Over the past two years, June has become a month that should feel special. In America, it’s generally regarded as Pride Month where we celebrate The LGBTQIA+ Community in all of its wonderful forms. Don’t get me wrong. I will celebrate them all year round. I get thrilled seeing flags out in the wild or even those with more definitive forms of expression. Being aware of how large this group is has given me some comfort even as I struggle to really feel part of it. I think that’s just a side effect of “coming out” when I’m older as opposed to living the past 15 years with any sense of confidence, where I’m planning trips to The Chromatica Ball and brunch to discuss Bros (2022). I don’t know. It’s not like I rejected queerness before 2021. It just feels different when you see it from yourself.
But June 2023 feels odd. Much like last year, I have found myself in the midst of a social media break. I think the biggest difference this time around is that I’m doing it less because of generalized stress and more because I’m just not feeling all that esteemed about anything. I promised myself that whenever I struggled to feel good about being online that I wouldn’t stick around longer than I needed to. This comes at the expense of any presence growth and thus any sense of self-starter success, but it’s also something that I’ve had to come to terms with. The Elon Musk Era of Twitter has been one of the worst I’ve been active in. It’s made me worried to the point of sometimes being anxious and sick.
As I enter Pride Month, I think too much is going on at once and I’m sure there’s way worse that I have ignored altogether. Part of me feels fraudulent for not diving into the complicated subject matter and having a say. The struggle to see myself as an activist type, who has the strong will to stand up to bigotry definitely weighs on me. It’s not that I’m against progress. I support those who openly fight for change. Maybe this is all just a side effect of the notion most have that passivity is the same as indifference and losing. Even then, I’m left with the sense that I’m letting the world down because I can’t stand to be on social media right now. I can’t stand to listen to the news where politicians from Florida and Texas lead the paths for transgender genocide.
I suppose that I started with Twitter in large part because it’s the place where I have felt most allowed to be expressive. I love the people that I have met there and wish that I was able to have more hours in the day with them. However, they’re a small piece of the bigger pool. Musk has been keen on suggesting that freedom of speech would be inundated on the service, and all that’s meant is racial epithets having their use increase tenfold in only a day. It’s the rise of bullying, the disagreement of truth, and being submissive to the opinions you actively disagree with. There’s no room for nuanced debate. If you think you’re right, you’ll still be right after a whole thread. Whether or not you accept the other opinion as being allowed to exist is probably the greater debate.
Everything mixes together and suddenly it’s difficult to want to share my opinion on anything anymore. Along with personal quandaries distracting me, I have found times on Twitter since November finding me actively disliking the website. It doesn’t make sense because I love expressing myself there, and yet the functions are being taken away. I wrote a post celebrating National Women’s Day and mentioned trans women only to have people attack me with all of the familiar responses. I blocked them, but it still felt so pointless.
I think it felt pointless because where I keep hoping that I will find crossover and have people engage with those types of comments in productive manners, I keep landing on people who actively hate transgender identities. There’s this judgment for the most minor of queer celebrations. Don’t get me wrong. There’s people who are more supportive and I find those people to be great, however everything has felt more and more oppressive. Following The Club Q Shooting, I took a few days off for fear of reading content that triggered me. As Jessie Gender pointed out in a video from the time, the culture had changed from The Pulse Shooting where it was demarcated with “Thoughts and Prayers” replies that at least faked compassion from conservatives who’ve chosen the lane of not doing jack shit and being proud of it. Now it feels worse.
It's June and I don’t exactly know how I’m supposed to feel enthusiasm for Pride Month. On the one hand, there is resilience and so many great people doing amazing things. I try to celebrate them whenever I can. To them, I say thank you for making the world a greater place. You are the reminder of what compassion can foster.
But I think that it’s been tough to see that more and more when the conversation has been tipped so firmly into the “genocide” camp. I’m aware that this used to be more commonplace in the 20th century, where even AIDS was The Gay Disease and we deserved it. On the one hand, I’m thankful that Monkeypox never caught on as AIDS 2.0, but even then there’s been these small moments where you realize how fragile the discourse has been lately. One out of dozens if not hundreds of mass shootings was done by a transgender teen and they became the scapegoat for how we’re mentally ill and want to watch the world burn. It’s the idea of declawing predatory language of its actual use in order to make queer identities seem worse. Sure, bring in the World War II analogies where The Jews were singled out. It makes sense, but it doesn’t make it easier. Even then, why must I be forced to have an opinion on Bud Light being the “queer beer” simply because people like Kid Rock send death threats to Dylan Mulvaney? Even the fact that conservative pundits attacked asexuals and aromantics for not having Valentine’s Day plans in the most backhanded ways possible stings a little. I forget if anything is changed, but we’re coming up on a year when a Supreme Court Justice said that Gay Marriage should be overturned. Bravo! We couldn’t make that last a whole decade. Stop calling us privileged you cishet assholes.
I’m not against the idea of turning on the news and seeing pieces of queer joy. Pride Month in some part needs that. The idea of optimism should be present even in a time where everything is completely bleak. However, as I turn on The NBA Playoffs, even there I’m reminded of people like J.K. Rowling selling a video game. There’s no way to really escape it, and I’m struggling to not give in to worse tendencies. As it stands, I’ve purposely saved the “Everyone Is Awesome” LEGO set that I bought from Legoland for June so that I can build the rainbow in all its glory. I’m trying to find ways to feel like the world matters, and it hasn’t been easy. This isn’t to say that I’m a nihilist or even think badly of what’s good in the world, but it’s a major reason why I haven’t been on Twitter. It’s why I’m avoiding the conversations because I don’t have anything useful to say. The Memory Tourist has been at most where I do any soapboxing because I need that outlet.
