We’re coming to the end of pride month once again. Corporate twitters will go back to their boring profile pictures, pride themed events will (mostly) come to an end, pride themed items won’t be restocked, but that doesn’t mean that pride is really over. After all, having pride in yourself should be a year-round commitment. Living through the bad times to see the good is a worthy cause to celebrate, and I, for one, am proud of myself. For surviving the hard times and for lifting up other trans people to the best of my ability, I am proud. Every trans person should be proud and we deserve to celebrate who we are unashamedly.
I love pride month. Typically, there’s a lot of lovely summer days (it being June and all), I feel more comfortable with being visibly queer, and I have an excuse to celebrate my queerness openly with the people I love. Of course, there are hardships too, especially now with the growing vitriol from mainstream media and the government, but that doesn’t mean that we should lose hope. Statistics1 still show that anti-trans viewpoints – namely “gender critical” ideology – are not the mainstream and that the people who hold these views are a minority. The problem is simply that they are loud and often difficult to ignore because they apparently believe that the non-stop harassment of trans people will make us go away (spoiler alert: it won’t). Transgender people will never go away, we have always existed and we always will, if they won’t accept that then that is entirely their problem. I refuse to apologise for loving myself and loving being myself wholeheartedly.
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