My first literary infatuation was for Anna in Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 classic Anna Karenina. I read it in Russian during summer of 2001, at the age of eleven, in my grandparent’s summer house in the suburbs of Tashkent. It was a very dry and hot summer, over 113 degrees, and I used the tiny library at the far end of the house to hide from the heat. I did not question my attraction to the female character, I was too naive to understand what it meant or how it would affect my life. There were no words in Uzbek language to describe homosexuality, or at least none that were present in the public sphere.

After my sixteenth birthday families of young bachelors started courting me through my family. It is an exciting for a young woman in Uzbekistan. The potential match’s mother or grandmother would call mine to express their interest, because it was always a family decision and not up to the individual. I was extremely lucky to have been born into a ‘progressive’ family - one that valued education and did not ask of its daughters to be married by the age of nineteen. I decided to leave Uzbekistan as soon as possible, not because I expected to find a society where homosexuality was accepted or even protected under the law. I could find a queer community, or meet a woman and fall in love. I simply wanted to avoid marrying a man.

I needed my mother’s approval and support to leave, so I spent the next two years exploring my options and negotiating. I found and used information from different human rights organizations about women's issues and human rights abuses in the Middle East, and specifically in Uzbekistan. Every Tuesday evening I had a standing appointment with my mother in our kitchen to present a new country, university, and its pros and cons for international students. Persuaded, my mother agreed to support me, under one condition: I would have to go to Slovenia, where her high school classmate who immigrated a few years ago could keep an eye on me. I asked her why she let me do all this research for so long if she knew that Slovenia was the only viable option beforehand. She said, "I wasn’t looking for proof that international education would benefit you - it is rather obvious. I wanted proof that you can handle it."

In Slovenia, I continued to inquire about human rights issues and the corrupt legal system that I left behind. Why was the place I called home a place of fear and anguish for many women? Why was my sexuality criminally punishable in Uzbekistan, and legally protected in some other countries? How could tradition and religion trump individual freedoms of so many citizens? Wasn’t the law a tradition itself, and was it to be rewritten or reinterpreted?

Although reading articles in modern journals and political newspapers was extremely helpful I wanted to find a platform where these ideas could be discussed and debated. I joined two Models of United Nations, first in Slovenia, then in Holland. I represented Nigeria in the General Assembly and USA in the Environmental Program. After debating resolutions for days, I began to realize how complicated international human rights issues were. Agreements were voluntary and often built on a careful political gameplay; each government had a very specific set of laws that sometimes clashed; even when laws protected similar rights in a similar ways, their interpretations by courts produced different results. Compassion and desire were not sufficient to solve these issues; I needed a thorough understanding of social, economic, and legal concepts that surrounded these them.

After my first year at the University of Ljubljana, I was free to decide whether or not I wanted to remain in Slovenia. Although my experiences in Slovenia were overwhelmingly positive, I always wanted to live and study in North America, and decided to transfer to a school in Canada that would offer a similar major but greater opportunities. And so started my undergraduate career at Brock University.

While at Brock, I explored different areas of law through classes and research papers. My favorite class, Labour Law, explored labor relationships in the context of the 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act and various federal and provincial statutes that protect workers. On the first day of classes, professor Finley walked in the classroom pronouncing the name of Everett George Klippert, the last man in Canada who was convicted and imprisoned for homosexuality in 1965. We learned that although Klippert’s case was criminal, it played a profound role in the way civil cases about discrimination based on sexuality were treated today by Canadian courts. A man who was imprisoned for homosexuality only forty two years ago was now protected under the law and had the right to marry.

Outside the classroom, I joined the Student Justice Center, first as a volunteer and later as a student employee. I coordinated all marketing and communications activities. As an umbrella organization, we provided support for all justice seeking groups on campus, and it was my responsibility to raise awareness about various human rights and civil liberties issues by maximizing the impact of marketing efforts. As I designed posters, brochures, and buttons for events that demanded an end to violence against women and the LGBTQ community, I was reminded of my great fortune. Here I was, six years later after leaving Uzbekistan, marching the street with a big Take Back the Night banner, or wearing a rainbow t-shirt at the Toronto Pride Parade. I know that repeatedly chanting three lines is not sufficient for change - not in Canada, not in remote Middle Eastern villages. But it is a demonstration of rights that have been gained - proof that with carefully planned legal strategy, liberation is possible.