Pride Month: Not All Queers Are Created Equal
“Queer Liberation doesn’t exist without intersectionality at Pride and all year long.”
The History of Pride
Pride Month is almost over and is an incredibly important month for not just the queer community but out global community. Pride originally commemorated the Stonewall Riots where Trans Women of Color and GNC+ people acting in response to an early morning police raid at Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, NYC on June 28th, 1969. Prior to this NYC has a litany of police raids of gay bars throughout the city due to the idea that being gay in public was a “disorderly disruption of normal life.”
The Genovese Family (called an “organized crime” family) bought the Stonewall Inn in 1966 and rebranded it as a gay safe haven where drag queens and “cross-dressers” were welcomed. During the initial police raise on June 28th female officers were asked to take “cross-dressers” into the bathroom and check their genitals to decide how people should be prosecuted. This was the final straw after a long history of discrimination and police brutality and instead of leaving the bar a riot began. A year later the first pride parade in America would commence.
If it were not for Trans Women of Color (like Marsha P Johnson), gender non-conforming people (like Storme DeLarverie), Latinx Transgender people (like Sylvia Rivera) and the BIPOC community we would not have the same recognitions we have today. That being said the lack of accessibility and intersectionality still present at Pride continues to be astounding, stigmatizing and slap in the face our queer ancestors.
Modern Day Pride
Let me begin this next section by labeling that I am white and I am master level therapist so I have more privilege than many and it has protected me in many ways and given me many opportunities and I have experienced a ton of bi/pansexual phobia, non-binary phobia and ableism and during pride it happens to be the most noticeable. I have had countless friends, colleagues and clients from across the US share stories where those is hetero-passing relationships were either asked to leave a pride event or blatantly told there was no way they could be queer. I’ve heard non-binary people share that their fellow binary trans community members thing, “they/them” pronouns are “annoying to remember” and I’ve been to many Pride events with almost no disability access or accommodations only to have people literally stand in front of my wheelchair for a better view or kick my cane when “sorry that’s in the way”.
I am not blind or deaf and have had many blind and deaf colleagues share the lack of translation available and again lack of physical access to use a walking stick has kept them from attending. I have had many neurodivergent clients share than due to the loud nature of events with no quiet spaces available they have often avoided Pride all together continuing to leave them and many like them out of the very spaces meant for them. Many have shared that while Pride events were virtual it meant for two years they had connection, they were welcome, their disabilities and accommodations were no longer an issue and for the first time they (and I) didn’t have to ask to have spaces that accommodated us. As people continue to say this pandemic is over for many in the Queer community not only is it not over but it has deeply affected our sense of community and ability to re-grown the connections that keeps us grounded and feeling our most alive.
As I continue to painfully write this article I am struck by how hard I worked on myself. I have been trying time come since I was 12, first as bisexual, then pansexual and finally as GenderQueer/Non-binary & Transgender. Over the last 3 years of coming out and going through gender affirming medicine I have seen such a change in myself. My confidence has grown, my self-worth is higher, my ego is in a healthy place and my relationship with my partner has never been better. And yet during Pride month I have been exploring why I want to shy away and why I feel so uncomfortable in the very space I have spent a career and a life fighting for and dear readers it comes down to a few things:
1. Being disabled means being physically unsafe at Pride events that aren’t explicitly considering disabled bodies or online.
2. Bi and Pansexual phobia means often my sexuality is not only unwelcome but frowned upon or discouraged depending on where I am and what kind of event it is.
3. Being non-binary, AFAB and someone who likes femme things means that my non-binaryness and Transness is often equally discounted, mocked, ridiculed and looked down upon.
If we want Pride to include all 2sLGBTQIA+ people we need to create spaces that directly involve all the intersections or disability status, of all the sexualities and all the gender expressions. And those of us that are white (myself included) need to pass the BIPOC, APPI, Latinx and all non-white community members. We need to create intersectional spaces that model for the world how Queerness is not only the true magic of the world but that through us people can learn unconditional love, self-acceptance, and honoring those around us that are different. If your Pride isn’t anti-racist, all genders inclusive, all sexualities inclusive, anti-ableist and anti-fatphobic then what are we even proud of?
So, if you’re queer and you have privilege maybe donate money to a QTBIPOC fund, shop at local Queer AAPI business or get a yummy meal at a Queer Latinx local restaurant? What harm is there in using our privilege to even the playing field in the Queer Community? Maybe this is what the world needs to be less hateful? And if it’s not, at least the Queer Community and Pride will be the exact things we tell the world we are.