Photo by David Fahie Photography.

“Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Pride has got to go!”

“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t fuck with us!”

The chants pierced the hot night air of June 24, 2013, accompanied by tambourines and drums—including a makeshift drum, made from a red frying pan with a wooden spoon for a drumstick. A crowd of protesters flooded downtown Toronto’s streets, beginning in the LGBTQ Village’s Barbara Hall Park, where the city’s AIDS memorial was erected years ago. Some linked hands and arms to protect others and guide cars safely by as the marchers passed.

Hours prior, Pride Toronto participated in an opening ceremony at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). “It made me want to defile everywhere,” one attendee said to a roaming camera capturing the event. While marchers used some of the same chants heard during the official Pride Parade and its counterparts, the Dyke March and Trans March, this was in many ways the anti-Pride Toronto. It was the Night March.

Opening the TSX in 2013 was another drop in the bucket of economically focused relationships that Toronto Pride has fostered over the years, with its TD Bank music stages, Bud Light floats, and free Pfizer temporary tattoos. Organized independently of Pride Toronto, participants have been walking the Night March in protest of the corporatization of Toronto Pride since 2012. The Night March is a return to the grassroots activism of nearly 50 years ago that initiated the first Pride in the city. As one sign from the 2015 Night March read, “Stonewall was a riot,” referencing the protests of a New York gay club, the Stonewall Inn.

It’s why some in the LGBTQ community are pushing to reclaim their platform from corporations. After almost seven years of marching, perhaps their message is finally being heard. While Pride Toronto still lists 13 big-name sponsors on its website—including its “platinum sponsor” TD Bank—its corporate sponsorship revenue dropped to $1,506,804 last year, down from $2,269,180 in 2016. What would Pride look like without these big names and their money? The answer can be found by stepping outside of Canada’s urban centres, where rural communities and small towns take Pride into their own hands, and, often, their own wallets.

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

The town of Inuvik is located 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, just east of the Mackenzie River before it dumps into the Beaufort Sea. It’s so far north that residents have to “look south to see the northern lights,” according to its tourism website. This year, the Genders and Sexualities Alliance (GSA) of East Three Secondary School is planning Inuvik’s first-ever Pride parade, and the school’s first Pride week.

Genders and Sexualities Alliances—student-run groups for LGBTQ youth to meet, find support, and discuss their experiences—have been integral to community education and organizing Pride events.

East Three Secondary’s southern neighbour, Mackenzie Mountain School in the remote town of Norman Wells, held its first Pride parade in 2015, organized by the school’s GSA, Rainbow United. With a population of just 778 people, Norman Wells wouldn’t otherwise have the community backing or funding for such an event.

The East Three Secondary School’s GSA hasn’t planned anything bigger than a bake sale, but the presence of a Pride event, however small it is, can make a world of difference in a place like Inuvik. As Sarah Kelly, a teacher who helped form Rainbow United, wrote in 2016: “The overall message of intrinsic activities like Pride Week and GSAs is to teach youth how to tolerate and love others who may be different from themselves and be true to who they are as individuals.”

ONTARIO

North Bay is a small community on the shores of Lake Nipissing, with a population of 50,000. As the “Gateway to the North,” the city has been privy to some important parts of history—it was an essential route for the fur trade and attracted many missionaries in the late 19th century. Today, North Bay has 28 churches and a large French-Catholic community.

Though larger than Inuvik or Norman Wells, North Bay has few GSAs—in 2012, only two of its six high schools had an official group recognizing LGBTQ students. “It’s not a completely accepting community when it comes to the LGBT[Q] community,” says Jason Maclennan, head of media and sponsorship relations for the North Bay Pride Committee.

