Tag Archives: pride month

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Pride Challenge: Day 20

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Maureen or Joanne? (Or your favorite LGBTQ show or queer-positive show).

I don’t even have any idea what this is in reference to, so I’m glad that they included that last little bit in the prompt.

Sense8.  Without question.  It’s probably pretty cliched to say that, but it is my current favorite.  I love Queer as Folk (both US and UK) and The L Word, but they each had their problematic aspects or concepts they had difficulty portraying well, and I have become less in love with each of them over time.

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Pride Challenge: Day 19

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Butch or Femme?

BS binary.

Personally, I identify as a tomboy femme – slightly femme of center, to the point where high femme/high butch and its accountremont is drag for me.  I occupy the middle and that’s fine by me.

To look at?  Suits.  Anyone in suits.  I love looking at folks in fancy dresses, but…mmmmm…suits.

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Pride Challenge: Day 18

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Something about the LGBTQ community you don’t understand or have a question about.

Why the white, cisgender, gay men insist on hogging Pride events.  You had your turn in the spotlight, how about you let go of that, just a little, and let other queer community members step forward?

I know this is changing, but not quickly enough.

To a certain extent, I understand how this came to be.  For these folks, there was only one axis on which they weren’t in the position of privilege – sexual orientation.  These days, sexual orientation matters less if you have the other privileges – at least: race, gender alignment, and sex.  Your sexual orientation matters less to society as a whole if you are not politically active in regards to it, especially if you conform to gender expectations regarding expression and presentation.  These gay men got more power as the stigma around gayness decreased, so they ended up saying screw you to anyone who wasn’t them, and formed modern Pride celebrations in their image.

This is some of what activism has bought the queer community – the ability to fly under the radar if you don’t raise a fuss.  Which is bullshit.  Pride started out as a riot – making a fuss, making ourselves known, putting ourselves in people’s faces so that they can recognize that we are people who are as deserving of equality, de jure and de facto, as anyone else, even if we don’t/can’t conform.  Lacking that, why are we accepting flying under the radar as a second option?

Maybe we aren’t.  I think the trans* community has been slowly picking up the mantle that has been slipping from the fingers of the white, cisgender, gay men, and making it our own, sewing our own colors onto it.

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Pride Challenge: Day 16

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A picture from your first LGBT relationship or of your first LGBT crush

This particular “relationship” ended poorly, but I am not up for outing them in a public forum, by posting a picture.  They don’t have any importance in my life anymore, but I still respect that desire for privacy.

Instead, I’ll tell you about the picture.

There are three of us – for about a year we did an amazing number of social things together.  This picture is me, her, and him.  I am decked out in my typical university attire – jeans and a pullover hoodie (I assume I’m wearing a t-shirt underneath, given the time of year and what I typically did).  We are coming back from some event on campus at night – the flash lights up all our faces, but the background is dark.  I think she and are starting to split at about this point in time – we never quite had the chemistry, but this was my first dip into that pool, so it’s worth something.

This picture still comes up for me occasionally in my Facebook pictures – I look at it, sigh at what happened after that, and pass on.

My first serious girl crush was also during college (I say serious, because I had a fancy for a moment for a gal in high school, but couldn’t quite admit that I  was bi yet) – she was the same year as I was, super smart, and involved with one of the student politics clubs on campus – I want to say environmentalism, socialism, or atheists.  Or maybe a combination of the three over the years.  I had a crush on her for all of my college years and I don’t even know if she was queer – I know she participated in some events through the school’s LGBTQ center, but so did a lot of straight people.  Oddly enough, given my tastes since, my first girl crush was not very femme.  She had dark brown straight hair and pale skin and I admired her dedication to her social justice work.

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Pride Challenge: Day 15

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Your favorite LGBT quote

Image Source
This one really struck me the first time I saw it.  To me, identifying as queer is important because of the reclaimed aspect of the word – you used this word against the LGBTIA community for so long, now we’re taking it back.  There is power in our language and this quote really goes there for me.

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Pride Challenge: Day 14

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Your favorite LGBT song or artist. 

So, I’m going to be cliched here and say Mary Lambert.

When I was dating Minx, hearing her songs for the first time – that was revelatory.  Not that I didn’t think that there was something worth celebrating about being in a relationship with a woman, but that there was a relatively mainstream artist who was celebratory about her queer relationships, instead of sweeping them under the carpet.

Then I heard she was a local artist and that she went to school with Lola.  So, yeah, the connection to her music hasn’t withered at all.  “Same Love” still makes me tear up, each time I hear it.

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Pride Challenge: Day 13

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Your favorite LGBT role model/celebrity.

The people who organize queer inclusive events, who are inclusive of the wide spectrum of queer and trans/non-binary identities.

I find that a lot of the people I used to idolize in the queer community have either fallen by the wayside or have some problematic views on gender binaries.

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Pride Month: Day 11

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Your favorite LGBT book (or one you’d like to read)

Yikes, I realize I haven’t read that many.  Do graphic novels count?  If so, definitely Fun Home.  Alison Bechdel, she of the Bechdel test, writes/draws her adventures growing up with an in the closet dad, eventual figuring out that she’s queer herself.  There’s a musical version coming to town this summer and I am So. Fricking. Excited!

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Pride Month: Day 10

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What does marriage mean to you?

I answered this question during the 30 day challenge I did in December, here is my answer:

Marriage is a bonding together of at least two people because they feel they can make a life together.

It is likely something that I will never have – to be honest, I am less disappointed with that idea than I used to be. I like the idea of committing to someone like that – with poly it doesn’t have to be just one person and it doesn’t have to be forever (though for me, long-term is preferable – I love the comfort of long-term relationships).

To expand on this – marriage does not necessarily need to be romantic or sexual, but I think that the choice to remain together, choosing each day to be with each other, for whatever reason(s), is important. But that’s important in any long-standing relationship and is not limited to marriage.