Come Pride Season the Sense of Community and Inclusion Sparks a Fire of Determination and Engagement

By David Nichols, eBay

Pride is always an interesting time of year for me. I see the parties/festivals/parades, and all the rainbows and so much skin and it fill me with, for lack of a better word, pride. However, over the past several years I have come to realize that pride for me is a large celebration of the smaller things going on throughout the year.

Steps forward or steps back happen throughout the year. Come pride season, the sense of community and inclusion (regardless of our victories or defeats) sparks a fire of determination and engagement. You can see a young person, wide-eyed and trying to take it all in standing next to an aged queen who was there when Stonewall happened, or for the first time an out gay man was elected to office, they’d seen it all before. You see such a diverse population at pride. There is everything from bears to dykes, fetish to vanilla, old and young, a rainbow of ethnicities and orientations and identities.

Pride tends to embrace the individual as part of the community. They encourage us to let our freak flag fly! I also think pride is big enough that it celebrates those who don’t attend the big events. Those who chose to celebrate by taking someone special to dinner, or those who cuddle up on the couch and binge a bunch of LGBTQ+ content. Pride is a little something for everyone. For me, I would say that pride honours where we were, celebrates where we are, and encourages us where we are going.