Also available in Finnish.
I was at Turku Pride Yesterday!
A lot of great things happened. I got to lead chants at the very front of the procession; I got to play around with gender presentation; I met someone in the park afterward who told me they had voted for me in April. It never rained properly while I was outside, although it did drizzle.
I am, however, an introvert. Marching in a parade is fun, but it's also exhausting; leading chants for said parade and then hanging around in the park talking to people afterwards adds a new level to that. I'm not going to say that I wouldn't ever do those things for their own sake, but even queer as I am, I would be less enthusiastic if Pride were just a party.
Ultimately, I go to Pride because it's political. And these days, the political core of Pride — the thing that makes it a protest, not just a party — feels ever more essential.
And that is why I show up. Not just to see colorful people march through the city. Not just to play with outfits and ways of expressing my own gender. I show up because large parts of the world are increasingly run by people who wish I didn't exist at all, and hope they can threaten me back into the closet.
I show up to show them that that will never happen.
Happy Pride, everybody. We're not going anywhere without a fight.
