16 October 2013 by Jennifer
Words I wrote just before Notts Pride 2013, as an expression of what Pride is.
Ever since we’d first talked about it, I’d had the glimmering of an idea of what it would be like. But due to time pressure and lots of other things to organise, it stayed in that amorphous form for weeks. A few days before Pride, we still hadn’t even written anything, let alone rehearsed it, and I’d begun to think that for simplicity, we might just abandon the idea. It was in the scheduled programme, but I was pretty sure no-one else would really miss it, because only the people in the team knew what it was supposed to be :-)
But then I did find a little window of time to spend on the writing. I posted it to the group’s discussion list on the morning of Pride, saying “rather late in the day, but does anyone want to do this?” And it was eventually spoken from the Community Stage by Kat & Anna.
All of us
Some of us call ourselves lesbian, bi, trans, dyke, gay, queer,
pansexual, genderqueer, genderfluid, or asexual.
Some of us use some other label,
or don’t like labels,
but we know we’re part of the rainbow family.
Some of us are here to support people close to us,
or to show our support for equality.
All of us are part of Pride.
Some of us are in the middle of getting used to a new idea
about who we are.
Some of us have been out for years –
who we are just seems like normal life by now.
Some of us are finding our way…
we might come out next week,
or next month,
or next year.
Some of us came out once already,
and now we’re questioning all over again.
All of us are part of Pride.
Each of us is unique,
with our own history and background.
Today we come together,
across all our differences,
to celebrate what we have in common:
our humanity,
our solidarity with each other,
our wish to be true to ourselves,
and our love.
Permissions
I’m releasing that as Creative Commons, in case anyone else wants to use it &/or adapt it. Terms are Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.
I don’t mind if the attribution is skipped in a “live” context (such as reading out at another Pride!), but any reproduction in written/recorded form should include the address of this page. If you want to use it for commercial purposes, ask first.
Thanks
Thanks to Kat & Anna for bringing the words to the world, and to all the Community Stage team for the very satisfying collaborative enterprise of making them as true as we could.
Thanks to Kat for extra words on the first line, which was originally drafted as: “Some of us call ourselves lesbian, bi, trans, dyke, gay, queer, or asexual. [open to suggestion for other words to add to this list]”.
Plus a special tip of the hat to Leigh & Natasher for the phrase “Rainbow family”. They often use that phrase to express “LGBTQ+”, and I “caught it” from hanging out with them :-)