Pride & Penjudice is a low-stakes, but meaningful event for Pride. It entails writing a one paragraph response to the following prompt: "What does queer pride mean to you?" This gives you lots of creative freedom with expressing your own version of Pride, and aside from the prompt, there is no restrictions on how you can show its meaning. The purpose of this event is to demonstrate Pride through everybody's own lens. Maximum word limit for submissions is 250 words. *This event has no winner.*
Type your responses here.
I was a crossdresser as a child. Balk all you like – I know it’s cliché, and of course it’s what every “gender dysphoria” clinic will probe you for even when it doesn’t actually have much to do with being trans.
I mean, I’m not trans, and my trans sister? She never crossdressed. But I did grow up marked by a difference, received pretty well at age 6 and a little less each succeeding year. Someday I stopped crossdressing, though I did still wear some feminine items, a fact my mother found endearing but gave her pause all the same. What if I was bullied?
Well, truth was, I already was bullied, and I already didn’t care. So that was that, I wore my comfortable white jumper with a sequin unicorn bedazzled upon it. Only at home though, cause what would the other kids say? Well. I think we all know what.
But what my mother didn’t realize was that I had really never had much trouble at school due to my apparent queerness, at that age an apparent nascent transness that both my parents suspected but of course didn’t touch – there was not much good advice in those days. I did have trouble, but it was more from the whole autism thing. The communicative chasm between my peers and I set me so far away from them that the glint of the sequins on my little white jumper couldn’t cross the light years to reach their young eyes.
Queer pride to me has always been about freedom. Being agender and aroace in our very heteronormative society can be very limiting and stressful. Having the ability to express myself and find companionship within queer communities is the most freeing feeling in the world. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
To me, queer pride is something that I cannot partake in my offline life, as I still live with my parents. I wish to share it with my siblings, they're fine with it.
— H-X-R
Well, I'm a cishet. But it doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me. I sit at a table with two other homosexual guys. And the sheer confidence that shines through. They just talk about the guys they want constantly in life, and I think that's the beauty of it. They represent two distinct sides that I find almost admirable. They're so insanely confident and secure about themselves, even more so than me. And I think that's what Pride means to me. Loving yourself because you are the way you are regardless. I want to be able to look at myself and go “yeah, i love myself as much as they do. I want to love myself with that same level of certainty.” Be unapologetically authentic.
it is the journey to finally find your
self;
the courage
to seize your freedom;
the joy of
– not merely existing but –
fully living
your life on your terms.
I'm still figuring out my Identity. I'm relatively new to all of this as a whole. But I think what it means to me, at least I think, is being able to be your truest self. I'm not able to do that now, but I pray that I will be able to soon.
Happy Pride Month!! ~ Ejitjr
Pride to me is my silence. My mouth is so full of words I want to scream and shout on the summits of the highest peaks, words that claw at my viscera and tear me open from the inside begging to be said. Unfortunately, most of these words will never be said. The person I am will never fully be able to be herself, and I have to deal with it. I had to grow up not knowing what it was like to be loved. Not knowing what it was like to know the comfort of community and camaraderie. Not knowing if I was an abomination, or how many times I had to bruise my knees atop altars begging deities who never responded to fix me. Fix the times my stomach sunk when my parents went through my things, fix anything. Pride is finding respite in myself, in those unspoken words. I know for every time I have to censure myself for being myself, there's another person out there who can shout those words from the summits of peaks. I'm okay with that. I have to be.
Queer pride is the frontier of the right to love, the expression of the natural human to desire and give affection. It is a pain to see social and political restraints on people who love outside of what old tradition has destined them to love. There is no natural "path" that human life is designed to follow, but it should, at the most basic level, be used to promote compassion, equality, and love. The value of the human should be gauged by their treatment of those around them, not by how they look or identify.
The human identity cannot and should not be fettered. How much one desires to engineer it to fit themself is to their discretion. The search for a stalemate continues. Time will let us know if we find one.
Happy Pride Month. Stay unique.
I didn't socially transition until I was 18 years old, despite knowing I was transgender since 12. I have experienced being transgender in three different decades and all of them sucked. My cat, Aggie, was the first to accept me. I'd cry to her and she'd cuddle up to me and she never gave a shit about whether I was cis or trans or any other thing because to her I was love. It was Aggie who kept me going until I was able to socially transition and now I have many things to live for. I don't really know what queer pride means to me exactly. I'm a man and there isn't anything wrong with that. I think the best way I can summarise queer pride is that freedom to be happy.
-LimDoc
To me, pride feels like the freedom to be myself, a freedom I am yet to be granted. It is a hope for a better future, for me and everyone. A hope for a future were my being trans is just an adjective that describes me and not a target painted on my back.
-QuantumRebel
I am water.
I am the glacier, the river and vapor.
I am the glacier—
Unmovable as rock, content to sit with my face to the sun,
and know I am ice and stability and shelter from the heat.
