I’m sorta male-nb (not especially cis but not quite trans at this point) so my experiences aren’t the same as a trans person. Much of the queer community seems to be on the softer side, but I’m hoping to find something harder at one of these events or something. There isn’t much in my area, but hopefully for a month the gays will be loud and proud enough for me to strike up conversations.

Now it’s more important than ever to go. We need to show the transphobes and homophobes out there that we LGBTQ+ people and our allies are far more numerous than they think.

it’s a crapshoot, when i went to my local pride it was half cops carrying thin blue line flags and zero people gendered me right even after being corrected, and i only felt more alienated the longer i was there and the more people i talked to.

the gay bar i ended up in was even worse for trans acceptance, literally the first thing said to me as i walked in the door was “you’re actually a guy right?” (i was dressed up as fem as i could manage with my time budget and assets), and i spent most of my time alternating between trying to escape a badly cross-dressed chaser and being shouted at by some drag queen that took offense to me walking past her so many times in my bids to escape that creep.

i honestly feel lucky for not winding up getting SA’d or worse, i’ve never been made to feel so uncomfortable before or since. all in all, it was pretty emotionally damaging, especially as i was only recently out and had just lost my entire social circle about it. i wish people wouldn’t talk up “the community” to newly out folks because “the community” doesn’t fucking exist, your local cliques do. and some of those are going to be filled with awful people, because being gay doesn’t make you a decent human.

i’m not saying every city’s pride is going to be like this, but if you’re not familiar with the local scene definitely go with friends (actual friends, not some random gay person who says they want to be your friend so they can borrow a bunch of money and then ditch you at some random gay club and then block your number when you’re not happy about it, the way i did), and bring a weapon.

tl;dr easily among the worst experiences of my life, and i’m never going again

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.

So naturally I love it.

I used to go to the Pride parade and festival in San Francisco every year after high school. I only stopped due to scheduling and money. Easy to get there with just some gas money; but I hate not being able to buy anything from the vendors.