Yes. Thank you so much for that question.
I think that is evident when you go through social media and see the types of comments you get, for example, when you post on same-sex relationships. People use anonymous pages, commenting right underneath with very gruesome words, such as getting five men to take the lesbianism out of them. Living your life and going through social media comments like that put you not just in a difficult mental space but also in a difficult physical space, because you don't know what your safety will be outside. Are they actually going to do it if you step out of your house?
That's the kind of hate we face as 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada in general, not just in Calgary.
You also have people commenting about murder and things like that. When you have one person with that comment under your page, when other people see it—especially if it's people who also have that kind of sentiment—they then have the courage, I guess, to go and act on it. You have people when you walk on the streets.... Even during Pride, people would actually walk up to us. This past Pride, somebody walked up to us and said, “Oh, that group—I hope you guys die”, or something like that, and just walked away. This was just random, and obviously we don't know who that person was, but if he gathers 10 other people who have the same beliefs as he does, he can easily cause harm to us. We're female, right?
I think it's very easy for us to acknowledge that this hate exists, but what are we going to do about it? That is really what our stand is.