As part of our new blog series: What Pride Means to Me we're interviewing celebs and bloggers from around the web and asking them two questions:
1) What does pride mean to you?
2) What are you doing for pride this year?
But, we don't want to stop there. We want to hear from you. So what do you say? Respond to this topic and tell the world!
What pride means to me, lets see. I remember how hard it was in the 80s to show pride, it WASnt so easy back in the day where my part time job was watching over my freinds going out on weekends being if fear of gay bashings that seemed so common back then. Standing 6FT8 it wasnt hard for me to stand up for myself in some ways but in others like everyone else .
WHAT PRIDE MEANS TO ME IS HANGIN IN THERE , THINGS ARE MUCH BETTER NOW. IM 46 YEARS OLD NOW. I LOOK BACK and think wow IF the young boys only knew what its was like back then. PRIDE feels good these days, I live in HILLCREST AREA OF SAN DIEGO, I Can walk down the street and see gay couples holding hands, open about their sexuality , NOT afraid. PRIDE FOR me is knowing how we all had to hang in there to get to where we are today. I see gay flag at BANK OF AMERICA and I still cant believe it. WOW we sure have come a long way.
What will I DO FOR pride this year? Well, back in the day it was aBOut gettin in their faces and making statements.SHOWING the world we are here and you better get used to it, SHOWING the world we deserve equality.
NOW ITS A BIG PARTY and a REMINDER and being united. SO I GUESS ILL BE on the PARADE ROUTE HERE IN HILLCREST , DRINKIN A BEER, LAUGHING AND WATCHING all the hotties on parade floats. HAVING A GOOD TIME,
MAYBE Ill have a flash back of THE late 80s when I ROLLER SKATED IN WEHO parade, fell down < almost broke my neck and THEN GOT BACK UP & EVERYONE ROARED , CLAPPED (instead of laughing at me),when I GOT BACK UP AND CONTINUED TO SKATE DOWN THE ROUTE WITH MY FRIENDS from our local gay bar in Fullerton CA
ROY MASON
SAN DIEGO CA
www.SanDiegoRealtyUpdate.COM
I was completely out before the Stonewall events occurred, and so were most of my friends in NYC - so the idea of "gay pride" seems more of a personal experience to me than the celebration of specific events or a movement. Gay pride has been a personal process, and less a political response. And over the years it has changed in shape and meaning for me. Though I marched in the parade in NYC during the years of the AIDS epidemic, my greatest enjoyment of the events was not as a political act but in the celebration of gay life, and the multitude of gay life styles and interests.
My celebration this year, and every year, is my life and happiness as a gay person.
Jack
www.nycnotkansas.com
I'm 27 and have been out as queer since I was 13. However, because of family vacations, I never got to attend the gay pride parades in New York or San Francisco (the two cities I grew up in) until I was in my late teens. Once in my teens I was able to check out the New York dyke march, which was amazing, and, as an adult, I was awed by the San Francisco dyke march, which was fun, radically and aggressively political, sexy, and HUGE!
When I finally went to an official pride parade, I was (and still am) horrified about how the majority of the parade is advertisements for liquor brands that want to make money off of our community. Should I really feel "proud" of the fact that Absolut thinks we are an attractive target market. I think we can do better than that.
This year, I am celebrating pride in Mexico City, which is having its 30th annual gay pride celebration. For dykes (and other queers) visiting Mexico City for pride (or any other reason), feel free to check out my website, Macha Mexico: A Lesbian Guide to Mexico City--it's an English language website about lesbian culture, venues, and events in Mexico City.
Happy pride!
I'm celebrating all over NYC -- Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan.
What it means, Gay Pride? My inherent right to be me.
I'm 38 and I know that I was Gay probably before conception. Let's just say that appearances can be deceiving, I was fascinated about all the things that boys could do as a very young child. I was quite curious and also very dainty and girly, it's the dainty and girl side of me that had everyone fooled. Only a select number of people knows that I am Gay because I came out to them, a good number knew around the time I turned 14 and I'd say the rest are still in denial.
My first love was a female, and my entire teenage years except the one we were together, was dark and painful. I learned to hide my emotions then for fear of being outted. My mom used to tell me "Oh, it's just a phase and you'll grow out of it." Not to me being Gay because I haven't told her but I believe she suspected it, but to the normal things teenage girls go through in puberty. In fact, she had me convinced for a time until I turned about 16 years old that it was just a passing phase, and my Grandma tried.. and tried to get me to go out on a date with a boy. "Why aren't you dating yet?" She'd ask me, my mom would ask me that too, all the time. I'd just say that I didn't know, held on tight to my Grandma's apron strings. Truth was that I was afraid a boy would "like" me. I wasn't over my first yet and couldn't figure out how she grew out of the phase and I didn't.
Well.. I'm 38 now and have told many people except my mom. The first person I told was my brother who's Gay. My friends know and so does my fiance, I have several Gay family members and my mom takes well to my brothers "little friends". He's 36 years old, tunring 37 next month and she refers to his partners as his little friends because she hasn't quite grasped that the man who's holding her son's hand is his lover. I am bi-sexual with a bit of a lean towards women, I think they are the hottest creatures ever to walk the earth besides Will Smith and my fiance!
So for this not-entirely-out bi-sexual, pride is the journey in my now, and where I am going because I know all too well where I've been. I can honestly without a smidgeon of a doubt say that I've been Gay for all 38 years of my life, I've spent a little more than a majority of it still trying to figure out why my new phase never came. Pride is accepting that I was right where I was meant to be and that my phase came when I accepted that.
My Pride in who I am, which is more than just my sexuality, makes me very different, very edgy. I've always like to stir things up a bit, I've always dressed differently because my thinking was different than those where I grew up at the time. I wasn't a typical anything and still am not, people tell me that I carry a lot on my shoulders and basically I agree but it's all made me quite strong. I'll tell most people in a minute that I'm Gay and argue with anyone who has a problem with it. It's who I am, I can't change that and I know it's a part of me as native as the ancestral roots that created me. That's a lot of hair-flippin', gum-smackin', finger-snappin' Pride and that's as shiney and bright as the girl who was my first 27 years ago! Yes, we are still friends but live life a little differently. *smile*
For Pride this year I'm planning to volunteer for the Pride committees in both Colorado Springs, and Kansas City, KS.
Not sure why this is just registering now with me, but after hitting various Pride sites on the web and reading articles in print pubs and scanning pix of Pride celebrations on both the web and in print, I realized that Pride is now a four-month event. It's really astonishing, how Gay Pride has become this enormous celebratory force stretching the summer over. From May into September, there is a Pride event happening somewhere.
Amazing, really.
Pride means being PROUD of who U r, where U r, and what U r. Remember, PRIDE,PRIDE,AND MORE PRIDE! LUV, Ernae.
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