PRIDE 2023 DEFIES WHITE SUPREMACISTS, CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS

My Mixed Feelings About Pride 2023: Afraid to Go, More Afraid NOT to Go

I’ll be going in memory of Marsha P Johnson, my sister.

It’s been 10 years since I last attended a Pride event. I’d grown tired of what our local Pride event had become. Oh, sure — there was the usual joy of seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a long time and catching up with where they were in their lives.

But then things changed.

Homegrown vendors, the ones who lovingly crafted their wares, began to be outnumbered by corporate vendors who import wares from China, a country whose position on our community is poor at best and inhumane at worst.

As soon as Pride month ended, corporations that expressed support for us went right back to ignoring us except as a marketing demographic.

Pride attendees had absolutely no idea why we even had Pride in the first place.

Why should I choose to go to any place where the majority of attendees couldn’t be bothered to support us except for one week out of the year and ignored us for the other 51? And even assuming I would want to drink a beer, I can do a lot better than $10 for a Budweiser. Hell, I can do better than a Budweiser any day of the year. When they say, “Nothing beats a Bud,” I reply, “Then I’ll have nothing.”

So I stopped going.

This year is different. There’s a lot more open hostility and hatred toward LGBTQ+ people. (Did I get everybody? It seems that with each passing month we find another subgroup to our community — which is why I prefer the much broader term Queer.) For the record, I am a 73-year-old M2F transwoman. Which is another reason I identify first and foremost as Queer.

It’s just easier that way.

And yes, I know a lot of us, particularly older gay men, hate that word. They say it harks back to the ’50s and ’60s when it was an epithet, a pejorative. I understand their feelings. But that was some 50 or 60 years ago; times change, and the language changes as well. So, while I’m sorry you’re stuck in the past, I’m not going to redefine my identity to spare your feelings. That smacks too much of Political Correctness.

You saw the photo at the top of this article. For those of you who are wondering, it’s Marsha P (“Pay it no Mind”) Johnson, a transwoman who was at the forefront of the crowd that threw bottles, bricks, and rocks at the New York City Police officers who were rioting at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, a date which now is considered the beginning of LGBTQ Pride, Gay Liberation, or whatever you want to call it.

In June of 2016, President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument as America’s first LGBTQ national park site.

Marsha P Johnson’s entry at Wikipedia reads in part: “Shortly after the 1992 Gay pride parade, Johnson’s body was discovered floating in the Hudson River. Police initially ruled the death a suicide, but Johnson’s friends and other members of the local community insisted Johnson was not suicidal and noted that the back of Johnson’s head had a massive wound.”

It is this fact, more than any other reason, that made up my mind. I will be attending both the Pride Parade and the Pride Picnic this year. And I’ll be doing so in memory of Marsha P Johnson, my sister.

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Pride 2023 DEFIES White Supremacists, Christian Nationalists.

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