oppress others – especially those who are a part of our community.
If we are not beautiful to each other we will never know beauty in any form. Let us be a beautiful rainbow people.
Love,
Sister Sissy Fister
Irreverent Mother of the Sisters on a Mission