My Pride: What Pride means to me.
This last weekend I went to my local Pride celebration. For me that weekend is always one that I look forward to all year and that leaves me glowing for weeks after I come back to my mundane world.
But it has become apparent to me that a lot of people don't understand what Pride does for us in the Queer community. Many misunderstand the images and the perception of outsiders on this weekend of LGBT Pride. For them it is just a bacchanal where we are hedonists and let lose some of our most depraved inner compulsions. For these people I feel that I need to explain to them how I experience Pride, what it means for me and why it is one of the highlights of my year.
The most important concept to relate to explain the meaning of Pride is probably "Fear." For many of us in the LGBT community fear is a part of our everyday lives. It is something that is ingrained in us, something that has become a part of who we are... it simply underlies everything: how we see ourselves, how we deal with each other, what we put on every morning before we go out to face the world. We all know that it was not too long ago, under fifty years, when it was illegal to be who we are; when discrimination and abuse was open and overt; when we could not love who we loved, could not be open, and hiding was a part of life we all sadly practiced and perfected for survival. But that all began to change on the day we celebrate at the Stonewall Inn in New York City when some of our brave forefathers and foremothers stood up to oppression and began a movement towards Equality that we continue today. In the years that followed we have had heroes stand up and leaders fall tragically but through it all we have come to where we are today, but we know that we still have so far to go... this aching fear is still deeply ingrained in far too many of us, we still are second class citizens in a Country that claims to have equality as one of its main tenets, we still mourn those of us who fall victim to the cruel hands of bigots and those who hate us simply for who we are, we still feel the sting of casual words and jokes that endeavor to make us feel less then human. In short we understand fear on a deep level that shows itself in different ways in all of us, but it is a commonality that we all share on some level.
Pride is the one weekend when we get to take that part off of us like some sort of ill-fitting cheap suit and revel in a feeling of freedom, safety and shared identity. For this one weekend we can march down the middle of the street of our cities, we can meet each other and talk and laugh freely, we can make free use of our self-deprecating campy humour, we can laugh at how we are stereotyped and generalized, we can relax and let our true selves out to frolic in the heat of a June day. We can forget, for one day, that painful part of ourselves that is composed of our fears... for one day we are with family and we are all equal.
I simply did not want the weekend to end. I stayed up late Sunday night with a wonderful friend, and after he left my apartment I sat outside in the night air feeling the glow of the weekend as it still lingered around me. Pride always both refreshes me and energizes me. For those couple of days, who I am is just alright. For that weekend being Queer is a wonderful thing, getting to feel that sense of family, of belonging, of being important just as I am... not despite who I am. It's a small taste that leaves me longing for more as it fades away in my mouth.
It reaffirms for me what is possible. It makes me all the more determined to do my part to make it possible for Pride to be redundant. I wish we all could live every day with that ugly suit of fear in a pile on the floor of that closet that we left long ago, leaving plenty of room. I wish that I didn't know that I will soon open the paper and read of another one of us who faced discrimination and or violence for who we are. I wish I didn't know that I will see "that look" in other's eyes. I wish I did not have to put on this horrible suit of fear again... I wish it didn't decrease the glow of my skin, clash with my possibilities, and diminish the sparkle of my dreams. Someday... someday, if we work hard however, children will read about our oppression with the same dismay and disbelief that we ourselves see when we read about how LGBT people were treated back in the forties, fifties, sixties and previous decades. But just as we revel in the freedoms that were bought with the sweat, tears and blood of those who preceeded us, we have a debt to shed our own for those to follow us.
But Pride gives a taste of what it feels like to glow, to breathe, to experience the cool breeze of equality for just one short day, and that is enough... until that heady taste fades from our lips.
But it has become apparent to me that a lot of people don't understand what Pride does for us in the Queer community. Many misunderstand the images and the perception of outsiders on this weekend of LGBT Pride. For them it is just a bacchanal where we are hedonists and let lose some of our most depraved inner compulsions. For these people I feel that I need to explain to them how I experience Pride, what it means for me and why it is one of the highlights of my year.
The most important concept to relate to explain the meaning of Pride is probably "Fear." For many of us in the LGBT community fear is a part of our everyday lives. It is something that is ingrained in us, something that has become a part of who we are... it simply underlies everything: how we see ourselves, how we deal with each other, what we put on every morning before we go out to face the world. We all know that it was not too long ago, under fifty years, when it was illegal to be who we are; when discrimination and abuse was open and overt; when we could not love who we loved, could not be open, and hiding was a part of life we all sadly practiced and perfected for survival. But that all began to change on the day we celebrate at the Stonewall Inn in New York City when some of our brave forefathers and foremothers stood up to oppression and began a movement towards Equality that we continue today. In the years that followed we have had heroes stand up and leaders fall tragically but through it all we have come to where we are today, but we know that we still have so far to go... this aching fear is still deeply ingrained in far too many of us, we still are second class citizens in a Country that claims to have equality as one of its main tenets, we still mourn those of us who fall victim to the cruel hands of bigots and those who hate us simply for who we are, we still feel the sting of casual words and jokes that endeavor to make us feel less then human. In short we understand fear on a deep level that shows itself in different ways in all of us, but it is a commonality that we all share on some level.
Pride is the one weekend when we get to take that part off of us like some sort of ill-fitting cheap suit and revel in a feeling of freedom, safety and shared identity. For this one weekend we can march down the middle of the street of our cities, we can meet each other and talk and laugh freely, we can make free use of our self-deprecating campy humour, we can laugh at how we are stereotyped and generalized, we can relax and let our true selves out to frolic in the heat of a June day. We can forget, for one day, that painful part of ourselves that is composed of our fears... for one day we are with family and we are all equal.
I simply did not want the weekend to end. I stayed up late Sunday night with a wonderful friend, and after he left my apartment I sat outside in the night air feeling the glow of the weekend as it still lingered around me. Pride always both refreshes me and energizes me. For those couple of days, who I am is just alright. For that weekend being Queer is a wonderful thing, getting to feel that sense of family, of belonging, of being important just as I am... not despite who I am. It's a small taste that leaves me longing for more as it fades away in my mouth.
It reaffirms for me what is possible. It makes me all the more determined to do my part to make it possible for Pride to be redundant. I wish we all could live every day with that ugly suit of fear in a pile on the floor of that closet that we left long ago, leaving plenty of room. I wish that I didn't know that I will soon open the paper and read of another one of us who faced discrimination and or violence for who we are. I wish I didn't know that I will see "that look" in other's eyes. I wish I did not have to put on this horrible suit of fear again... I wish it didn't decrease the glow of my skin, clash with my possibilities, and diminish the sparkle of my dreams. Someday... someday, if we work hard however, children will read about our oppression with the same dismay and disbelief that we ourselves see when we read about how LGBT people were treated back in the forties, fifties, sixties and previous decades. But just as we revel in the freedoms that were bought with the sweat, tears and blood of those who preceeded us, we have a debt to shed our own for those to follow us.
But Pride gives a taste of what it feels like to glow, to breathe, to experience the cool breeze of equality for just one short day, and that is enough... until that heady taste fades from our lips.