You’ve almost certainly gotten some very important information about observing LGBTQ+ Pride Month: Don’t use your LGBTQ+ team members as mascots, don’t drop your support for LGBTQ+ people and causes at 11:59 p.m. on June 30, don’t use rainbows to shill for your product instead of conveying sincere messages of support. And again, that’s very important information, and I’m sure you’ve already internalized all of it and put it to use.
BUT WHAT ABOUT MORE STUFF? you cry into the wind. What about information beyond the standard annual Junetime scolding? Don’t worry, I’ve got you, with more stuff to know and share. Take it as nuance to inform your creative efforts, information to feed your brain, or high-level answers to your curious questions — just take it and enjoy having it. (Don’t take it as anything definitive or comprehensive, though, or groundbreaking, if you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community.)
LGBTQ+ Pride is defiant.
It’s straight-up pride and unity, and it’s also defiance in the face of centuries of adversity — You’ve told us we’re shameful and sinful and should be ashamed and hidden away, and screw you, we’re not going to do it. It’s about being told to feel ashamed and to, instead, feel proud. It’s about being told to hide away and to, instead, throw a damn parade. And that’s what makes it different.
For instance: I’m proud of my Slovak heritage because of its connection to my history. But Slovaks haven’t taken a ton of discrimination since the early 1900s, when my great-grandfather landed on these shores. No one’s really getting persecuted for their Slovak heritage, or being forced to hide it to avoid persecution, or being shamed and told to pretend they aren’t actually Slovak. Being a queer woman* is a totally different kind of pride, because parts of society are still shaming, discriminating against, and doing physical violence to LGBTQ+ people.
Pride Month is about spitting in the face of shame and discrimination, honoring the brick-throwers who came before us, and celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. And that’s what makes it different.
Everyone has sexual orientations and gender identities — cis, straight people just aren’t called on to justify them.
At the risk of briefly centering cis, straight people in a month of LGBTQ+ pride: The general attitude, even now, is often that cis and straight is “normal” and everything else is an aberration. You can hear this perfectly exemplified with all the, “I don’t have pronouns.” Yes, bubbeleh, you have pronouns. Everyone who doesn’t refer to themselves in the third person, Elmo-style, has pronouns. And you have a sexual orientation and a gender identity. It might just happen to be that your sexual orientation is toward people of the opposite binary gender, and that your gender identity matches the one you were assigned at birth.
It’s just that cis, straight people generally experience their orientation and identity differently from LGBTQ+ people. Straight people seldom if ever have to play the pronoun game when talking about their significant other — using “they” or “my spouse” or “my partner” or a gender-neutral nickname or initial or whatever to avoid having to disclose that the individual in question is of the same gender. They rarely have to think twice about walking into the bathroom that matches their gender.
Again, none of this is to any way center cis, straight people in a celebration of LGBTQ+ pride. It’s about widening horizons: If you find yourself seeing LGBTQ+ people as something foreign and set apart from you and your existence as a person, now you can do better! Yay for doing better!
There’s a difference between gender identity and gender expression.
Gender identity is which gender you are. Gender expression is how you embody your gender in the world. Because there are lots of ways to do it. A woman can present as the girliest of girly girls or the most masc-presenting of butches and still identify as a woman. A person with a full beard, a full face of makeup, and a full skirt could be nonbinary, or he could just be a dude who likes makeup and skirts. Put Meryl Streep, Jonathan Van Ness, and Billy Porter in Billy’s 2019 Oscars gown, and… okay, I mean, Billy’s gonna win, hands down, that look was conceived by God to go on him, but this isn’t a situation where the clothes make the man, or woman, or nonbinary person.
And a person doesn’t have to settle on one kind of expression. A woman who comes home from a day at work, takes off her buttoned-up suit and flats, and puts on a flirty little dress and stilettos to go out is embodying different forms of gender expression, both of which may be perfectly authentic to her. It’s something we rarely think of as “gender expression” because both forms are so commonplace, but that’s what they are.
Bonus: Pansexuals aren’t into cooking implements, and bisexuals remain bi at all times.
HAHAHA YOU’RE SO CLEVER AND CREATIVE no, you are not. For real: it’s not even offensive, it’s just been so very, very said before. Find some new material. Also, a bisexual person doesn’t cease to be bisexual when they’re with a person of the opposite gender.Think about it like a futon — sometimes it’s folded up like a couch, and sometimes it’s folded down like a bed, but either way, it’s still a futon.
Happy LGBTQ+ Pride Month to all who observe, and to all who don’t… happy June bereft of joy and color and strength and unity, I guess? Back to happy LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and may your rainbow flags hang high.
*Yeah, I guess I just did that.