Human Pride

The Artist D is Proud

He was so excited to be leaving that small town and going to the big city for the day. He picked up his freaky friend at her parent’s house and they headed out. The boy was but seventeen dressed in something tight and probably fluorescent with jelly bracelets lining his arms. The boy’s friend was goth’ed to the nines. Both had a combined intellect far beyond the hayseeds of their birth and couldn’t wait to find out what was hiding in the shadows, in broad daylight.

The sun was hotter than hell and I remember now that the boy was wearing a tank top. His shoulders were burnt to a crisp by the end of the day and have been freckled since that very day. The things they saw and did that day would live in infamy even though they did very little. The young friends were the observer type and that’s what they did that very hot June day. It was as if the spaceship had landed and our people finally let us in to see that we were not alone.

I was that sun burnt boy and I was so very excited to tell my mother of the things I had seen when I got home. I saw women dressed as men and MEN dressed as WOMEN! There were boys there who held hands with other boys. People like me exist! Back then it wasn’t so naive and it still wasn’t common knowledge. No matter how close to the 21^st century we were. Mom didn’t know transgender people existed and she too was sure gay couples lived on the underground and pretended to be roommates. I bought a rainbow bear at that Pride Parade and gave it to my mom.

And so it often goes those very hot days in June when we leave our closets and venture to the nearest city hub to be with our own kind. The gays, lesbians and transgender people step out with summer. We’re in the face of drab culture and it has helped, but now I have to wonder where “we” are headed!

I thought of something back then that I think even more strongly today. I come from the flat countryside where people are one type and you’ll be damned to be anything different. I know what it’s like to be the green alien in a herd of white faces. That’s why it was so freeing when my friend and I ventured to the big city and found our multi-cultural gay, lesbian and transgender roots. It was invigorating to discover people of like mind with like bodies. Once you are welcome into the Pride Club you start to see things as they really are.

The gays have different groups and so do the lesbians. Are you a bear, a twink, a bull or a lipstick? The list goes on and on. Then as we (our Pride Culture) marched onward the list of labels got longer. From LGBT to LGBTI to LGBTQ to the less know MSGI or GSM onward into the realm of alphabet soup. Just to name a handful. I see now far more clearly what I was seeing then. Once I was welcome to identify as Gay I found that I then had to decide what within the Gay label I was. Much like when I fell under the Transgender label. Well, what kind of transgendered individual are you? Male to female or female to male or androgynous, pandrogynous, gender queer and hurry to please make up your mind as this stuff really matters!

Free to Be

Do all those labels really matter? It matters for the right to be ourselves. But it also ends there for me. It’s a childlike perspective that I am fortunate to have never lost. Had I been allowed to be who I came out of the womb feeling I was then I would have been that and never mentioned it again. I would have pranced on in fabulous female clothes and enjoyed life as it was. It’s all clear and simple until someone says you can’t do that. Would it really be that big of a deal if you were allowed to transition from one gender to the other as easily as it is to change your hair color? You’d want it. You’d get it. We’d be done and ready to move on to world peace or even better yet, opening a colony on Mars.

When you’re at the parade this year be sure to take pride in who we all are. Take a deep breath to remember that each and every interestingly different individual you see deserves the same freedoms everyone else knows they deserve. Whether you’re observing as a vanilla in nature or a freak unique you must never discriminate just because someone is different. Yes, ma’am, even the gay boy wearing a speedo dancing on the float.

But at the end of the day sweep it all into a pile and remember that we are one in the same. We are human. We are beings. We are all shuffled together trying to get along. So let’s get along and instead of fighting for the right to be gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, straight, intersexed, asexual, undecided, etc., let’s fight for the right to be as free as every being ought to be.

Much like my freckled shoulders that have never recovered from my first Gay Pride Parade in Allentown Pennsylvania, I am forever happily scarred by the pride paths I’ve taken. They took me forward and I found my place with my people. Then I found my place with humanity. I’m human and the rest is just war paint.

The Artist D is executive editor of Fourculture Magazine. He is also unearthing the underground as host of The Fabulous D Show every Sunday at TheArtistD.com!

Tags: featured, Identity, LGBTQI, pride, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion