Cork student: What does Pride mean to me?

DURING my teen years, I used to look forward to Pride Month, despite the fact that I never did anything for it besides walk through the bottom floor of H&M to make brief eye contact with other queer girls.

Cork Pride happens in August for some reason, so I lived vicariously through YouTubers and any queer content I could find through Instagram.

I ate it all up, studying recounts of queer history told through the squares on my feed. I attached a safety pin to my school fleece because I’d read it was a symbol of alliance to other LGBTQ+ people that I was one of them. That I was on their side.

It was easy for me to laugh at homophobia and hatred when I could so clearly see the community online, and the hypocritical arguments homophobes churned out began to lose their venom.

I fantasised about being a grown woman with a girlfriend who wouldn’t be afraid to hold my hand, who I could take home to my parents.

I had seen the progress being made for LGBTQ+ people before my own eyes, so I couldn’t wait to see what my world looked like in ten years time. Maybe society would integrate with us.

I’m 21 now, and each time Pride Month rolls around I feel a weight in my stomach because I know of the heat of the spotlight that’s going to be put on us.

I know there are people out there waiting for any opportunity to demonise us, especially now.

Pride Parades happen throughout the world and each time I say a silent prayer that it will go peacefully and the acts of hatred that will be committed won’t be deadly.

My phone has long since ceased to be the safe place it used to be - America, a place I had always idealised as a place culturally ahead of Ireland, now terrifies me.

A trans woman there, Dylan Mulvaney, was chosen to be an ambassador for Bud Light, and thousands of videos of people shooting their beer cans and bellowing threats at the camera followed.

In some U.S states, performing in drag is illegal. The narrative is now that drag queens are pedophilic, that celebrating trans people is encouraging children to ‘mutilate’ themselves. And during Pride Month, when LGBTQ+ stories are amplified, the vitriol also swells.

A question reporters like to ask queer people is ‘what does Pride mean to you?’

To me, Pride now exists as a symbol of resilience and fighting to claim our places in society. It means that things are going to continually get difficult and that we are playing the long game.

Pride means we endure and survive, like those who came before us, so that our children may never feel the hatred of a stranger for just existing.

Pride means it is time to step back and observe our situation from above, find out what it is we are actually afraid of, and what we want to tell the next generation we did when it seemed like the world wanted to swallow us alive.

Pride means to pass on the flag and remember who handed it to you, and to never take the smallest freedoms for granted.