The city didn’t have an officially organized Pride until last year, after the president of the North Bay and District Labour Council, Henri Giroux, attended Toronto Pride and decided it was something he needed to bring back to the community. A team was assembled, and the North Bay Pride Committee was born. In planning the first Pride, there were hiccups: Many initial members decided to leave the committee for various reasons, including the underrepresentation of certain groups within the LGBTQ community. With just six weeks to organize the events, which included a march and a picnic, the group scrambled to secure funding, food and space donations, and the necessary permits. In the end, the North Bay and District Labour Council, made up of representatives of different unions including OPSEU and CUPE, covered the costs. Despite some negative reactions from the local community—such as asking why there weren’t “heterosexual straight Pride” events too—over 3,000 people participated in the march and attended the Unity for Pride Picnic.

North Ontario Pride Network in North Bay Pride Parade. Photo courtesy of North Ontario Pride Network.

While North Bay Pride was generally considered a success, Maclennan says the committee didn’t have a chance to reach out to many companies for sponsorship. Though the District Labour Council is continuing its support, he hoped corporate sponsorship would make Pride 2018 larger and more accessible by allowing the committee to offer free events. But from a business perspective, a sizeable return on investment is key, which small-town Pride doesn’t deliver. “When you try to talk to the Pepsis and the Cokes and stuff like that, whether they’re just supplying bottled water for the event or something, they just don’t listen to you, they don’t have any interest,” Maclennan says. They instead focus on big cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.”

Despite the struggle to secure funding, though, Maclennan emphasizes the importance of continuing Pride events in the community. North Bay still has progress to make when it comes to accepting its LGBTQ residents, which is partly why the city’s Pride is rooted more in activism than celebration. The committee consciously decided to call last year’s event a march, as opposed to a parade, and will do so again this summer. For Maclennan, it’s a chance to educate North Bay residents and promote acceptance and unity.

SASKATCHEWAN

Joe Wickenhauser, the executive director of Moose Jaw Pride, agrees that education is an integral part of Pride. Last August, the Prairie South School Division, with the help of Moose Jaw Pride, developed a new course on gender and sexual diversity. Wickenhauser believes the course, which is now available as an elective for Grade 11 students in the division, is the first of its kind in Canada.

Though various Pride events have taken place intermittently in the city since 1993, Moose Jaw has only been hosting an officially recognized Pride Parade since 2016. With a population of just more than 30,000, it has been called the “Friendly City” by both visitors and residents—an appropriate nickname for a city whose Pride organization is built to help others create and maintain both LGBTQ-focused and -friendly events year-round.

Moose Jaw Pride as an organization is part of the Saskatchewan Pride Network, providing support for smaller surrounding communities, like Humboldt and Battleford, who want to organize their own events but don’t necessarily have the means or resources to do so. In 2016, it helped organize the first-ever Pride Week in the towns of Estevan and Weyburn, and assisted with the second-ever Pride flag raising on a Canadian Forces base.

Wickenhauser says the organization found support for these events through grants and local fundraising, in large part thanks to relationships built within the community. “A lot of the local businesses support the work that we’re doing because they believe in it,” he says. Being present throughout the year and in different mediums creates a familiarity between the organization and Moose Jaw residents, an invaluable relationship that has allowed Moose Jaw Pride and the Saskatchewan Pride Network to grow and thrive. The organization offers a variety of diversity training programs for local businesses and schools, and often sets up information booths at events in surrounding communities to increase their visibility and provide outreach to the LGBTQ residents there.

Despite the community support, however, the growth of the organization means it does need to look elsewhere for funding. Wickenhauser says it’s sometimes hard to strike a balance between LGBTQ advocacy and sponsorship needs. “I think as each Pride festival gets larger and larger, sometimes the appeal of larger sponsorships becomes harder to ignore,” he says.

Moose Jaw Pride, it seems, has found a neutral middle ground. Since the organization is involved in so many other events across the province as both an educator and supporter, Wickenhauser says it’s important to recognize each community and their differences and adapt the planning of events to meet each community’s needs. Some residents may be ready to have an activist-focused Pride event, but other communities respond better to a less overtly political, more celebratory approach. Especially in smaller towns where visibility is still a challenge for some, building ally relationships and ensuring the events are open to everyone provides protection for members of each LGBTQ community. While the anonymity of big-city Pride isn’t always an option for smaller towns, creating a space that is safer and welcoming to everyone allows some freedom in being known.

