What Pride means to me this year

With the various Pride related events scheduled in San Diego for Pride weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about what Pride is.

If one wants to call the Stonewall Riots the first Pride event, since Pride events technically are a remembrance and a celebration of the Stonewall uprising and the Gay Liberation movement that followed the Stonewall Riots, then historic Pride began by drag queens and trans women breaking beer bottles over the heads of police officers, followed by a riotous crowd throwing Molotov cocktails because LGBT people were being oppressed.

I don’t think that kind of violence is how we want to celebrate Pride in San Diego this year, or any other year for that matter. I’m sure the San Diego Police Department would appreciate it.

On one hand, Pride events are a gathering of community to celebrate. It’s to say “Look how far we’ve come! Let’s have some fun!” On the other hand, the competing thought is to honor the advocates and activists who created the change we celebrate, honor the people who are still doing the work and look ahead at the work and sacrifice that will be required in the years ahead to achieve full equality and full justice for the entirety of the LGBT community.

Our community has an inherent conflict in place.

Maybe we should feel good that corporate sponsors want to join in to help us feel proud. So many Fortune 500 companies have added sexual orientation and gender identity to their equal opportunity and diversity policies – perhaps that is something to celebrate too.

Well, take Facebook. They sponsored San Francisco’s Pride Parade just a few weeks ago. They have a welcoming diversity policy, they recently expanded their gender choices to include over fifty choices to accommodate the vast array of trans people’s gender identities; all seems well.

That is, until one looks at how Facebook’s real name policy has been used as a weapon against trans people. Just in the past few weeks, the trans woman who, when she worked at Facebook, helped develop and implement the Facebook gender spectrum for trans users was kicked off of Facebook under the real name policy. She was using the same name on Facebook that she had on her name badge at Facebook when her account was suspended.

And, in their storefront along San Francisco’s Market Street, along the San Francisco Pride Parade route this past June Saks Fifth Avenue visually wooed the crowd with the message “Happy Pride San Francisco, from your friends at Saks Fifth Avenue.” Apparently all was forgotten – by them – about their January legal brief stating they had the legal right to discriminate against transgender people.

Well, at least we won’t have to worry about the bathrooms being gender policed at the Pride Festival. We have the Limits On Use Of Facilities In Government Buildings And Businesses initiative (formerly referred to as the Personal Privacy Protection Act initiative) drive coming where, if the initiative should become law, bathrooms at businesses would be able to be policed for use based on perceived gender identity. Well, we’re back to the activism part of Pride events, looking at the work and sacrifice that will be required in the year ahead to stave off this attempt to derail LGBT community civil rights.

I guess this year I’m in the advocate and activism corner as opposed to the celebration one.

It’s not to take anything away from the celebrators: there’s is so much positive to celebrate this year. But being in the subcommunity of the LGBT community with the toughest civil rights slog ahead in California in the year to come, I see so much work and sacrifice ahead.