Pondering Pride(s)

Some grateful, grieving acknowledgements of the significance of community solidarity

Hullo my lovely readers

A content note for discussion of grief and bereavement, the personal and political impacts of structural oppression and marginalisation (particularly related to sexuality and gender identity, and disability and impairment) and the significance of community in the context of those experiences.

Also a note that I’m dedicating this week’s letter to Napo, a dear long-time family friend and one of my queer theatre elders, who died on Thursday.

Thank you for your generous responses to last week’s letter, sharing my perspectives on crip time(s) as well as the more detailed words of Jamie Hale.

I’m still very much navigating my own negotiations with the lived realities of crip time(s) – which, this week, as with many other years of early Junes, are co-existing alongside crip griefs as I mark the anniversaries and birthdays of multiple friends, both disabled and non-disabled.

This year, though, as noted in the dedication, they’re also explicitly co-existing with queer griefs, for Napo and his significance to my family.

And my childhood.

That means I’m once again thinking a lot about communities – and how much it meant to me to have those, growing up.

Even under Section 28.

Especially under Section 28.

(For any readers not in the UK, this legislation, only repealed in 2003 – when I was in my first year of secondary school – prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality as a “pretended family relationship”.)

As I wrote about in my prose poem, “Colour Codes”, back in February, being surrounded by queer and trans people and elders taught me many things:

Collective care.

Expansive definitions of family.

The solace of solidarity amidst struggle.

That grief and pain were not – are not, and must not be – mutually exclusive from joy and celebration.

That persisting is a form of resisting.

(I’m really holding on to all of those in our current political contexts, both domestically and globally, because we’ve simultaneously come so far and still have so far to go.)

Those lessons mean that – in another annual resonance of June – I’m also, of course, pondering the power of Pride.

Not just the parades, which feel both extra necessary and terrifying at the moment.

(Although I have written before about how Access Safe Spaces or Access Blocs are rare, reliable ways for me to engage on a public level with the layers of my identity as a wheely queer trans crip.)

The significance of the simple-yet-complex relief of representation, in the public sphere… but also quieter, more personal and private interactions with family (and “family”).

Of knowing I’m not alone, and I’m not (by far), the first.

And the desire to distribute at least a little of that relief to others.

So, to honour Napo’s memory, for the rest of the Sundays in June (because Sunday is a good Book Club day, right?), I’m going to return to my “Wordy and Wheely Reads” series.

I’ll share my thoughts on books related to queerness, transness, disability (and sometimes all three together).

Because books help us belong as well.

It’ll wheely (really!) mean a lot to have you along for the (p)ride.

[Image description: An image drawn by Jessi on the virtual blank canvas of WeaveSilk.com. In the centre of the frame, on a black background, streaks of light represent an abstract take on the colours and shapes of the Intersex Inclusive Progress Pride Flag: a yellow triangle / chevron with a purple circle for the Intersex flag; thinner white, baby pink and baby blue chevrons / triangles for the Trans flag; brown and black chevrons / triangles for queer and trans people experiencing racism; followed by the horizontal rainbow stripes that represent LGBTQIA+ pride. / End image description]

Thank you so much for reading, take care of yourselves and one another, and love and solidarity until next time,

Jx