Sunday Arts Magazine

23 Aug 2021

The Road to Pride

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The Road to Pride
Op 9 # 45

(APRA AMCOS Registration No. GW61911019)

I wanted to write a piece to celebrate the opening of the new Victorian Pride Centre.
Such a stunning building, a monumental achievement, and an architectural triumph,
after years of hard work. It is a world exemplar and a credit to all involved.
I wanted to write something tracking the journey of the last 50 or so years to where we
are now. Until 1980 sex between consenting adult males in Victoria was illegal.
People were arrested, imprisoned and carried criminal convictions for loving who they
loved. State and Church treated us as second class citizens. Self-righteous violence in
the community bullied, raped, bashed and murdered our people.
For those of us who realised our identity 50 and 60 years ago the journey was perilous.
Families rejected us, Church and State considered us evil or ill or criminal. Yet, we
somehow found each other. We gathered in hidden places to dance and be together.
Places constantly subject to police raids and arrests. We lived in ghettos because we
didn’t know what else to do. There were no safe places.
Times have changed, but not for everyone. There are still young people subject to
Church and family intolerance. Aversion therapy is still practised, causing lasting
damage, including depression, mental illness and suicide. It makes people hate
themselves, but it doesn’t stop them being gender diverse.
The Pride Centre is a glorious incarnation of acceptance and equality for gender
diverse peoples. My composition tracks a person’s initial realisation that they are
different, their tentative moves to be themselves, the hostile reactions encountered,
their self-doubt and self-deprecation. Then the ferocity of societal denial and violence
follows. But – there’s a beginning fightback, a beginning of hope for ourselves, that
strengthens and builds so that we came to stand proud in defiance, and the community
began to believe we weren’t monsters at all, but decent human beings, and the voices
of repression muted themselves.