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

If Moose Jaw is the “Friendly City,” then Corner Brook, N.L., can be considered one of the most welcoming in Canada. While relatively young—it just celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2016—Corner Brook has become one of the more progressive cities in western Newfoundland.

This past October, the city celebrated Corner Brook Pride Week. Like many small-town Prides, Corner Brook’s is organized and funded by volunteers and local donations. Among its biggest supporters are students from Memorial University’s Grenfell Campus, who have provided flags to participants in the past. GSAs have also been integral to the education of the community. Corner Brook Regional High has organized two StandOut conferences, which invite students from schools across Newfoundland and Labrador to learn about creating inclusive environments for people of all genders and sexualities.

The city has also welcomed unique efforts to celebrate Pride. In the summer of 2014, Linda Chaisson was visiting her children in Vancouver. Walking downtown, she noticed a brightly coloured crosswalk, with painted stripes of pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. “I want one of those,” she told her daughter. A city councillor in Corner Brook, Chaisson brought the proposal to a committee, then the rest of council upon her return to the city. It was swiftly approved, and Corner Brook became the first city in Newfoundland to have multi-coloured, rainbow crosswalks.

Positioned at two busy Corner Brook intersections—one directly in front of its city hall, and the other at the entrance of Grenfell Campus—Chaisson says the painted crosswalks are a means of incorporating LGBTQ symbolism into everyday life and promoting acceptance. A seemingly small gesture, it’s helped Corner Brook build a more inclusive community. In 2009, when the city held its first Pride, Chaisson says only about 25 people showed up. But this past October, over 200 people attended Corner Brook’s annual Pride Parade.

Whether symbolic, like painting a sidewalk, or tangible, like incorporating GSAs in school, these are examples of a “gentler approach,” as Wickenhauser put it, to bringing Pride into a smaller community. Recognizing that not everyone may be on the same level of understanding—whether due to a lack of exposure, education, or a mixture of both—Corner Brook seems to have found a good balance, and Chaisson hopes that it will only get bigger, better, and more inclusive as time passes.

MAY 1969
“There’s no place for the State in the bedrooms of the Nation.” Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s Bill C-150 is passed, amending the Criminal Code to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults (but only in private, mind you).

AUGUST 1, 1971
Toronto holds its first Pride celebration with a picnic on the Toronto Islands. The picnic, planned in conjunction with the second anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, is described as a “happy event” though some beach-goers were “grossed out” when the Toronto Gay Alliance banner was unfurled on the ferry ride over.

AUGUST 28, 1971
“Two-four-six-eight! Gay is just as good as straight!” Over 100 people converge on Parliament Hill in support of “We Demand,” a 13- page manifesto calling for changes to laws and public policies regarding the LGBTQ community.

AUGUST-OCTOBER 1973
Pride Week becomes a national celebration with a political theme: The inclusion of sexual orientation in the human rights code. Festivities are held in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg.

MAY-JUNE 1976
Multiple raids on Montreal bathhouses and gay clubs are blamed on a city “cleanup” commissioned by then-mayor Jean Drapeau in anticipation of the Summer Olympics. A demonstration organized by L’Association pour les droits gai(e)s du Québec (formerly Comité homosexuel anti-répression / Gay Coalition Against Repression) attracts more than 2,000 participants.

FEBRUARY 1981
Known as the “Canadian Stonewall,” 300 men are arrested following police raids on four Toronto bathhouses. The next day, nearly 3,000 people march on the 52 Division precinct and Queen’s Park; cars are smashed and fires are lit in response to the raids. Soon after, Lesbian and Gay Pride Day is established in Toronto.

