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Pride Awareness Month

YWCA Kalamazoo is celebrating our LGBTQIA+ community with Outfront Kalamazoo at the Kalamazoo Pride Festival 2023 on June 2nd and 3rd! Come down for the two-day celebration at Kalamazoo’s Arcadia Creek Festival Place, where an estimated 8,000+ people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and racial identities from Southwest Michigan and beyond gather to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride. We will be hosting a table on June 3rd with info on services, swag to give away, hosting interviews and more!

Pride Awareness Month

BIPOC Pride Historical Facts

In Los Angeles in 1950, The Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization, focused on combating police abuses of the Chicano community and police entrapment. The initial LGBTQ+ Pride honored the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which Black LGBTQ+ women mainly led. Despite recent victories in employment law at the Supreme Court, junior and nonsupervisory staff still encounter difficulties living openly in their workplace. Queer youth are incarcerated excessively and have a higher rate of suicide, while trans women still report being harassed and brutalized by the police disproportionately. During Pride month, we celebrate progress, but we must also recognize the work that still needs to be done.

Kalamazoo Pride Festival 2023

Event Highlights Coming Soon!!!

We ask YOU to express Yourself

Your identity matters, your voice matters, and we invite you to share your opinions in a judgment free space. We are here to listen and learn from you. Together we can empower and celebrate everyone with pride.

What makes you most excited about pride awareness month?
How does pride awareness allow you to express yourself?
What are some difficulties that you face regarding intersectionality within the LGBTQIA+ community?
How does the community you live in help or hinder the way you express your identity?
Which is more important to you: acceptance of your identity or the Validation of your identity and why?
Where does the support for the LGBTQIA+ community fall short and how can allies, activists and organizations improve?

Please email your response to socialmedia@ywcakalamazoo.org

Pride Ad 2023

All donations significantly impact our ability to provide programming, events and outreach to our clients and propel us forward, on our mission, toward eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting equity in our community. Please help us in our work by donating today!

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LGBTQIA+ Intersectionality

Intersectionalities within the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC Communities

  1. People who belong to both the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color face compounded challenges as they deal with both lesbo/homophobia, biphobia, and/or trans(phobia/misogyny) as well as racism simultaneously and at different times throughout life.
  2. 42% of people in the United States who identify as LGBTQIA+ are also a person of color. (https://www.verywellmind.com/the-intersection-of-lgbtq-and-poc-5204007)
  3. Being both LGBTQIA+ and a person of color means being subjected to compounding systems of oppression and experiencing more microaggressions than their single-minority counterparts.
  4. LGBTQIA+ BIPOC community members may not find the LGBTQIA+ community as welcoming as one would anticipate. White supremacy does exist in all areas of society.
  5. People of color may experience homophobia within their racial communities, and there is reportedly less homophobia in second-generation families than in the first generation.
  6. LGBTQIA+ people of color are often resilient in order to survive in this society.
Care and Services

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All donations significantly impact our ability to provide programming, events and outreach to our clients and propel us forward, on our mission, toward eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting equity in our community. Please help us in our work by donating today!

Donate