Why don't I like pride parades is rather simple.... I don't think it helps people with GID. To most people unfamiliarly with the condition saying transsexual or transgender invokes images like this one...
In most parades you see drag queens, cross dressers, and gender benders... very few trans men and woman march. While these people fall under the umbrella term Transgender, they are do not have a medical condition. It's a lifestyle choice... People who are gay or lesbian like true transgenders are just born that way, and that's who they are.
Maybe its just me however I don't see the need to march in front of over 100000 people because I have a medical condition. We don't have cancer parades having people with cancer parade in front of others, or Diabetics etc .... So why should we march in front of others?
Thank you Kara for coming and also believe that if we even help one person it was worth it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the booth and would do the booth again anytime )
ReplyDeleteWhy should you march?
ReplyDeleteooo .. you just know I have to be devil's advocate on this one.
While I agree with you, Kara, concerning the fact that the Pride parade does more to harm the cause of folks with GID than to help them, I am also able to understand why folks with GID should march ... just not necessarily in the Pride parade.
You are part of an invisible group ... the very nature of the condition requires the sufferers to maintain a level of secrecy that gradually causes grave damage to their psyches. This sets you far apart from the GLBC community … because of the very challenges faced by the person who suffers from GID, because of the disparity between their genetic gender and that they identify with, it is not in the nature of such a person to step out into the crowd’s focus and draw attention for what they are.
Because of the lack of a sense of identity which is the greater part of the condition (precipitated by the amount of time and energy that is required across a lifetime in maintaining the illusion of the genetic gender), all of the people with GID I have thus far met have been extremely inward-focused and self-oriented. And how can they be otherwise?
When you spend a lifetime trapped inside your own head, unable to admit to yourself or others who you really are … denying with all your heart the truth that you know is gnawing at it … terrified of standing up and being counted because it means that you will be bereft of the illusions and masks you have used in getting to this stage of your life and may well lose the people in your life that matter to you … when everything in your life has been built about maintaining those illusions and masks whatever the cost … When ever does the person with GID have the opportunity to develop empathy or compassion for others?
They cannot possibly be expected to; you have to care for yourself before you have room to care for others. To be able to complete transition successfully requires the time for the individual to go through the steps to admit the truth, get help, deal medically with the gender issue and then (the hardest part) spend time developing an identity … to learn who they are and who they might like to become. And such a great number of you are so traumatized by the time you suffer your break and have to admit your truth that an unfortunately large number fail to get beyond the gender issue.
This means that championing the GID cause either fall to the medical practitioner, a non-GID person, or those extremely rare persons who have completed their transitions and can find within themselves the courage to stand up and be the public face of the condition for this inward-turned group of individuals.
Oh you SHOULD march … but until those children, who are having their GID diagnosed early enough to avoid the traumas of a lifetime hiding in plain sight, are grown to adulthood and willing to be the pioneers for others like them, it’s sadly unlikely to happen.