This week we were coming home from a swap meet on surface streets when we ran into a detour for some sort of LGBT Pride event.
I’m so far out of the loop regarding the LGBT community that I was completely unaware of there being any such event. This despite my getting the local LGBT Community news paper , which I sometimes even read.
Stonewall was a long time ago.
Pride Day events stopped being political over 20 years ago and turned into marketing opportunities.
I lost the urge to go to these events over ten years ago. Last time I went the SPF 50 failed to protect me and I wound up with a nasty sunburn.
I might be willing to take the risk of a nasty sunburn for Willie’s Picnic or an Eric Clapton’s Cross roads Festival but when it comes to hanging out with a bunch of LGBT folks and listening to really sucky disco music… Not so much… In fact not at all.
I actually marched with transgender folks back in the 1990s. I even wore a Transsexual Menace t-shirt.
Never again.
I don’t feel this big universal community identity with trans-folks.
I honestly don’t like an awful lot of trans-folks. Those I do like and consider friends are people I like. End of story The trans-folks I can’t stand are simply people I can’t stand.
An inclusive ENDA won’t solve matters of discrimination. Tina and I have had people assume we are Jewish and show prejudice toward us.
Discrimination and prejudice are the result of thousands of years of tribalism. Nationalism, racism all those things are based on that in group-out group dynamics.
As for trans-specific issues I’ve retired from the fray. Consider me a veteran or an activist emeritus but I ain’t a marching anymore.
Marriage equality is a major personal quality of life issue for me.
It’s happening. Culturally as much as legally.
When one of us goes to the grocery or bank, clerks ask us where our better half is.
Bigots will hate, the indifferent will remain indifferent. The ubiquity of LGB and even t-folks is rarely considered worthy of comment by most. Those who are outlandish in appearance are worthy of comment. But if you think about it a moment you realize that applies to lots of straight folks and how they dress as much as it applies to LGBT folks.
I live in suburbia. I actually kind of like it. I especially like going past cows and horses near where I live or occasionally seeing a rabbit in the yard.
I’m an old woman, I assimilated years ago.
I also realized that no matter how much the gender studies people want us to be others, most LGBT people are a lot more like the people they grew up around, than some sort of exotic creatures.
Some of this Pride stuff seems just plain divisive.
At one point Pride served as balance to Shame.
But once you lose the shame, proclaiming pride in something you just happen to be due to the fickle finger of fate seems sort of silly
What about just accepting yourself as ordinary people, who just happen to be born LGBT. A different kind of ordinary.
Transgender has seem to become a career program for people who think they are too special to work in the service industry.
I’m tired of activists who beg for money to support themselves in working to end issues that are probably intractable.
I sometimes wonder if I would want to live in a world where everyone thought the same. It sort of seems dystopian.
At the same time matters of class and race seem to need much more work than they receive. We face a complete environmental disaster that is going to result in billions of people dying.
Prancing around half naked to thumping idiotic house music in a Dionysian orgy seems much more appropriate for the young than someone my age.
Me, I’d rather watch TV with my honey, eat ice cream and munch chips while our cats head butt us to get us to pet them.
Women Born Transsexual 