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In my time in the queer community, I’ve been to a few Prides. I’ve been to some of the smallest and some of the largest; I’ve nearly collapsed from exhaustion at Nyack, NY #Pride, I’ve partied with Equality Texas in Austin, and I’ve marched to massive crowds down the streets of Washington D.C. during #WorldPride this year.

That said, there is something about hometown Pride that’s different.

To understand why, some understanding of the queer ecosystem in a fairly large city is needed. It’s a community with neighborhoods, though not in the same way as the cis would understand the term. Many of the social structures and outlets of cisheteronormative society are tainted by the assumptions cishets demand, so we built our own. There are queer choirs, there are queer bands, there are queer dance troupes. We have queer football teams (both American and association - and, I suspect somewhere, Canadian and Australian and rugby), queer baseball and softball (and a shoutout to any queer cricket teams out there), queer basketball, queer hockey, queer cycling, queer roller derby. We have groups for LGBTQ+ kids, for those just coming to terms with being LGBTQ+, and for senior citizens who’ve been through decades of this. We have queer groups for just about every ethnic and religious group imaginable.

In other words, within any large community, there is a queer community within, which (like the larger community) are designed to explore almost every interest imaginable, in an environment far more welcoming than cishet society provides.

And the one place where all of those groups come together is Pride.

It is the gathering place - the queer community, in all its beautiful and quirky glory. The point is inclusion rather than exclusion; all of us are excluded from areas because of who we are, so the point is to be as inclusive as we can. It’s as close to a general assembly of queer community as exists.

It is a family reunion, in the best sense of the term.

And no matter where we’ve gone, it’s always good to come back home, to our found family.

Can you dig it?

:QueerCatHeart_Trans:

#queer #trans #lgbtq