Pride Month at Tildes: #10 - What did you do for Pride Month?
What did you do for Pride Month?
This is the final topic of our Pride Month series!
Share anything you did this month that fits with the theme of Pride.
Anything goes! Big things, small things, public things, personal things. If it was queer or queer-supportive, then it counts! Even if it was just commenting in some of these topics, feel free to talk about that.
Event Guidelines
Everyone is welcome to participate. This includes allies! You do not need to identify as LGBT in order to join in the topics.
I will use "queer" and "LGBT" interchangeably as umbrella terms to refer to all minority sexualities and gender identities. These are intended to be explicitly inclusive.
Be kind; be gracious; listen to others; love lots.
Full List of Topics
June 1st: Introductions and Playlist
June 4th: Who is a historical LGBT advocate that you admire?
June 7th: What positive changes have you seen in your lifetime?
June 10th: What's something you wish more people understood?
June 13th: Ask almost anything
June 16th: What media representation resonated with you personally?
June 19th: How are things with your family?
June 22nd: What are you worried about?
June 25th: What are you hopeful about?
June 28th: What did you do for Pride Month?
What did I do for Pride Month?
I ran these topics! A big thank you to everyone who participated. I loved reading everyone’s comments. I love the Tildes community, and I appreciate each and every single one of you who contribute your own individual color to our beautiful rainbow tapestry of humanity.
My hope in running these topics was to make the queer community here feel a little more seen and a little more cohesive. I also wanted it to be a positive, affirming, safe space because I know what the social and political landscape out there looks like right now, especially for trans people. If these topics helped people feel, even the slightest bit, like there are more hugs than hate in the world, then I’ll consider them a success.
A meta note: I already run a lot of recurring events on Tildes, and the last thing I want is for people to get kfwyre-fatigue. I do feel a little over-exposed, and I think a community is healthier when stuff like this is distributed among many people rather than centralized in one or a few. As such, I do not plan on doing this again next year, but I am 100% okay with someone else taking the reins if they want to.
Whenever I run something like this, I consider the idea of it “owned” by the community rather than by me personally. I will not be offended if someone steps in and does their own spin on Pride Month at Tildes next year. In fact, it would make me happy! You don’t need to ask my permission or anything like that — you already have it.
I have done a couple of little things. I have experimented with presenting a little less fem, with not shaving my mustache; generally being less concerned with whether or not i "pass" as a woman. Its been fun! I like the hair on my upper lip, it is a nice reminder that im indian.
I also kissed my boyfriend in the rain. It was very sweet, and i think theres no better way of encapsulating queer joy.
For me, personally, Pride month always makes me a little wistful, sad. I miss my brother and his partner a lot, and they did not live to see a time where we could have warm, friendly conversations like these. It helps my heart to see people that are here being supportive and kind to one another. I enjoyed this series, and I want to thank you for the running of it all.
I didn't really do anything for Pride Month this year, to be honest, but this month I got an F64 "diagnosis", so I can finally go to an endocrinologist and start HRT soonish \o/
congrats!!!!
Thank you!
Thank you for taking the time to put this together! It’s been quite nice seeing these posts pop up all month.
Truth be told, this has pretty much been the most interaction with Pride I’ve had in years; I’ve really enjoyed how laid back, thoughtful, and uplifting it’s all been.
I went to my first pride march in the nearby city. It was fun, pretty casual. We had pups, bears and fursuiters in the march, and some inclusive clergy members waving at us as we passed by. There was a concert at the end which I didn't go to, because the streets around the stage were so packed that you couldn't move, but it was a jolly nice bit of exercise and a fun day overall.
Less than I wanted to, more than expected. I'm a leader on the pride employee resource group at work and like most years I ended up booking the speakers and moderating for them. I brought in three speakers this year, one internal and two external - an OBGYN, someone to give a trans 101 talk, and a local LGBTQ+ center. I also did all the educationals again (Thanks for the historical figures post! That served as great material). I went to a queer play party, a few underground queer raves, helped my partner get ready for and play her set at one of the local day parties. A friend who moved away to Portland like two or three years ago was in town to visit and I got to spend a good deal of time with her which was really nice. Oh and Darude came into town to play a local spot so I got to say hi and hang out with him again for the first time in a few years. He brought in a signed custom skateboard deck for our friend who has a kid who recently got into skateboarding and it was the cutest gesture ever. He also introduced me to a local "legend" who's been in the scene for ages who I had a ton of fun dancing with. Ville is such a sweetheart.
I also ended up DJing our pride "float" in the main SF parade. I put float in quotes because it was a super last minute thing, they started building it (it's just a decorated trailer) about 4 weeks ago. I've got to say, every DJ set I've ever done is always a trial by fire (equipment is often the culprit in at least some minor way) but this was challenging in ways I've never had to deal with. DJing on a platform that is jerkily moving, starting and stopping. The sun shade didn't really cover the decks or screen so it was really difficult to see what tracks I had lined up or whether certain buttons were active or not and kept overheating the laptop. I had no monitor speakers (lol). Oh and there was a dancing tree on our float meaning it was constantly shaking and they also kept bumping into the equipment. I feel like I had to manually adjust the tracks a lot more as they kept getting slightly out of alignment on account of all the movement. Ultimately it was a lot more fun than walking in the parade like I do most years because it gave me something to do while I was there and it made the time pass by a lot faster so I had fun and would do it again.