Kerry Fast
kerryfast@gmail.com
October 2019
Or an alternative subtitle, and one with considerable more flare than the one I came up with: in the words of Pëta, someone I interviewed who was raised Mennonite and identifies and as queer and genderfluid: “This was not your typical trip to the [Steinbach] thrift store.” I begin with Pëta’s words because they point to what is at the heart of my paper—the multiplicity of spaces that make up Steinbach. Doreen Massey writes about space that it is “constituted through interactions,” that it is a sphere that holds the “possibility…of multiplicity,” and that it is “always under construction” (p. 9). Seeing space in this way, rather than as a set, never changing place, Massey argues, means that not only is space political, “but that thinking the spatial in a particular way can shake up the manner in which certain political questions are formulated, can contribute to political arguments already under way, and—more deeply—can be an opening up to the very sphere of the political” (p. 9). Margaret Rodman echoes Massey’s description: “places are not inert containers. They are politicized, culturally relevant, historically specific, local and multiple constructions” (p. 205).
The location in question in this paper, is of course, Steinbach, a small city in southeastern Manitoba of about 14,000 people. And in the city of Steinbach, the two blocks of Reimer Avenue that are flanked by EA Friesen Park and the Helena Loewen Garden on one end and by City Hall on the other end, specifically on the morning of July 9, 2016 and into the afternoon. On that morning, 4000 people gathered in the EA Friesen park or the streets leading into it and at some point, walked the two blocks to City Hall, where many of them stood in the hot sun for more than an hour listening to a variety of speeches by members of the LGBTQ community and politicians. But much more was going on than this brief description of the inaugural Steinbach Pride. And this is where I draw on the theoretical descriptions of space that I began this paper with. Steinbach and Reimer Avenue as a street in Steinbach didn’t undergo much change on July 9, 2016. It’s still Reimer Avenue, a strip of pavement with sidewalks; the buildings along the street have remained. But Steinbach Pride created new meanings for Reimer Avenue and for Steinbach on July 9. Steinbach as a place was an important factor in what happened at Steinbach Pride, but Steinbach Pride also changed Steinbach.
Jimenez, in his study of the Chilean city of Antofagasta, takes this one step further. He describes space as “a dimension and form of agency—a capacity.” Space, he writes, “is what people do, not where they are” (p. 7). While I disagree with Jimenez on the one hand—where people are is important for understanding space—I draw on his description of space as capacity for this paper. What people did on Reimer Avenue, at City Hall and in the park, is what gave meaning to Steinbach Pride and is what drove its political agenda forward. In other words, Steinbach Pride, in its creation of a certain kind of space on those few blocks in Steinbach, where people did certain things, revealed Steinbach’s capacity for a new and different kind of space.
My paper is specifically about how Mennonite meaning was made during Steinbach Pride, and there would be many other ways of understanding Steinbach Pride. But to get at the role that the Mennonite context and flavour of Steinbach Pride played in creating meaning is integral to understanding it. It’s important for the obvious reason that Steinbach and area is steeped in Mennonite history and culture. As a stand-in for the almost 150 years of Mennonite presence in southeastern Manitoba, let me say that Steinbach was founded in 1874 as a small village by Mennonite immigrants from Ukraine, one village situated amongst many other Mennonite villages in a tract of land known as the East Reserve. (By drawing attention to Mennonite history and culture, I’m not eliding other equally important histories and cultures that shape that area of southeastern Manitoba, Indigenous and Métis ones come to mind).
In understanding Steinbach Pride in its context of Mennonite history and culture, I also situate it in the context of the wider North America Mennonite community. Daniel Cruz in his book Queering Mennonite Literature states unequivocally that “frankly, the North American Mennonite community is behind the times in regard to issues of sexuality” (p. ?). This is his justification for insisting on using queer theory when there have been calls that queer theory has run its course. While I do not draw on queer theory like Cruz does, I contend that Steinbach Pride too is relevant for the North American Mennonite community and for the same reason. Many Mennonite institutions, communities, and individuals haven’t figured out human sexuality in a way that contributes positively to Mennonite life. Stephanie Kreibel, in her dissertation on Pink Menno, the American Mennonite youth movement dedicated to bringing about full equality for queer Mennonites in Mennonite Church US chillingly points this out in the context of the Church’s stance towards its LGBTQ members. She writes that “binaries are a primary means through which people order the world…[and] binaries generate violence” (p. 10). She then goes on to document the psychological violence that Mennonite Church US enacts in the face of Pink Menno’s creative and playful resistance to the Church’s exclusionary policies and theology. Steinbach Pride is not bound to a Mennonite institution like Pink Menno is, and as such Steinbach Pride IS a space for LGBTQ Mennonites. Indeed, Steinbach Pride may be the only public expression in North America of queer Mennonites creating their own space, on their own terms. Chris Plett, an organizer of the inaugural Steinbach Pride and now president, articulated this well in his speech at Steinbach Pride, bringing together the multiplicity of space, the capacity of Steinbach, and the political creativity that made up Steinbach Pride: “This is how we’ll take up our pens and write our own chapter in this amazing open book that is Steinbach and the surrounding area” (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/steinbach-first-pride-1.3671878). My hope is that my paper helps to move away from binaries that create violence, and ones that are relevant to Steinbach Pride include gay/straight, right/wrong, inclusive/exclusive, church/non-church, to show how Steinbach took on multiple and creative meanings on July 9 in the exuberant, electric, joyful chaos that was Steinbach Pride.
