"I’m Lukayo Estrello, senior manager for the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD)," the new title for Jer’s Vision, the nationally successful anti-bullying organization. "On the website I made a blog post called ‘In the Name of Naming’, which talks about the name transition. For me, being part of Jer’s Vision, and working here for three years, I have tried to move us more toward an anti-oppression framework. People have argued that Jer’s Vision is more from a liberal framework, that our great success is appealing to straight and heterosexual and fifth gender people to try and get them to understand.
"Which is one of our greatest appeals: we go into schools, we talk about a bullying story, we try to get them at the heart of the matter. [I also] talk about growing up trans and an immigrant, and the two are different narratives, so they send me into schools where there’s one trans kid who’s recently come out or started to transition . . . and the school doesn’t want to put all the pressure on that one kid to educate all the other kids.
"So we still haven’t lost our goal of trying to appeal to other folks; that part of ourselves is put specifically into that campaign, while the Centre (CCGSD) idea is that we want to be more of a resource hub for other organizations across Canada. Our mandate has always been ‘You tell us what you need, we’ll go to where you are, and deliver what it is you want... If you’re from a small town, and you just need one visible gay person to talk to your kids, we’ll do that; if you need training for your teachers, at whatever level you need, if they’re still trying to understand gender identity, then we will do that.
"Sometimes that looks like a speaking tour, sometimes like a full-blown conference (or teacher summit, as is happening this Friday the 10th of April), sometimes it looks like them sending their kids to our week-long training forum."
Lukayo mentions that founder Jeremy Diaz talked about wanting ‘Jer’s Vision’ to become ‘Shared Vision’, as there were now six staff members, all of whom have stories to tell and share about their own challenges and successes.
"If we’re going to have an organization that’s trying to reach out to people, to build alliances and allies, as well as to reach into our own communities, we have to have a diverse representative, and we have to be speaking from our own experiences. And I don’t see a lot of that in larger LGBTQ organizations. . . I know there are different organizations separated into The Native Youth Sexual Health Network, and that’s separate from [this or that]. The only place where I see that sometimes it will mix is in Toronto, and I want to see that more in other places. . . What we want to be able to do is build those connections."
GC and Lukayo discuss the varying natures and knowledge in such diversity, and Lukayo mentions that, as a Filipino with the kind of Two-Spirit history of his own culture, he was actually guided after his emigration to Canada (as a child) by local Two-Spirit Elders in learning about his own realities.
Then there’s the Gay Sweater. To quote the CCGSD media release:
LGBT Community Creates World’s First Real ‘Gay’ Item to End Misuse of Word ‘Gay’: Today, the world’s first and only ‘gay’ object – a sweater knit from the donated hair of more than 100 LGBT people – makes its debut during Toronto Fashion Week. Appearing ahead of this summer’s upcoming Pride Week celebrations in Toronto, New York, San Francisco and London, The Gay Sweater was created to make people everywhere understand that it is incorrect and offensive to use language like that’s so gay to negatively describe something. . . The project is an initiative of The Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD).
"‘The idea for the sweater was born from a desire to educate and encourage everyone to use ‘gay’ the correct way," said Jeremy Dias, director of the CCGSD.
We bet it’s warm!
