Happy Pride: How embodying the values of the LGBTQ+ community can help us all live a more authentic, joyful life

How do you say Happy Pride! without acknowledging that we’re celebrating this month in a country that persecutes Queer people?

This month, brands will cloak opportunistic marketing promotions as ally ship. 

We'll sell rainbow print editions.

We'll claim our values boldly and on time.

We'll align ourselves with a movement that many of us have not served and suffered for.

We mean no harm – we’re so conditioned in commercialism.

Here's what I'll say, instead: The influence the LGBTQ+ movement and leaders like ALOK and Adrienne Maree Brown have on my own life is daily and persistent.

As a white, cis-gendered, straight woman, I know:

👉   The source of the gender binary – designed to organize billions of humans into only two gender representations – shows up every minute of every day. Two options. One or the other. Good or bad.

👉   We are all victims of the binary: the notion that there is a right or wrong way to be.

👉   A big mistake that cis-gendered and straight people make is believing that the binary does not also impact us.

👉   The binary – its existence inside of every intricate detail that defines traditional society – limits our capacity to be the truest version of ourselves. All of us.

Today is another example: I have to believe there are more than two options for celebrating Pride Month. Something other than the two options of performative activism or staying quiet.

This month I hope you see an opportunity to measurably expand your ally-ship efforts, as well as recognize the ways in which you can embody the values of the LGBTQ+ community every single day to be unapologetically yourself – no matter how hard the world makes it – for there's the joy of being alive.

PS This month I’m reading:

💚   Eliot Page’s Pageboy

💚   Dr. Kyla Schuller’s The Trouble with White Women if you’d like to join me. 💚

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