It’s Pride Month for the community, a time for celebration. It’s just the month to be loud, proud, and connected.
I now get to celebrate Pride Month proudly, but it took a while to reach this point. I didn’t start going to local pride events until college. I found out, quickly, that they’re even better when you really know your community.
Humble Beginnings
Despite growing up in a very anti-gay area, I didn’t really grow up with homophobia. My parents certainly weren’t homophobic. I didn’t hear a lot of negative stuff about gay people.
Well, I didn’t actually hear a lot about gay people at all. Nothing negative, really-but not really anything positive, either. I didn’t know it was an option at all.
I was, however, a theater person. As we all know, theater people are very gay. It was because of a community show I was in that I learned about gay people at all-and that I might be one.
My mother mentioned that she thought one of my costars, ahem, “swung both ways.” I knew what that meant, but not that it might be strange.
I asked, “Well, does it matter if they’re a girl or a boy?” I figured most people didn’t care- that it was normal to be attracted to both. My mother responded, “It does to me. I wouldn’t date a woman.”
Hmm… Interesting. I would then pack that information away for years, not thinking about it again. I only paid attention to crushes I had that were normal, like the rest of my friends had.
I didn’t say anything to that co-star at the time. I didn’t know how to. Years later, we would bond over it.
Even later, a different co-star from that show would become one of my longest-lasting friends. They came out as non-binary just a few years after I came out.
Like I said, theater is very, very gay.
Once I got online, I started actually getting to know other queer people. I found the label “bisexual” and thought, “Oh my god, there’s a word for it? Yeah, that’s it! I found it!”
Having a community online was great, but it was all I had. No one I knew in person was accepting of it. My first relationship was long-distance and purely online.
I was a lot of people’s first gay person. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid. It took a lot of explanation- a lot of them just didn’t know we existed. If they did know, it was because they had been taught that we were bad.
So until middle school, my entire community was online. Having any community at all was nice, but there’s no way to live in it. I didn’t know what the queer community looked like locally-I didn’t know how much I would later fight for it.
Improving Middles
A lot of people start to figure out their sexuality in middle school. Almost as important, more people will have access to the internet.
I got my first in-person, real-life partner in 8th grade. They were the only other transgender person in the school. They had the privilege of transitioning early, having a very queer family. I wouldn’t come out to my parents for several more years.
Also in 8th grade, I would get my first chance to admit to having different pronouns. A high schooler running an after-school theater program asked about “unexpected pronouns.”
(Remember what I said about theater? Very gay. Of course, it would start there.)
When someone asked why anyone would do that, they simply stated, “You don’t have to understand it, just respect it.” I felt safe admitting that I’m not a girl.
I got to go by a chosen name for the first time in my life.
That highschooler would come out as queer years later. I would get to tell them that story at a Pride event even later.
At that same program, I met one of my best friends for life. He was 2 years older and just then coming to terms with his own identity. He took a liking to me, telling friends about this non-binary kid in the program.
Later, we’d start calling each other brothers. Him, and the other queer people in that drama program, would start to feel like family.
I finally got into high school, going by a chosen name and using they/them pronouns. I arrived relatively early.
I came to know the first trans person to ever be in that drama program while openly trans. He doesn’t know anyone who was out before him.
That’s how new the concept was to the area- he graduated in 2020. The first to go through the program while out as trans. I would be the 4th, preceded by my brother and another trans male there.
At the time, the drama program had acting competitions, separated by gender. They had to hold a meeting to decide whether or not my brother would be allowed to compete with the boys.
The answer was yes, setting a precedent that would make things easier for everyone who came after him. When I competed, I had the opportunity to do so alongside the boys, no question.
The program became safer for queer students.
Shortly after I graduated from high school, they would stop separating it by gender at all.
I also met one of the first trans men to come out as trans in the area in general. He did so after graduating, but was getting bullied for being queer before being out as trans.
He started the first GSA at the high school, which would later fall apart but then return. The backlash he faced when he first started it was probably why it disappeared for so long.
He was such a significant figure that local news articles were written about him. I was shocked when I first met him- shocked to see someone with a “protect trans kids” mug at an event.
Through him, I would later hear about the local pride organization. Most people never hear about it. I didn’t catch wind of it until my junior year of high school.
There wasn’t any good way to change our names at the school at the time. Any chosen name would be added as an alias—one that most substitute teachers would ignore. My brother would only respond to announcements if they used his chosen name.
I lied to the person making the student ID cards, telling them that the name they had on file was wrong. Old filing error. I told my friends to do the same to get our chosen names on IDs.
We would later throw enough of a fit about names that we had a meeting with the district superintendent. That meeting resulted in them changing the policy around changing names in the system.
This wasn’t until around 2022.
My brother would get bullied for being queer in high school. After a long time out of school, I returned to high school during the lockdown. I was called slurs twice, the first day back.
The school wasn’t safe for us, not really. We hid in the drama room. Other queer students, not in the drama program, would also later hide there.
Most of us would only use the bathrooms in the drama room. They were the only ones in the entire school with whom we felt safe.
In any other bathroom, we had to use the wrong one or risk being questioned. And we knew other students would react poorly. So we went out of our way.
We found a community, but it was small. Anyone that was openly queer faced criticism, bullying. We had each other’s backs in the face of homophobia.
In the long, long ago years of around 2019-2022, we were making minor local history. Around a decade after gay marriage was legalized across the USA, our town still felt like it was the 60s.
I’m staying with my parents for the summer, between college semesters. Less than a month in, I was called a disgrace in the street. 2025, and something like that wasn’t even surprising.
And almost needless to the kink scene is non-existent. No kink events. Not even a sex store until an hour’s drive out. They can barely get on board with gay people-knowing what gay people got up to might blow their minds.
Continued Expansion
I got into college and made history as the first transgender person on a local advisory board.
In my college town, there was a bit more of a community. We actually had a prominent pride organization, covering five total counties.
The college had a GSA. We had pride events. We got the city council to recognize Pride month… 2 out of 3 times we tried.
I know everyone in the queer community there. That’s how small it got.
I was told that our behavioral health agency couldn’t report data on LGBT patients if there were fewer than 12 individuals. It’s totally possible that less than 12 queer people use those services in that county.
I was used to small-town pride. Everyone knows everyone.
And being openly queer is a constant fight. The local high school was explicitly and openly transphobic. Our pride events often had counter-protesters.
On my last day in that town, I was shouted at by high schoolers from a school bus. A few months prior, someone was attacked for being gay.
It all sounds bad. I know there are better ways to live. I’ve experienced the queer community in a more progressive area, and it’s better. It feels safer.
But listen. Knowing your community gives you a reason to fight.
Everybody knows everybody in my small town queer communities. When I speak for queer people, I do it knowing exactly who I’m doing it for. When I see my old high school getting better about queer students, I know the students it affects.
Queer rights and protections directly affect kink. LGBT people’s rights to be open affect the organization of kink events, the sale of kink products, and the safety of the people involved. Kink and the LGBT community have been intertwined since the dawn of time.
So, know your community. Get involved. There are plenty of ways to do it- go to pride and kink events, or go to community meetings and say something. You don’t have to know every gay person in your town-but find your group.
In the USA and a lot of other countries, the fight for gay rights continues. Elsewhere, improvements can always be made.
Go to a Pride event. Meet the organizers. Organize. Know your community. Know how to fight for it.
Have good sex. Experiment. Meet people at kink events. Let loose. Relax. Feel good.
Have a good Pride month. Remember why we celebrate it.
