LGBTIQA+ Pride & Protest
Right around this time every year is usually a series of Pride parades and events to connect with other queer-identified community. But, with quarantine, that isn’t an option to do live in most places. The glitter, confetti and rainbows are missing, even if there are video streaming options. But there are folks gathering en masse for black lives matter protests. In a way, we’re going back to our roots 51 years ago with the original Stonewall riots of 1969, only this time it’s BLM. Both riots started with Black folks saying “enough is enough.” The fight for equality persists in the world for pro-Blackness, pro-transness and pro-gayness, for anti-racism in queer spaces, and for anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia in BIPOC spaces.
There’s something cautiously optimistic and hopeful about white people, in ways they haven’t historically, listening to and mobilizing around the disparities in treatment for black people in the US right now. There’s a lot of relational skill required to listen with empathy, refrain from defensiveness and repair harm done. It’s a skill most US Americans seem to struggle with, across any social identity. So, understanding and accounting for the layers of systemic or institutionalized privilege and oppression only adds complexity to the process.
As a therapist, I’m often working with people who have experienced all sorts of traumatic violations to their physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual beings. Racism and homophobia create global, institutionalized complex and chronic trauma—a consistently invalidating environment—that affects the LGBTQIA community in more pervasive ways than single incident or single person traumas. And, while the physical aspects of trauma are in themselves painful, there’s an additional level of pain that comes from the ways people involved in that trauma directly harm or do nothing in the face of that harm. The relational piece is often more difficult for someone to untangle and process because it affects trust in oneself and others.
Take for example the case of sexual assault. The institutionalized sexism that supports rape culture (no matter the gender identity or sex of the survivor or perpetrator) is involved and intertwined with the survivor’s trauma and healing process. At every level, the survivor is questioned about what they are wearing, whether they are remembering correctly, what they drank, why they went where they went. They are told it didn’t happen or they wanted it. They are left alone with someone they’re talking to at a bar or party or people heard things but didn’t do anything. The survivors aren’t believed because it’s their partner, or because people believe it couldn’t have happened because of their gender or sex. Their sanity is questioned. Their symptoms are shamed. They’re left feeling like they’re the problem and they should just stuff their feelings and move on. Only they can’t because their body remembers. Every reminder activates their body’s protective mechanisms in an attempt to heal, but, if they don’t have supportive folks and a way to process the trauma, it stays stuck and can often get worse.
This leaves the physical trauma stuck because the survivor often can’t orient to their pain when no one is confirming such a disorienting experience happened and that they have a right to feel what they feel. Conversely, the perpetrator tends to get all the benefits of doubt. Their future is protected while the survivors is forever altered. Their rights are amplified while the survivor’s are stripped. And then, if the survivor does get some validation, the perpetrator can often rest into the institutional protections they’re afforded and blame the survivor for the very thing they did. For example, “you’re ruining MY life by these accusations when I’ve done nothing wrong!” and folks will rally with them. The perpetrator will get the affection and support the survivor so desperately needs. However, when perpetrators are held accountable and justice is served, the environment creates healing conditions. When survivors are received with love and acceptance, with belief in their experiences, they heal.
The same thing has been happening with white fragility and racism. Often, when the person of color points out a microaggression or example of racism, they’re questioned, told they’re being too sensitive, that they have a chip on their shoulder, that they’re making everything about race. The whole conversation has historically centered white comfort and the person of color, who had the original microaggression or violence, is left now having to deal with the original assault AND an added layer of relational trauma. They have to now deal with bystanders who sat by and watched the person of color get blamed for the way they said something, for the “aggressive” manner in which they said something, while the white person who committed the transgression actually gets all the empathy and consoling for having the awful experience of having the person of color “attack” their good name and personhood with “erroneous” accusations of racism or discrimination.
But, when there are more people of color at the table for safety and validation in numbers, when we have communities of color for support, and when white folks start seeing the supremacy in action and stop, people of color can heal. It’s been happening in conversations all over the world lately. Black folks have been cautious and still have to deal with the microaggressions from white folks, but when someone can hold us in our truth, it creates room for validation and for those traumas to be felt. There’s a collective grief happening when this witnessing has finally occurred, in those moments when we no longer have to brace against the expected dance of defense.
LGBTQIA folks have had their fair share of oppression as well. Heterosexism and cissexism, with their roots in sexism, bias the conversation to heterosexual and cisgender comfort, respectively. Wanting people to keep their personal displays of affection to themselves if they’re gay, loving the sinner but hating the “sin,” misgendering or needing trans and nonbinary folks to perform gender in ways that makes sense to the cisgender mind, all of these are (not so micro) microaggressions. People with unexamined homophobia rattle these beliefs off as if they’re moral and normal without seeing the blatant dehumanization. LGBT folks have been treated like their sanity can’t be trusted, like a psychologist needs to confirm it before gender confirmation surgery, or that folks need to be “fixed” through reprogramming to conform to heteronormative behaviors. Pride is about saying, “forget that mess.”
