Dear Baby Maybe,
For you June is a month where you get off school for the summer to begin your laziest time of the year. For me, throughout our adulthood, June has become the busiest time of year. And that’s because June is what we call Pride Month. There’s a couple of different ways people will describe and talk about Pride Month, but you’ll find that very few of those ways actually make sense to us.
Your first exposure to Pride will be in college. You’ll go with your college… not boyfriend, but.. ugh, we don’t have time to explain my relationship with Adam to you, but you’ll go with Adam. You and Adam will get on a train to NYC and go stand outside the parade and try to make sense of what is going on. See, Pride is supposed to be a celebration of LGBTQ identities. And while you’re still getting your footing on where in that acronym you fall, you’ll look at this parade and be confused why none of this is helping. You won’t feel like this parade is for you, and you definitely don’t see yourself represented in it. But you’re not really having these thoughts in real time. You’re not watching this parade at 19 years old thinking “this really isn’t the vibe for me, I need to find something that is more my speed.“ No, you’re more likely to be thinking “this is what I need to become to be part of this community.“
I wish that you could realize faster that when you meet up with another friend at the end of the parade route, that is where you and your energy belong. Not at the end of a parade route, but with the friend who matches your energy. I wish you understood the relief you felt seeing her. I actually don’t remember anything else about that day. I remember watching the parade, vaguely. I remember running into our cousin at the Starbucks Adam ran in to pee, and having a very awkward but not at all verbal coming out conversation. And I remember the relief of finally seeing someone who felt more like me. But I wasn’t aware enough at the time to appreciate her.
The show of Pride never made sense to me. I started to appreciate it as a holiday more when I learned the history of why June is celebrated as Pride. When I learned about the trans and queer leaders who stood up to the police and fought back against their brutality and mistreatment at the end of June 1969. That felt like something worth celebrating, worth remembering. But the parades and the parties I was seeing didn’t feel connected to that origin.
In the years since that first parade I attended, I have of course found more meaningful versions of Pride. Well, more in line with the celebrations and conversations I wanted to be having. But still, I can’t really get over the fact that the concept of “Pride“ just never felt right to me. I get that it makes sense for a lot of people, and I’m not looking to take it away from anyone. But I think in my ideal world we wouldn’t need to be proud of our identities. They could just be a part of us, a given. I have plenty of things that I’m proud of myself for. Being a woman isn’t necessarily one of them. My identity is not an accomplishment. I have pride in my community, pride in the legacy that got us here, but most of the time what is celebrated as “Pride“ feels disconnected from that. Maybe I’m taking for granted how easy it is for me to move through the world, maybe that is the impact of Pride and the legacy of the Stonewall riots. But I’d much rather June be about that legacy, be about that community, be about the movement and the momentum and the fight. “Pride“ feels too selfish. “Pride” feels individualistic. “Pride” feels too surface level for what I want to be feeling.
I don’t want us to just be proud. Pride doesn’t feel active. I want us to be engaged. I want us to be evolving. I want us to be effective. I want us to be educating. I want us to be pushing boundaries. I want us to be connected. I want us to be honoring the legacy that got us here. I want us to be unabashed, unapologetic, and unstoppable. I want the riots to never stop until the world changes. I want the respect we deserve. I want the safety that our communities deserve. I want restorative justice. I want restructure and cultural shifts and impactful change. I want what is rightfully ours.
I want so much more than Pride. I want us to be everything.
"My identity is not an accomplishment" woof. felt that one.