Since we're in the midst, or perhaps the tail end of, pride season, I thought it would be timely to reflect on the value of the word and the celebrations we see in colorful form throughout the world. It can also be viewed as a part two of my previous post on my experience in and relationship with the queer community.
As my previous post alludes to, pride for me is about more than the queer or excessively-lettered-acronym community and its struggles for equal rights and social normalization. To borrow a term that has become loaded from what I flippantly call the cult of political correctness, but has also been described in articles I've read as the "internet moral police", I come from the relatively privileged position of benefitting from coming from a place where many of the objectives of said process of social normalization have successfully taken root and have accordingly never suffered any trauma for the sake of my status as some form of a minority. I relate with my less fortunate peers not from personal experience so much as an overarching desire to see and understand the viewpoints of more humans in the world as simply being human, and respecting our differences in the process. I want to see equality and justice for all, in a world not run by aging white conservative heterosexual men; I do not want to see any specific group prosper more than another.
Pride for me, in turn, takes on a meaning that is more wrapped up in my own peculiar weave of minority-status and privilege-wielding. Since I live in a foreign country and spend a significant amount of my time in yet another one, all of these considerations are compounded when we apply local context and the extent of my integration into them. I am not just me, an average white queer male college student, I am a all of those things plus the addition of being them as an American in a continent where it is intellectually voguish (in the best of cases) to find fault in all things American. Pride in my situation means contending with a very different set of social difficulties than my contemporaries in the US, but especially my contemporaries in the relatively progressive enclave I was raised in. So let's take a look at all of those elements instead of writing anything more about their meaning.
Pride for me is:
As my previous post alludes to, pride for me is about more than the queer or excessively-lettered-acronym community and its struggles for equal rights and social normalization. To borrow a term that has become loaded from what I flippantly call the cult of political correctness, but has also been described in articles I've read as the "internet moral police", I come from the relatively privileged position of benefitting from coming from a place where many of the objectives of said process of social normalization have successfully taken root and have accordingly never suffered any trauma for the sake of my status as some form of a minority. I relate with my less fortunate peers not from personal experience so much as an overarching desire to see and understand the viewpoints of more humans in the world as simply being human, and respecting our differences in the process. I want to see equality and justice for all, in a world not run by aging white conservative heterosexual men; I do not want to see any specific group prosper more than another.
Pride for me, in turn, takes on a meaning that is more wrapped up in my own peculiar weave of minority-status and privilege-wielding. Since I live in a foreign country and spend a significant amount of my time in yet another one, all of these considerations are compounded when we apply local context and the extent of my integration into them. I am not just me, an average white queer male college student, I am a all of those things plus the addition of being them as an American in a continent where it is intellectually voguish (in the best of cases) to find fault in all things American. Pride in my situation means contending with a very different set of social difficulties than my contemporaries in the US, but especially my contemporaries in the relatively progressive enclave I was raised in. So let's take a look at all of those elements instead of writing anything more about their meaning.
Pride for me is:
- Being an under-spoken member of the queer community, donating when I am able to money to targeted interests that promote an end to legal mechanisms that keep people like myself in a position of being discriminated against and resisting the small and often overlooked acts of repression that are taken for granted by so many, such as it being somehow impertinent to hold hands in public. Because of this, I don't feel the need to wear a rainbow flag or attend parades or partake in specifically queer-oriented activities, for which I am often called a "bad gay" by less enlightened peers. Shame on them. I am proud to be a supporter of the cause in my own way.
- Not standing by for casual acts of -isms, correcting friends and family on jokes taken to be innocuous, harmful patterns of speech, unenlightened views on controversial topics. I'm not perfect, nor could I imagine being an internet (read: tumblr) vigilante about it, but in my day to day personal interactions with people, I do my best. I'm proud to be proactive about continually being a better version of myself by learning and becoming more enlightened over time and passing that along to others.
- Standing up for what is good about being an American. The reality of life in Europe is that you are, as an American person, confronted with hostilities in greater number than the admirations of American people and culture. These come in the form of passive actions as much as the other way around, such as from well-intentioned "oh but you know other things so well", among other things. I may not think everything that is done or everyone from my native country is the best, but it does not stop me from liking it, appreciating it, and even often holding it in higher esteem than others. I am proud to be an American, even if it makes up just a fraction of my pluralistic conception of self.
- Embracing a pluralistic view of myself and the world. I am proud to be many things at the same time in many different places and situations, and I want nothing more than to live in a world where those around me are as well.
If you made it this far, tell me in a comment or a tweet (or an email, or a passenger pigeon, or what have you) what the concept of pride means for you. As the cliche goes, this sort of introspection should be embraced the year round, not just during a couple of party-fueled weekends in warm summer months.
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