It’s Pride season again and while so many people are attending festivals, parties and parades to celebrate the equality gains that have been made in the LGBTQ community and rejoicing in the existence of any space that allows us to truly exist in the comfort of our own skins without the judgement and burdens that come with daily life in the non-queer world, I have to ask the question of where the trans community fits into this schema. It’s ironic that we have to have a conversation about where trans people belong in an annual affair that basically celebrates an event sparked by trans women…but here we are. So where do trans people fit into the traditional Pride landscape? And is this an event within which we should fight for our rightful place, or should we focus our efforts on something more targeted to our specific issues? Like our previous conversation about the T’s place within the queer acronym, I am drawn back to questions of collaboration within the whole, or the splintering off of the most vulnerable of our population.
Tonight we are going to engage in a discussion with three guests, Melvin Whitehead, Tracee McDaniel, and Alex Truesdale Perry, about their personal experiences in Pride, as well as their views on the necessity, or perhaps lack thereof, of the trans and gender non-conforming community within this celebration.