MAY 1981
Edmonton police raid the Pisces Bathhouse; 56 men are arrested. Protests are subsequently organized. That same month, the Bi-National Lesbian Conference in Vancouver becomes the catalyst of Canada’s first Lesbian Pride March when 200 women attending the conference take to the downtown streets.

OCTOBER 1981
Toronto hosts its first Lesbian Pride March, paving the way for what is now known as the Dyke March.

AUGUST 1987
Winnipeg holds its first-ever Pride march with some of the 250 attendees wearing bags over their heads “out of fear of rallying in public.”

JULY 1988
Halifax holds its first Pride. Described as more of a demonstration than a celebration, the event is used to protest the non-existence of legal protection for LGBTQ people against discrimination and violence. Seventy-five people participate. (Today, the event attracts 150,000.)

JULY 1991
The City of Toronto officially endorses Pride, 20 years after the first Pride picnic.

JULY 1995
Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall becomes the first sitting mayor of a major Canadian city to march in a Pride parade.

SEPTEMBER 2000
In Toronto, a Pussy Palace Collective party is raided by police. Women are strip-searched and names are recorded. After much backlash and a lawsuit, training programs are enforced for the Toronto police that focus on interacting with the LGBTQ community.

DECEMBER 2002
A bathhouse in Calgary is raided and 17 are charged for keeping a common bawdy house.

JUNE 2005
Toronto’s Bill Blair becomes the first chief of police in the city’s history to participate in the Pride parade—the same year gay marriage is legalized in Canada.

JUNE 2009
The first-ever Trans March takes place in Toronto after years of pushback from both the public and Pride organizers. Without floats or elaborate decorations, the event is described as “putting the ‘act’ back in ‘activism.’”

JUNE-JULY 2014
Toronto hosts World Pride, while new Pride festivals are launched for the first time in Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins, Ont.

JULY 2015
Six Nations of the Grand River hosts what’s believed to be Canada’s first on-reserve Pride event, drawing about 150 participants.

JULY 2016
Black Lives Matter holds a sit-in during Toronto’s Pride parade to protest the whitewashing and commercialization of the festivities. BLM presents a list of nine demands, including the removal of police floats during the march.

June is Pride Month in several cities across Canada, and this weekend marks the 37th annual Pride parade in This Magazine’s home base of Toronto. In recognition of the yearly celebration, This has accumulated some of our favourite stories tackling LGBTQ issues from our 50-year archive. Some remind of us the sad realities that many queer and trans Canadians still face in our society today; others celebrate the many successes LGBTQ communities have fought for over the years.

Happy Pride!

Editor’s note (June 23, 4 PM EST): We’ve updated this post with even more Pride stories dug up from our archives! 

The battle for LGBTQ equality in Canada is still ongoing
Pam Rocker, September/October 2016

“It’s true that things are much better than they were 50 years ago; we have benefited from the incredible pain and advocacy of our elders, LGBTQ and allies alike. But can’t our unwillingness to settle live in the same breath as our gratitude? It must if we are to have any integrity with the generations that follow us.”

Honeymoon’s over: What’s next for the gay rights movement
Paul Gallant, September/October 2009

“Same-sex marriage was, in fact, a perfect storm. Established middle- and upper-class gay and lesbian couples who normally avoided anything other than traditional party politics wanted it. Sympathetic straights—people who didn’t understand things like cross-dressing or anonymous sex in parks—could relate to the desire to marry.”

Project Diversity
RM Vaughan, May/June 2015

“The ugly truth of the tech/IT industry—that it is still overwhelmingly dominated by straight, white men—hangs over our giggling like a grey cloud. Despite its reputation for being the innovative and inclusive industry that propels our vaunted new Information Economy, most of the tech/IT world looks like the same old boys club.”

The long road of LGBTQ rights in Canada
Kyle Dupont, June 2012

“While it’s true that Canada has not always been as accepting as we’d like, or hope, we have done some awesome stuff.”