Pride is a time to resource and celebrate in community with other queer folks the idea that we don’t have to walk around in shame for our fabulous selves. Pride is a time to recognize that there are environments that can be affirming with people who are just like you. There’s an “us” and a chosen family, even if your bio family hasn’t worked through its homophobia and heterosexism. For many queer folks of color, they often haven’t felt so welcomed in the rainbow. But, in these times, I’m hoping that people are starting to see that dismantling all the oppressions is necessary for equality for all. It’s all interrelated—the health and wealth disparities for marginalized folks and all the intersectional identities.
So before a virus or a necessary mask requirement (can we make masks fashionable? Yes) or being stuck with homophobic or transphobic relatives ruins it all, here are some things to celebrate and a Pride Survival Guide:
Justice prevails with the SCOTUS ruling that it is illegal to discriminate against people in the workplace for being LGBT!! Hooray!! Sucks we need the law for decency, and there’s still protections we need, but it’s a victory nonetheless.
You are YOU!
Marsha P Johnson and Bayard Rustin were badasses!
You can still nurture your connections with other queer-identified folks safely online & 6ft apart with masks
Nature is a great way to celebrate pride
Pride Survival Guide for Black & Brown People by Human Rights Campaign
Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese Poem
Disclosure documentary by Laverne Cox
For the Bible Tells Me So documentary by Danielle Karslake and Helen Mendoza
Hannah Gadsby specials on Netflix
LGBT Therapy Scenario
I sat on the floor with my client, who was sobbing, deeply breathing with her pain. She looked up at me and said in all earnestness, “I’m garbage.” It broke my heart. This is what homophobia and heterosexism does. It takes a talented, creative, loving soul and forces her to either hate herself or fight like hell against it.
What she meant by “garbage” was that she had internalized her family’s, church’s, Christian school’s and society’s homophobic messages that she was trash because the person she loved happened to have the same genital anatomy and gender identity as her. She spent years starving herself, binging and purging, cutting, faking, praying, dating boys she didn’t like but who looked good on paper to please everyone but herself. She waged a war with her flesh and romantic desire because she was told they were wrong. She learned to orient to a world that demanded she prioritize everyone else’s comfort over the happiness her body was wired for.
She was told these rules were right because God said so. She was gaslit by condescending words that said she was loved, but only if she deny a huge part of who she is. P.S. that’s not love. She knew what people in her community believed about gay people long before she knew she was one of them. She knew the consequences long before she knew who she was. When she knew she loved women, she knew that her family and church would tell her that she’d have to refrain from that impulse every day. Hell wasn’t in the afterlife for her. Hell was every day, constantly having to choose between being in her family’s and God’s good graces and acting on any impulse toward a love or family of her authentic longing. Either choice filled her with self-loathing. And it was killing her quickly every minute.
What she’s had to spend her adult life learning, accepting or unlearning, in addition to all the regular life lessons, is:
Homophobia isn’t love.
Her love is exactly right the way it is.
That it really sucks and costs a lot to have to do all this extra therapy for the damage homophobia has caused.
In addition to the vulnerable act of dating and putting one’s self out there that heterosexual people experience, she has had to also navigate :
a) whether or not the person of her affection is clarified enough about their own sexuality to honor her feelings as real so she is not being used or tokenized.
b) whether the person of her affection is out about her own sexual orientation or dealing with shame/other people’s expectations (this is different from choosing to remain private, if possible, due to safety concerns)
c) whether any random stranger or family member may be emboldened toward violence or outward displays of hatred of her at any sign of PDA or jilted gender expectations.
d) loss of family, friends, and support because of their homophobia and remembering that it isn’t about her, but doesn’t hurt any less.
But, that’s not where the story ends. The LGBTQIA community is resilient, full of people who dare to honor the truth of who they are and fight like hell for folks like them. Things are far from perfect but I’ve had the honor of bearing witness to so many members of the community reclaiming their anger, dignity, pride, intersectionality, identity, respect, sexuality, impulses, vulnerability, belonging, romance and much more. I’ve seen people break cycles of abuse that they thought they deserved and find a love they couldn’t imagine was meant for them. I’ve witnessed folks create relationships or situations that make sense for their needs, even if it bucks convention. People have found LGBT-affirming houses of worship and redefined their relationship with a higher power.
This pride month, even if you can’t go to bars or parades safely or celebrate as overtly as you’d like or you’re stuck with less than affirming housemates, know that there’s a community for you just as you are. Know that there’s support for you here. You are beautiful, just the way you are.