I am the river—
Rushing across the landscape, ever-changing, never the same river seen by the same person.
I am vapor—
Rising high above the world, unbothered by words and boxes and expectations.
I am water.
I am Blue.
I am content in the knowledge I am me, no matter what form I take.
- BlueSignet
As an aroace enby, pride means learning to accept myself and learn to love myself again.
→ Pearbranch :)
Being queer, especially being gender nonconforming/trans in today's modern age, is dangerous. With countless political campaigns using folk who simply just want to live their true lives in a way that helps them and hurts no one. All because people refuse to understand and learn things that are foreign to them. As humans, we fear what we cannot understand and thus push and shove those unfamiliar things away until they are no longer seen. Even if it means attempting to kill off an entire minority of humans just so that unfamiliarity is gone forever.
And that is why queer pride is so important. queerness means being loud, being visible, reminding the world that we exist, that we are always here, we are not some phase or some social anomaly. We have been here since the start of society, since the start of humanity; we are a part of the human brain, psyche, and humanity. We are loud not just for ourselves, but for those who cannot be themselves or be loud with us. We are the outlet for fellow queer people who are still stuck in the closet, who are in danger of being harmed for being their true selves. As we live for ourselves and each other.
So if you ever question "Why does there need to be queer pride?" or "What does queerness have to do with backrooms?" remember that queerness is everywhere. Loud or quiet, and it is just as important as anything, even in places that you don't see as related to said queerness, like the backrooms.
We are here, and we will always be here.
-SkullDoggery/Skully/Sebastian
Queer pride is the act of letting the silenced ghosts of the past speak through the living.
Queer Pride to me means accepting change. Since I’m genderfluid and bi (with changing preferences) I change a lot. I don’t like change at all, but I’ve learned to accept it through expressing myself in any way I can. Pride has also taught me that people are more accepting than I originally thought, and how nice the world can be at times. Queer pride means love to me.
- Gl1cH3D Gaming/Isaac
To relish in the unique power of my existence being a catalyst that ragebaits the worst of society into ruining their lives through their own delusional self-hatred.
I live rent free in your head, yet I don't even know who you are. Who really has the power here?
-Spectre48
Queer Pride for me is progress, that I can be myself and not seen as anormal or weird. Queer Pride validates that we can be different and that's ok. Humanity pushes forward with the passage of time.
- Silver aka Laundryfan_04
For me, queer pride means that I shouldn’t have to fear living and dressing and behaving as my authentic person (as a trans woman). In a world absolutely wracked with indiscriminate hatred, pride for oneself in spite of the hatred isn’t just freedom but defiance for oneself and other queer people against unjust or unwelcoming environments. I can struggle to be able to show myself as I wish I was, and that takes a toll on me similar to how other trans folks’ struggles take a toll on them. When I get to show queer pride, it is a reminder that I and everyone else of queer identity has the right to be beautiful and proud.
Happy pride month, shit, happy pride life :)
- Iamalemon
I can't put the nature of my pride and my queer experience into words. I've tried to write this block a dozen times since I found the page, and it never feels adequate. It's simply too much for me to express. But it's alright, because someone else has put it better than I could ever hope to:
"During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn't look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn't feel like we're going to win now, but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing."
-Dan Savage, LGBTQ activist
Remember that, please. Remember the dance.
Pride to me as a disabled person with an ultra-rare form of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is advocating for the disabled community and standing up to medical gaslighting, especially for my fellow rare disorder/disease havers. I want to show that despite all the trouble, the hardship and the pain, it's possible to be yourself and it's possible to do what you love. I am disabled, that is not a bad or wrong word, and I am capable. Happy Pride to all my queer and disabled folks!! 🦓🩷 - seallynns
The pride I have has never been such a comfort to me. I mean, if we were all friendly about things like this, wouldn't we all be open about our preferences? I have always felt uncomfortable being with my parents and siblings, calling "weird" what makes us unique.
I consider myself a freak for much of my life, with a problem I considered very serious.
I wasn't like the other girls, nor like those who blushed when they saw a boy.
I didn't. And that alone was enough to make me feel strange. They fall in love, I don't. They dream of weddings, I don't. They dream of starting a family, I don't. For others, the idea of loneliness is terrifying, but for me, it feels great.
I have absolutely no interest in mixing my saliva with other people's tongues or letting them inseminate me.
I don't care, Mom. I don't care, Dad. If you want grandchildren, there are my brothers.
Before I found out I was Aro/Ace, everything was cold and awkward; now, it's the best feeling in my life. Knowing that my strangeness had a name and that I wasn't alone. And not having children or "feeling anything" doesn't break me; it makes me who I am and what I love.
And if I'm strange to the world, so be it. There's a reason my last name here is what it is.
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
Happy Pride Month, ghosts! I think I'm late, but better late than never. ✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧
"I am not lacking love. I am not waiting for the 'right person.' I am the right person."
-Yasmin Benoit, Asexual and aromantic activist
