CREATIVE NON-FICTION

It’s Pride Month, We’ve Hidden All Our Rainbow Flags!

We’ve hidden every trace of our queerness, but we may still need to protest

This feels like a rough beginning to my third June as an out and proud queer non-binary trans man, but it’s also a month full of hope for a better future. Since I came into this part of myself one month before the world shut down, I have yet to attend a full-blown, in-person Pride Parade in all my transmasculine glory. We hadn’t planned to attend this month, since we were really busy trying to sell our house, but we may need to make one exception.

To make sure we can sell our house at the price we need to move to a more queer-friendly part of the country, we’ve had to hide every trace of evidence of our queerness. Since moving is a matter of feeling safe, we’re willing to do what we need to do to make this happen. Living in a place that welcomes queer trans people is much more expensive, which is why not all of us can just pick up and flee the South of the United States. Hiding our books and rainbows for a little while feels like a small price to pay, but it also feels like a betrayal of the spirit of Pride.

Living in a place that welcomes queer trans people is much more expensive, which is why not all of us can just pick up and flee the South of the United States.

Our realtor is a special friend who has put an incredible amount of effort into helping us transform our house to appeal to cis, heterosexual, white buyers who might otherwise have decided not to buy or who would have submitted a lower offer, assuming our house was worth less because people like us owned it. We are truly grateful for this help and support. We’re also grateful that this friend was honest with us about what we needed to do to successfully complete this step towards a better life.

That said, this is a reminder that every tiny interaction where we live seems to carry an invitation to go back in the closet, if only momentarily, to enjoy one of many subtle or not-so-subtle privileges of passing as a cis heterosexual. When I was in the closet, I was terrified I would get outed and the entire world would instantly know I was queer. I didn’t understand the constant opportunities and pressure I would face to go back into the closet, no matter how thoroughly I had outed myself. Even now that testosterone has thoroughly altered my appearance, situations like this come up, encouraging me to hide parts of myself, even for a short time.

• Should we downplay our trans appearance to feel a little safer when a repair person comes to fix something in the home, since that person will know where we live in this rural area?
• Should we use our deadnames when getting our one car fixed to be certain that it doesn’t affect the service we get for something so crucial, since there is no public transportation where we live?
• Should we bother sharing our real names when calling to ask our Homeowner’s Association a question about transfer fees for a potential new owner of our house? Would it just confuse things in a conversation we want to keep very short by just acknowledging our deadnames?

We face this choice over and over on an almost daily basis, for reasons of varying importance. Where do we draw the line? There are no right or wrong answers. We each need to find our comfort zone for personal risk profiles as trans people.

Where do we draw the line?

You may be thinking, “Well, why haven’t you just changed your names legally? Wouldn’t that be easier?” In the rural county where we live, changing our names could take up to 1 to 2 full years and requires personal references from locals in the small town we live in, where we keep a very low profile with neighbors to avoid attracting negative attention.

We would then have to go before a judge to convince them that we are trans enough, and take out an ad in a newspaper to let people know our dead names and real names, along with our address.

So much for keeping a low profile.

We’d also have to put that information up in the courthouse for anyone to see. Since we’re moving soon, we don’t want to risk causing legal confusion by starting this process in one state and finishing it in another. Where we’re moving, we can do all of this in about 3 months with less hassle.

It’s Pride Month, but so far, this month had promised to be too hectic to manage much of a celebration. That said, in North Carolina, we may have to make one exception. You see, the mayor of a small town near us has taken a stand against drag queens reading to children, bowing to pressure from a movement that equates LGBTQ+ people to “groomers”.

The message from Mayor Jacques Gilbert of Apex, North Carolina states:

“It continues to be my goal to ensure that all voices in our community are represented. I have received a variety of feedback regarding the Drag Queen Story Hour at the upcoming Apex Pride Festival. Given that this part of the event was not originally presented when the event was proposed, I met with representatives from the organization hosting the event, the Apex Festival Commission, and presented the feedback I have received from citizens. Today I was notified that that the Apex Festival Commission has taken the feedback into careful consideration and has decided to remove the Drag Queen Story Hour from the event. Any further questions or concerns regarding the Pride Festival activities can be forwarded to [email protected].”

We don’t have time to celebrate Pride, but we will absolutely make time to protest, if needed. I certainly plan to make time to write a formal letter to the email address listed above to explain why this decision is a slap in the face to all people belonging to LGBTQ+ communities. When completed, I will post my letter on Medium. I hope you will consider doing so as well. This mayor needs to know that, when there is active discrimination suggesting that any of us are inappropriate to be around children because of our LGBTQ+ community status, that we will all have each others’ backs. Pride was originally a protest, and it appears that it still needs to be one in North Carolina.

Pride was originally a protest, and it appears that it still needs to be one in North Carolina.

It’s our dream to live in a place where we don’t have to worry about having to decide whether to go back in the closet every day, even if only for a 3 minute conversation over the phone. The price of achieving that dream should have been to have a quieter Pride celebration this year. Unfortunately, we may have to interrupt that quiet, and our plans to continue getting ready to move, to remind an Apex mayor that we’re a community that isn’t so easily silenced.

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