For the faggots

The bus driver I rode with this afternoon wasn’t happy to find out that Pride was this weekend.  I assumed it was the traffic he had a problem with until he derisively spat “faggots!”

People rarely look at me and assume I’m a lesbian, but I froze, irrationally terrified I would be singled out in some way.  I spent the rest of the bus ride and the walk home angry at the driver and angrier at myself for feeling hurt.

Do you wonder what the point of Pride is?  It does seem to bring out the nastiest in the homophobes.

But I don’t celebrate Pride to try to convince people like my bus driver that queer people deserve better than the disgust in his voice; I celebrate Pride because the seemingly endless hatred still hasn’t made me bitter, because dancing is more fun than crying, because drag kings make me weak at the knees, and because nothing makes a homophobe angrier than an out and happy queer.

drag kings by fred koenig

Drag kings, photographed by Fred Koenig

Comments

  1. Justin says:

    Damn, I didn’t see the photo in google reader–those two are magicians.

  1. […] The Pride Festivals I attended before this weekend were literally walled off events. The festival would rent part of a city park and surround it with chain link fence, then plaster the fence with signs. You couldn’t see in or out. These events were trying to carve out a safe space and do a little GLBT education in towns that had, at best, weakly accepting climates. The events were small, smaller even than you’d expect for a size of the town and were attended mostly by local GLBT people who seemed desperate for a little community, a space to be visible yet safe. I loved these events for their hope and solidarity and defiance and having that wonderful at home feeling of being surrounded by queers. But when you walked out of those walls, the feeling was gone. […]

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