Lives in transition
Alex Colgan, May/June 2013

“There are many intersecting stories within the trans community, and there is more to transgenderism than the popular sinner/saint dichotomy of virtuous joie de vivre and sadomasochistic perversion. In this article, you’ll read four stories, interwoven through the history of transgenderism in Canada.”

Inside the struggle queer, Indigenous couples must overcome to start a family
Steph Wechsler, March/April 2017

“The circuitous culture of service provision and legislation can descend on prospective families—especially those with members from queer Indigenous communities—in many ways, each on their own bringing a range of potential obstacles. The law in Ontario has only recently changed to better accommodate family planning routes for queer couples who may not always conceive children or come to be families the same way that many with two biological parents do. These choices amount to a process that can help honour and define familial identity for many couples. In ways large and small these systems aren’t set up to give many couples equal access to the choices and clinical experiences white, heterosexual, and cisgender couples can have.”

Why Canada needs quality queer entertainment
Natasha Negovanlis, January/February 2017

“Too often, lesbian characters’ stories end in misery: these women die, have breakdowns, or end up heartbroken. It fuels the misguided idea that there is something wrong with being queer. That’s why it is so imperative that queer characters are no longer misrepresented in film and television.”

Sleeping with the enemy
Rachel Giese, November 1994

On early conceptions of queerness: “Lesbians are pushing the limit so far these days that it’s now queer to be straight. Rachel Giese on boy-crazy dykes.”

Tea for thirty-two
Kevin McMahon, June 1985

On discrimination from small-town Ontario: “The persecution of gays in St. Catharines, Ont.”

Queer kids
Katrina Onstad, September/October 1994

From our early ’90s back-to-school issue: “High-school sweethearts, earnest politics, and the trouble with trendy.”

Cut that out!
Chris Bearchell, January/February 1993

From our Gender Bender column, this essay explores the politics of literary (and pornographic) censorship.

Syrus Marcus Ware. Production still by Joshua Allen from "Ten," directed by Sarah Sharkey Pearce.

For the last two years, anyone weary of the increasingly commercialized and blissfully apoliticized nature of Pride in Toronto has made a beeline for the back-to-the-future experience that is the Trans March. It’s small, friendly, community-based, unendorsed by any corporate interest. It’s also politicized, giddy, and endearingly disorganized, the way many of us remember Prides of yore. It’s not just nostalgia that draws a bigger crowd each year, though — it’s the sense that trans activism has taken up the social-change banner from a gay movement that dropped it the moment the right to marry became the dominant political cause.

Syrus Marcus Ware, a baby-faced, 35-year-old trans guy, was happily agitating for a trans presence at Pride even before the march got organized. In 2008, he and a buddy “pushed and pushed and convinced” the organizers to start a trans stage (now a regular feature of Pride celebrations), but he’d been kick-starting trans, black, and prison-related causes long before that. Like many trans people, he came out first as gay, became an activist in high school (“I wanted to change attitudes at school and in my family,” he says, “and had a strong belief that the world could, and should, be different”), finally coming out as trans in 2000 after grappling with his feelings for at least a decade. Since then, he’s more than made up for lost time.

He’s an artist (painting, performance, and video) whose work often blurs into activism and whose activism can have the exhilaration of art (a program co-ordinator for youth and young adults at the Art Gallery of Ontario, he’s not wary of blending politics with art appreciation—his take on the recent Maharaja blockbuster show stressed the impact of British imperialism as much as it did the exhibit’s splendour). He’s a host of CIUT 89.5 FM’s Resistance on the Sound Dial. He helped create the publication Primed: The Back Pocket Guide for Transmen and the Men Who Dig Them. He’s involved with Gay/Bi/Queer Transmen Working Group, with a mandate to provide sexual health information to trans guys who have sex with men. He helped develop TransFathers 2B, a pilot course for trans men considering parenting (he recently got pregnant and is in a relationship with another trans guy). He works for prison abolition, both culturally, through the Prison Justice Film Festival, and politically, through the Prisoners’ Justice Action Committee, a group building abolition strategies within the black, indigenous, and trans communities.