Alas, even the few traditions that I have formed over the past two years seem to be crumbling before my eyes. Say what you will about the actual products, going to Target to look at their Pride Merch has been one of the best feelings I’ve had. They rarely have things that I want (really wish they’d make a “Protect Trans Lives” shirt I’d actually wear), but it’s still fun to see that it exists. There’s this validation that yes, everyone is deserving of their say. In a time where everything feels so regressive, Target hasn’t felt like it’s backsliding. I am not all too sure where to stand on the recent news but it’s definitely like deflating the other back tire. When people are knocking over displays and yelling at employees for having gay merchandise, it feels like we’re ramping up for Mad Max-style fisticuffs. The guns (quite literally) are probably coming out and people at a Pride Parade are probably at the hands of a bigot who takes himself to be a savior of Christ. I hate that this world endorses that. I hate that it feels like nothing is going right.
Another reason that I’m trying to avoid social media is to see how much of this is the bubble effect. How much am I just thinking that the world is getting worse because it’s the rhetoric online? It’s hard to say because unless we’re all good at doctoring reality, there’s a lot that’s not right. Some can take joy in bigots being worked up over beer cans because it’s stupid (it is), but I feel too weak to really laugh at that. I don’t want to talk about beer. I don’t drink enough to have an opinion. I just want to talk about queer cinema and how great it feels to find Alice Oseman books at major retailers. I don’t want to feel like “good faith” arguments are no longer passive aggressive and just plain aggressive. Something has to give.
I’m going to try to make the most of Pride Month. I live in California. My former Mayor, Robert Garcia, is currently in Congress and has promised to quote RuPaul on the floor. He’s the one who inspired rainbow sidewalks and even encouraged the rainbow lifeguard station at our beach. He’s done plenty right. Long Beach as a community has done a lot of amazing things. It’s a nice counterbalance to Orange County which has not given me the best hope by having to vote to not fly the rainbow flag in front of town hall. Small forms of negation are coming to the liberal west coast where you think it’s so free. We had a bunk election not too long ago and I genuinely did fear that conservatives might have had enough fuel even if all it did was prove how much money you’re willing to waste on a hissy fit. Still, I am curious to see what has changed at the local Targets, though I’m sure certain “controversial” products have been pulled nationally.
Am I becoming too much of a hermit in 2023? Am I going to get to December and suddenly feel far removed from the world around me? I do worry that everything is inspiring me to not care about things that used to make me happy.
But the one thing that I can say is that hopefully, this is not the case. I am trying to stay happy. I force myself to be an optimist because I know how difficult it can be to think so despairingly of the world. There is a need to believe that everything could work out and that maybe good will come of this terrible time. Even then, I’ve noticed conversations in my personal life that are as encouraging as they are disappointing, where there’s a long way to understanding. I’m going to try and keep a rational head, though it’s hard. I so desperately want conversations where it’s less “Did you hear about the school that didn’t let the trans student walk in a dress?” and more “Wasn’t Hari Nef good in Barbie (2023)?” You know, small things that make me feel like we’re actually invested in positive change and not just burning the hate to the ground.
Queerness doesn’t exist solely to be criticized and reevaluated. While it’s been demonized to an extent that makes me ill, I’m hoping that one way things can change is through compassion. Maybe that’ll come with Hunter Schafer in The Hunger Games sequel. Maybe Ethel Cain will win a Grammy. I don’t know if she will. But hey, Kim Petras did. That’s a start. Disney actually made halfway decent gay representation for once with Strange World (2022) – but not without homophobes attacking it and trying to fire teachers.
Thank you again to those actually making a difference. I’m sorry that I don’t have the spirit to be more vocal and passionate about this fight. Even if I believe we all deserve to be loved and respected, it’s still hard to find reasons to get back up after the news constantly knocks us down because one or two parents stuck their fingers in their ears and had teachers questioned by the government for being safe spaces for students, or how books about expression are suddenly more problematic than “The Turner Diaries.”
The one upside is that right now I’m taking a class about Sociology of Sexuality. It’s maybe the most fitting thing to do in June, especially as it discusses queerness in ways that I’ve only brushed over here. Lots of talk of intersectionality and history. If anything, it’s what I care about most because the idea of queerness being older than 50 years means a lot. It means we’ve always existed and didn’t just randomly “hijack the rainbow” from straights for personal gain. There’s a lot here that’s encouraging and I can only hope it makes things a little easier even if I fear June is going to be a hard month to stomach if anything on par with the Target controversy arises.
For now, I continue to force myself to be optimistic. After all, massive change has happened over the last 60 years since Stonewall and the various activism created a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, or any of the other subcategories. It’s sad to say but bigots will bigot. They have proven themselves to be largely hopeless cases. However, I do think that there’s plenty worth celebrating this month even if my mind feels preoccupied with the negative. We do have more support this time around. There is a larger contingency. Gen-Z is one of the most loud and proud generations yet. Rina Sawayama’s “This Hell” is still an affirmation earworm. Even Elliot Page’s memoir is due out soon. Something is going right. Something is going right. I just need to find a way to recognize that and be happy.
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