Finding Pride In The Maelstrom

“I’m doing okay-ish.”

"I'm doing fine, I guess."

"As well as can be, under the circumstances."

I’ve been trying to write coherently about Pride Month for the past couple of days now, without much success. Nothing feels like it captures everything we can feel right now. There exists an inherent contradiction, and in order to truly address where we stand on Pride, that contradiction needs to be addressed.

Most people, when I’ve asked how they’re doing, give some variation of the above: “I’m okay-ish” or “I’m fine, considering.” Always with the qualifier, that strange mix of “I’m doing as well as can be expected, considering that the world is on fire.”

So… good news, bad news.

Should we start with the bad news?

The problem is that the bad news would take up far too much verbiage if we really wanted to get into it. Those of us that have lived through the last year have seen a seemingly overwhelming assault on our dignity, on our human rights. Even those we thought were in our corner - looking at you, Democrats - have shown a willingness to sell us out at the first opportunity. The term “ally” has become almost a joke by this point. A full-blown migration is taking place in the United States right now, with an estimated 9% of trans people, or 400,000, having moved states in the year since Trump's election. Note that this number does not include people who have fled the country entirely.

Put simply, nobody is coming to save us - except us.

Have to admit, the last year has been an insane trip. That we even made it through the last eighteen months is a minor miracle. Within an hour after inauguration, we were literally told in Executive Order by the President of the United States… that we don’t exist. The vise against us squeezed, one bigoted bill after another, one executive order after another. Trans people in the US kicked out of the military. Trans people in the UK and parts of the US barred from using the bathroom. Our healthcare - necessary, life-saving healthcare - squeezed out. Bills banning our writings, our books, any knowledge of us from libraries, declaring our existence pornographic.

Let us be frank: they - MAGA, Reform UK, whatever you want to call this hydra of hate - want us dead. The cruelty is the point. They’re telling the sorts of lies about us that Sartre and Arendt once wrote about, the sorts of lies that no rational human being could believe, but that they insist be believed, so that they can do what they wish. So they deny even the most basic of science and reality, deny us the health care we need, enact laws to push us out of society entirely, push us out of living entirely.

We mourn the dead that results from their brutality. And we will mourn far more.

But what about the living?

It has been fascinating and uplifting to see what has happened to the trans community in the aftermath of the election.

In the early days of 2025, much of the trans community, except for those who’d been fighting all along, was a ball of chaos. Everyone felt this immediate need to do something, even if they had no clue what. Eventually things settled down; eventually the community settled in. Old veterans of struggles long done came back to spread their wisdom. Youngsters with the determination only naiveté could bring came into their own, came into the fight, bringing hope to a demoralized crowd.

We started to organize, started to learn what organizing meant. We became a far more coherent community. Social organizations took on an activist role, a community-building role, a mutual aid role. To borrow from a recent meme, we found two uses for bricks: to throw at authority figures, and to build communities together.

It is an understanding and an acknowledgement that we are a community under siege. It is not perfect - heaven knows we have our problems! - but it is a beginning.

We haven’t given up. Not yet.

Even some of the disappointing news carries with it hope. That 400,000 I mentioned before? They are going for a better life, a life where they aren’t second-class citizens, where they can feel safe going into a public place.

The bigots want us dead, so we're turning death into a fighting chance to live.

I think, in the end, I am reminded of some revelations I came to accept in the early days of publicly being out. This was the heyday of the “Class of 2020”, those that had come to their realization in the quarantine days of COVID. It was - and is - such a remarkable group of human beings, all burned in the crucible of pandemic to blossom into our beautiful and wonderful selves. My thought during those early, heady days as we came into our own, and as MAGA’s fangs started to be laid bare, was that this group of trans people will either be a remarkable triumph, or a horrific tragedy.

What I’ve come to realize is that those two possibilities are not exclusive. It will likely be both triumph and tragedy.

Someday, a monument to those that died in this horror show will be built. Maybe on some green in San Francisco, maybe an addition to Christopher Street, maybe overlooking the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, maybe across the street from the NHS England headquarters in Leeds so they can't sweep away what they'd done, maybe at the site of some Stonewall-level event we have yet to experience. It will say the atrocities done to us; it will carve in stone the crimes those monsters have committed against the trans community; it will mourn the victims, call their names so that they are never forgotten. We’ll look at the list of those gone, trace our fingers along the true names of human beings who laughed with us, danced with us… people whose funerals we attended, people we mourned and still mourn. And old trans folks will get together, hug each other, cry for those gone, and quietly celebrate at how far we’ve come.

All this will happen. And that mix - triumph and sorrow, with maybe a sprinkle of “never again” - will be this generation’s legacy.

Let your Pride be what you need it to be this year. If you can dance, dance; if you must mourn, mourn. If your Pride shines in the light of day, sparkle and outshine the sun; if your Pride must hide away in safety, turned into a quiet shuffle, that's fine.

Just don’t forget how to dance.

Happy - Angry - Glorious - Mourning - Pride, everyone.

As for the song for this entry... what else but Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club?"

Keep on dancing, if you can.