I turn now to look at how people who participated in Steinbach Pride 2016 drew on Steinbach as a Mennonite place, their own Mennonite identities, and the wider Mennonite world to create Steinbach Pride 2016. Unfortunately, in the 20 minutes I have, I can’t even begin to be representative of the 38 people I interviewed for this project; there are so many different papers I could have written.
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“I have a strong connection to the faith of my mothers and fathers,” Denise, who grew up in southeastern Manitoba, told me in our interview when I pushed her on what she meant when she said Steinbach Pride was about her people, “the complication is in the teachings.…For me…there’s always a contradiction in the teaching and interpretations because…it instilled in me a lot of fear and trembling as a little girl.…But there’s a great deal of strength that is there for the practice of hospitality, and how to give people a leg up, like building a garage, bringing food, all that practical stuff; I feel like that’s in me.” Her complicated faith was one of the reasons Denise attended Steinbach Pride, and if she couldn’t affirm all of what went on in the name of faith in Steinbach, it was still an important component of Steinbach Pride for her. And she took pains to recognize those aspects of her faith at Steinbach Pride that were important to her. She sent a letter to the Steinbach Chamber of Commerce prior to Pride “encouraging the community to be safe and welcoming.” She received an immediate response, and while the chamber of commerce wasn’t going to be “throwing out the banners,” as Denise put it, one member wrote back to say that “she was definitely gonna be there, like I’ll be walking with you.” And I don’t think it was coincidental that Denise framed this response in terms of hospitality: “That surprised me, that hospitality. I was surprised, I thought there was going to be more doors closed.”
That Mennonite hospitality was an important marker of Steinbach Pride for participants is also evident in Chris Plett’s invitation at the end of his speech to all the guests at Steinbach Pride. “As you go out this afternoon into the community don’t feel that they’re looking at you sideways and don’t think that they’re judging you necessarily. Be strong, and as the Mennonites say, mouk de sels tusich, which means make yourself at home” (CBC). In this invitation, rather boldly, Chris took it upon himself to speak for Steinbach, confident that it practiced Mennonite hospitality, when only minutes earlier, he had described how he had been bullied, forced to deny his gay identity, and lost a job because he was gay. But in his speech Chris drew on the capacity of Steinbach and recreated what the city could be.
Mennonite hospitality showed up in other ways as well. Walking as a three-generation Mennonite family was important for Patricia and Curtis and knowing that the fourth generation was present at the speeches only added to their satisfaction with the event. Following Pride, they invited a small Quaker contingent from Winnipeg who had come with their daughter, who was Quaker, over for Mennonite food. “That’s always an important way for a Mennonite family to end [an] activity and extend…the table,” Patricia explained. On the menu were borscht and homemade brown bread and rollkuchen (deep-fried fritters) and watermelon. Curt continued: “we were all of the same mind here, but people get together over food, to celebrate or to mourn, or whatever it is, to me that’s what Mennonites do, we use food as part of the celebration or any time community gets together there is food.” But for Patricia and Curtis, the hospitality they served up with their Mennonite food was a more complex, politicized hospitality; it was also a way for them to demonstrate that “Mennonite” and being welcoming of LGBTQ people were not incompatible. In a city where they felt that many Mennonite churches no longer held to and lived by Mennonite beliefs and values, and were, therefore, unaccepting of LGBTQ people, Mennonite food and the hospitality that comes with it stood in as a proxy for acceptance. Where Mennonite theology and beliefs are used to justify exclusion of LGBTQ people, Curt explained, Mennonite food “kind of makes a statement [that] the [Mennonite] culture is not necessarily at odds with the LGBT culture….I think it was important to kind of make a little bit of an issue, a little bit of a deal of Steinbach’s culture, Mennonite culture and just to show that it wasn’t necessarily incompatible with the gay community.” Patricia and Curt couldn’t claim that Steinbach as a whole was welcoming of LGBTQ people, but Mennonite food, as a stand-in for Mennonite culture, could be the first step in communicating the capacity of Mennonite faith and church life to be inclusive.
But for others, it was less about drawing on the capacity of Steinbach or Mennonite faith and culture to create an inclusive space and more about their own capacity in the context of Steinbach Pride to create a space for themselves by reclaiming what had been denied them—walking an alternative narrative along Reimer Avenue. For Kyra, holding her partner’s hand during Steinbach Pride was an important moment. She set this experience against the heteronormativity of Steinbach culture where she could not situate herself as a queer person. She described a family wedding shower for her brother and his fiancé: “I went to a family event recently, it’s the first one I’ve gone with…my partner, and we got to the front door and she couldn’t do it, and then I went in and I couldn’t it either. Why am I here? Why am I here without my partner? This is a bad time, so I’m just leaving. And I bump into this pretty frequently, but I feel like, what makes my relationship so much different than my brother’s relationship with…his fiancé, what’s the difference? I don’t get it.” And then about walking the Pride route she said: “I think I was crying purely because I was overwhelmed by the idea that I was able to walk those streets holding my partner’s hand. That was huge, it felt momentous, it felt like I was making history and it felt like I was taking one small step for all the queers in all the land, but I would never say that it is safe.”
