Week 07/2026: Pride!
Week of 9 February 2026
After the Pride flag raising two weeks ago, this Saturday (14th) was the annual Pride Parade in Hobart.
As we’ve done the past few years, my workplace registered a group to take part.
This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.
Pride!
The parade is fantastic. Organisations can register to attend as a group, or people can sign up to march individually. This year there were over 50 groups registered, from LGBTIQA+ advocacy groups, to government departments, social and sporting groups, political parties, workplaces, and individuals.
We were asked to meet at the back of the Salvation Army on Elizabeth Street to find our people and get any last minute instructions before heading off on the march at 1.00.
This year our group not only had fancy t-shirts but we had a playlist, which had started out being songs themed around the work our organisation does but I think it ended up as being something quite different. I’m fairly sure no one in any of our workplaces does any work remotely connected to Your Disco Needs You, but hey, it’s a big place. Maybe they do.
The march was led off by the Pride Skybus, which carried people who weren’t able to walk the route. The bus was followed by the First Nations group and then the police pipe band. After that the rest of the groups followed in all their different shapes, sizes and costumes.
Marching—sashaying if you wished—down Elizabeth Street, which was lined with supporters and curious onlookers. (There are heaps of great photos in this post. It’s hard to participate and take photos at the same time!)
It was a lot of fun but very sunny so I was glad of my long sleeves and leggings.
The leg warmers might have been a bit unnecessary and I’ve decided next year, after three years with a cap, I really need a proper sun hat for this event.
Looking online for suitable rainbow-themed wide-brimmed hats, I found this, which, while tempting, doesn’t quite fit the brief of keeping me shaded.
I could also wear my normal hat but that’s boring. I want a rainbow hat!
The parade was a wonderful celebration of LGBTIQA+ community and culture, and I was so happy to have had the opportunity to take part.
But then . . .
What never fails to happen afterwards, as people post about these events on social media, is the people who complain about it, or feel like Pride is somehow minimising the ‘straight community’ (whatever that is) or feel that they shouldn’t have LGBTIQA+ visibility ‘shoved in their faces’ (their words, not mine). The majority of public figures who I saw posting about the march had to turn off or limit comments on their posts, I imagine for this very reason.
It’s disappointing but not surprising.
I can’t speak for LGBTIQA+ people as to why Pride is important for them but I can speak for myself, as someone who has privileges that many in the LGBTIQA+ community don’t. I am not made to feel ashamed of my gender or sexuality, I’m not harassed or bullied because of my choice of partner, and there haven’t in the past been laws that criminalised my sexuality or made it illegal for me to wear particular items of clothing. (Yes, there was once a law in Tasmania that criminalised cross-dressing, which was mainly used to target transgender women. It was only repealed in 2000. Professor Paula Gerber provides a good overview of recent legislative changes in Tasmania here.)
While these people personally may not care about someone’s gender or sexuality, and don’t understand the need for the community to celebrate their expression, they’re missing the point. Too many people continue to advocate for restrictions on what people can do, what medical treatment they can receive, and where they can go. They insist that there are only two sexes, thereby denying the existence of the around one per cent of the population who have intersex characteristics, and they keep saying people should be defined by their ‘biological sex’, which is a practically meaningless term. And LGBTIQA+ people continue to be harassed, discriminated against, assaulted, even killed because of their identity.
To say people’s gender and sexuality don’t matter is to deny all of this. It also denies the struggles that people from this community have faced to be recognised and treated equally over many centuries.
This is a great article from Natalie, a young member of the LGBTIQA+ community in 2019 that addresses this very issue. They say
Pride isn’t just a party where people get dressed up and covered in glitter. It was and always will be a protest for the rights of the LGBT+ community. When organisations and celebrities support pride it isn’t making a political statement but making a community visible.
The fight isn’t over. We’re still protesting for our basic human rights. The rights that straight people have always had.
We cannot and must not forget this. This is what Pride is about. It reminds us that while we have come a long way and achieved a lot, there is still more to do.
Habit tracker
- Go outside first thing (7 days): 0/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 3/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 0/7
- Walk (7 days): 6/7
- Carry a notebook with me when I walk (6 days): 3/6
- Thinking time (4 days): 1/4
- Mid-day journalling (7 days): 1/7
- 9.30 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 6/6
- Evening routine (7 days): 7/7
Summary of the week
This week I learned
UN researchers say that the world has moved beyond a water crisis and into a state of global water bankruptcy. That doesn’t sound . . . great.
Owls can rotate their heads 270 degrees, which sort of makes up for them not having the side vision that most birds have. Because of their binocular vision, they can judge distance better and it helps them hunting. (Birds have twice the number of neck vertebrae than humans have, which makes their necks better able to rotate.)
Peregrine falcons in Tasmania are bigger than mainland ones, and they can catch black swans.
The tawny frogmouth mates for life and they sit exactly as I’ve seen them, hunched together. When they are threatened, they elongate themselves in order to look like a branch.
What I learned about myself
I really need recovery time after an event like the Pride Parade. I was worn out when I got home, so much that I had to have a nap. I felt exhausted and hot, had a headache all afternoon and my eyes felt tired. Even the next day I still didn’t feel recovered. I need to make sure I anticipate this and build in recovery time from events in future.
This week I noticed
I went for a blood test and someone came in behind me while I was waiting for their blood test and the person at reception said, “that’s not a blood test, it’s a wee test”. So they wouldn’t have got the test they were expecting when they went in.
A plover standing on one leg on the beach. I thought it only had one leg. It even hopped on one leg.
It had two legs.
What’s making me think?
David duChemin, author of Light, Space and Time:
“We don’t have the capacity to perceive the differences [in the way the camera can perceive time and light], but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. We don’t see the blurred brush strokes of elements moving through elapsed time but the camera does.”
It reminded me of something I was thinking about the other day, how a lot of the time we don’t think we’ve really perceived something unless we’ve seen it. That is, we give less credence to what we’ve heard or smelled than what we’ve actually seen. I know I do this all the time. I hear something and I know it must be there, but I won’t truly believe it until I actually see it. However, our vision is unreliable and it only tells us what we’ve seen through the filter of our brains and our perceptions and our filters. And we don’t see things as they truly ‘are’ because there (probably) isn’t such a thing. We can only see things as we see them.
The best thing this week
The Pride March
Reading
- Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- Light, Space and Time by David duChemin
Watching
- Resident Alien
- Doctor Who ‘The Evil of the Daleks’
Listening
- Heathers the Musical soundtrack
- Van Diemen’s Band: Bohemia
About The Author