If the gay movement opened the door to sexual diversity, the trans movement seems to be kicking it off its hinges, encouraging exploration well beyond gay, straight, and bi, creating a happily dizzy-making world where guys get pregnant, where that bearded dude with the great pecs turns out to have a vagina, where that gorgeous babe intends to keep her penis because she no longer has to comply with cultural expectations of gender. And the rest of us? We get a gender playground, open to all. “There are so many human variations outside the cookie-cutter paradigm of human desire,” says Ware. “We have to stop pathologizing them.” He’s working on it.

Tracey Sandilands, 49, arrived in Canada from her native South Africa in November 2008. The next day she began her new job: executive director of Pride Toronto. After a bumpy first year in the demanding job, Sandilands is looking ahead to the 30th edition of Pride and what she hopes will be one memorable anniversary party.

Q&A

This: What experience did you have organizing an event such as Pride Week?

Sandilands: I had worked on Pride in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, but neither was as large as Toronto’s, which is the third biggest in the world. South Africa has the only Pride parades on the continent and the Jo’burg parade goes back to 1990.

This: You inherited an organization that had every staff member quit due to burnout before you arrived. How tough was that?

Tracey Sandilands. Illustration by David Donald.

Sandilands: You have no choice but accept it. The board helped incredibly. I hired some people by phone before arriving.

This: Did you suffer culture shock?

Sandilands: I did to some extent but nothing I couldn’t handle. The biggest difference is the budget, which for this year will be $3.3 million. In South Africa it was a tiny fraction of that.

This: Was there resentment of an outsider coming in?

Sandilands: Probably some but that’s to be expected. I think the only nasty experience was a comment posted after an article appeared in XTRA! [Toronto’s gay and lesbian biweekly newspaper). Someone suggested I take my “white supremacy attitude back to South Africa.”

This: That person accused you of being upbeat despite Pride having run a $138,400 deficit in your first year.

Sandilands: That’s right. But the deficit was a result of many things, including complicated timing issues relating to grants. We all had a right to be positive about what we had accomplished.

This: XTRA! is no longer a media sponsor. Was it because you criticized it for having some inaccuracies in a story about you?

Sandilands: I don’t think that was the reason. We just never had a discussion about sponsorship.

This: But the community can be political.

Sandilands: Oh, yes. But nothing more than any other activist group.

This: Pride was criticized for allowing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to take part in last year’s parade.

Sandilands: It was decided that we shouldn’t keep anyone out of the parade because of their political views

This: What will happen this year?

Sandilands: This is a matter that [Toronto Pride’s] board of directors will decide on. As of now it’s being debated but no decision has been made.

This: What major changes are there this year?

Sandilands: A lot. We’ll have events outside the Gay Village, such as at Queen’s Park. More events for young people under age 19 and for those older than 40. Some of the latter have complained that the music was not their kind of music.

This: The date is a week later (June 25 to July 4). Is this because of the G20 summit occurring during your previous time period?

Sandilands: We made this move on our own. This allows us to incorporate the Canadian and U.S. holidays as well as keeping the anniversary of Stonewall, June 28,, in our festival. More people than ever should be there.

This: You have Cyndi Lauper giving a free concert during Pride Week. That’s a coup.

Sandilands: We’re so excited. She’s such an icon in the queer community.

This: Will you be able to enjoy any of the festivities?

Sandilands: I hope so, but it’s a very demanding time. The previous ED suggested I go up on a rooftop and enjoy the parade, enjoy what all of us have accomplished.

This: You’ll do that?

Sandilands: If there’s time.

The 2008 Pride Parade. Creative Commons photo by Chromewaves.

You’ve probably noticed by now, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or just standing endlessly in line to offload your garbage, that Pride is in full swing.

I have to admit I find Toronto Pride kind of overwhelming. This is largely because I come from Scotland, where Pride is shared by two cities who take turns hosting the march, and the whole thing lasts an afternoon instead of 10 days.