For Dan [pseudonym] it was the contrast between the Steinbach of his youth, where he had been teased and bullied for his effeminism, and the day of Steinbach Pride when he could unabashedly be an effeminate gay man. The hand gestures and other mannerisms he had begun to curb as a 6-year-old boy, and thereby “temper” who he really was, were, on that day, his again: “For me it was like re-claiming a space…where I think, where having a sense that I’m taking back this, ‘no,’ I’m saying, ‘this is a place that not necessarily accepts me, but this is my space, you can’t take this from me.’…As I walked on that street in Steinbach I thought, I don’t know how effeminate I look to people, but if I do it’s perfectly ok here today….I’ve got pivotal moments of things kids said to me in elementary school that just crushed me…so then take that little boy and go back to that street and actually walk right past my elementary school. ‘Yeah!! I’m here.’ That was empowering.”
I’ve described how Mennonite faith as expressed in hospitality found a place in some people’s experience of Steinbach Pride. But I’ve also described how heteronormative aspects of Steinbach’s culture, past and present, forced a resistance, a reclamation of space for those who had not been welcomed.
The irony of Steinbach Pride for LGBTQ Mennonites, was of course, that pride —small “p” pride—for Mennonites is a complicated business. As Denise put it: “so I think that one of the taboos of Mennonitism is parading, deliberately attracting attention, expressing your individuality, stepping out, your right to be noticed.…Boy it flies in the face of how we’re supposed to be.”
And Mennonite participants responded to this conundrum in different ways. Jesse framed it as taking up space and the challenge this proved for them as a Mennonite: “I went to a book launch....He [the author] is a transgender male and he grew up in Niverville, I think…and one of his poems says he’s learning to take up space, and it’s like ‘YES.’ That’s what we need to do…be a little selfish, like be you, and don’t be sorry for that, and I think that’s what Steinbach Pride for that first year was, like holy moly, we’re here and we’re queer….It’s like, we can do that, really? I didn’t know you could do that.”
For Pëta, who grew up in Leamington among Plautdietsch (Low German)-speaking Mennonites, attending Steinbach Pride “was a no brainer, just the thought of Pride happening in such a Mennonite hub anywhere, that was a big deal.” But Pëta too was aware of the Mennonite “prohibition” against small “p” pride, against attracting attention to oneself.
Katherine McFarland Bruce, in her book Pride Parades: How a Parade Changed the World, premises her sociology of Pride on the fact that Pride parades are unique to their location, whether that be Grand Forks, Salt Lake City, or Burlington, Vermont. One of the factors that made Steinbach Pride stand out from other prides was the request put out by the Pride committee that attendees respect the local context and refrain from dressing too extravagantly. Pëta had their own way of circumventing this call for modesty. They came as Taunte Mariekje, wearing a blue floral dress sewn by a friend back home and their head covered with a traditional black duak (lace kerchief). They explained, at least some tongue in cheek, how they came to that persona: “That name came about when I was asking myself how can I be authentically Mennonite and be authentically a drag queen as well. A lot of drag is about vanity and ‘look at me,’ so I decided that I had to be frugal, be thrifty, be humble about this too. Mennonites don’t have queens, but what’s the next closest thing? Well either grandma or taunte has all the power.”
Jochebed too chafed at this call for decorum and labeled Steinbach Pride the “held-back Pride.” If bodies and clothing were not to be flaunted, Jochebed was very willing to flaunt Steinbach Pride itself: “Steinbach Pride, is, is really impacting the whole of culture of Mennonitism. It’s not just Canada-wide, where it’s impacting…Like myself for example, I took it to Paraguay, and I posted on Instagram, I’ve posted on Facebook.…The whole [Mennonite world is talking about Steinbach Pride].…So, it can’t just stay within one country [meaning Canada] cause we Mennonites are everywhere, that’s the beauty of it, everywhere! If I know somebody then that message will travel very fast. Like gossip is our strength! So, let’s gossip about the gays! … Yeah! Let’s spread a rumour.…‘Guess what, the Mennonites in Steinbach, they have a parade!’”
And with that rallying cry I will bring this presentation to a close. In this paper I have tried to show that Steinbach Pride took on multiple meanings for Mennonites who participated in it. Some drew on the capacity of Steinbach and their Mennonite roots, their identities as a way to call for greater inclusivity. Others reclaimed the Mennonite space that had denied them entry, insisting on participating in their own way. Still others held together the conflicting values of Mennonite and Pride cultures in playful ways. It is in this multiplicity of meanings that I have highlighted today, meanings among many other meanings, that Steinbach Pride becomes a bold voice for new ways to be queer, for new ways to be Steinbach, for new ways to be queer in Steinbach. And in that, to quote the philosopher Derrida, “there is a chance, a chance to change” (quoted in Massey, p. 151).
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