Dunedin Pride focusing on events

Posted: Thursday Feb 24, 2022

Dunedin Pride secretary Trak Gray is looking forward to celebrating the rainbow community during March.

There is a renewed sense of purpose at Dunedin Pride, the local group that works to create an inclusive and affirming environment for queer/rainbow communities.

Dunedin Pride secretary Trak Gray said this year the committee was pivoting away from focusing on support groups and instead was prioritising events and activities that connected the community.

“So we are all about events — we are about being visible and connecting people.”

The goal was to ensure a strong and engaged community in Dunedin, they said.

March was pride month for the group and it had a number of events and activities planned.

Dunedin Pride had partnered with organisations including Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, the Dunedin Public Library, Woof Bar and Otago Museum and was in discussions about various activities.

A calendar of events would be available tomorrow.

Some highlights included queer movie nights at Otago Museum and a pronoun pin-making workshop with Dunedin ceramic artist Locke Unhold at Toitu.

“I think something that is a really unique aspect of the queer community is that we are not an inherently visible minority, but we still need to be visible.”

Pronouns provided an opportunity to establish personal gender or gender-neutral preferences, they said.

“We still need to put our queerness out into the world, and I think pronouns is a way that is really being explored at the moment. It is very topical.”

Pronouns were aligned to a decolonisation movement, they said.

“We have to move away from a gendered, colonised perspective, and it is a way to let in more things than just this male-female binary.”

The recent passing of the Bill to ban conversion therapy was a milestone to celebrate but more work was still to be done, they said.

“That is a pretty amazing milestone for us to hit.”

Their “big takeaway” from the passing of the Bill was it gave a chance to reflect on what point the country was at in the progression of the pride movement.

“We are only just creating laws to protect us from conversion therapy, so it shows us how far we have come, and it shows us how far we still have to go as well.”

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