It's Pride Week in Toronto.

It's Pride week and for the past two years I've been working in the most hetero, gendered workplace I've ever worked. So while it is Pride, I'm surrounded by an environment that is by it's exclusive to queer reality.

I come from a background of working in HIV/AIDS support and prevention where the majority of staff are either queer, or dealing with the fact that the majority of the community activists in the work are queer. So this straight environment is a bit of an experiment that isn't working out for me. In any workplace it seems there are a few people who try to control the workplace environment, and if management will not reign them in, their power to set the tone is unchecked. In my workplace, the people that throw their weight around have done so in a gendered and homophobic way. I'm sick and tired of women who are threatened by other strong, feminist, individual women trying to exclude those of us who refuse gendered roles, and who are out and proud of who we are at home and in the workplace.

So on Pride week, I want to say cudos to all you butchie gals who refuse to be anyone but yourselves. To you gals who get asked to leave the women's washroom, who get called sir, when you are 100% women loving women, I've got your back!!