Scotland’s march also tends to attract at least one dude with a sandwich board proclaiming that gay people are going to hell. Were that guy to show up in Toronto on Pride Weekend I’m not sure anyone would notice him in the crowd, or at least not without his shirt off. Toronto in late June is like Disneyland for gay people.

It’s easy to feel that an event this large has lost its political edge—particularly when you’re marching past buff guys in TD Speedos and paying $60 cover for a Saturday night party. If that’s not a sign that gay people are entering the social elite, I don’t know what is.

But a million people taking over the centre of the city over the course of a weekend still makes a political statement: namely, that there are enough of us to get 100,000 people out on Yonge Street without even exhausting our supply of queers. That’s a lot of people—enough for a small but fabulous army.

It’s easy to forget that in some people’s eyes, everything queer people do visibly and in public is political. Just last week a lesbian couple were harassed by security for kissing at the Air Canada Centre.

So, even though the live music isn’t nearly as good as last year (The Hidden Cameras! Free! That was when I decided Toronto was the best city on earth) and even though nobody wants to field sales pitches about why they should switch banks while marching for gay rights, the core of Pride is still what it always was, and it’s still just as important.

Even if you skip the after-parties and the overwhelming 10-day schedule of events, there are still plenty of reasons to grab some sunscreen, load up your water guns, and hit the streets.

Cate Simpson is a freelance journalist and the web editor for Shameless magazine. She lives in Toronto.

Does this suit make me look queer?

We’re less than a month away from Pride Week in Toronto, which kicks off with the Dyke March — also known as the Saturday when thousands of half-naked queer women take to the streets between Church and Yonge.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if this mass shedding of clothes isn’t really about celebrating our sexuality and glorying in the freedom of Pride, so much as a rebellion against the minefield that is lesbian fashion.

Contrary to popular belief, there is really no lesbian fashion aesthetic. There’s a “look,” but it’s hard to quantify and even harder to emulate if you’re a newcomer to the scene. It’s one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things. And it only applies to the shorthaired stereotype-adhering among us; if you’re high-femme, you’re on your own.

Queer women who come out in their 20s instead of in their teens seem to be hit hardest by the lesbian fashion crisis. I have more than one bisexual friend who — accustomed to dressing up to get the attention of men on a Friday night — is entirely at a loss when it comes to dressing for other women. And while it is widely accepted and known that there are gay and bi girly-girls, lesbians are notoriously suspicious of them. Go to a Church Street bar in makeup and a short skirt and if anybody talks to you at all, it’ll be to ask if you got lost on your way to the entertainment district.

Perfect gaydar, no matter what Stanford from Sex & The City would have us believe, is a myth. It depends on being attuned to the most subtle of clues queer people send each other, and even though most of us aren’t dangling colour-coded handkerchiefs from our back pockets anymore, clothes are a big part of those. People who just don’t identify with the latest in queer fashion markers struggle to identify themselves as queer without throwing out their entire wardrobes.

Things are not always so cut and dried even for the more obviously queer-looking among us. Where I come from, lesbians dress fairly uniformly in jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. We signal to one another through lack of effort. In Toronto, where everybody is better dressed — queers included — I spent a lot of time feeling scruffy and inappropriate before finally deciding not to care very much.

Part of the problem is that it’s tough just to find clothes that fit you when you’re boyish looking but shaped like a girl. Men’s clothes are tentlike on us, but women’s clothes are invariably too, well, woman-y. And those perfect-fitting men’s-suits-cut-for-women Shane wears on The L Word? Those don’t really exist.

All of this has me wondering about the stickers that are available all through Pride Week with every conceivable sexual orientation written on them. It’s as if, having shed our clothes and our coded messages about who we might sleep with, we are finally free to wear our identities on our sleeves.

Cate Simpson is a freelance journalist and the web editor for Shameless magazine. She lives in Toronto.