I’m a straight white suburban woman in my fifties. And Pride month can (expletive) right off. You can call me Karen but my tattoos would disagree. You can call me a bigot too. You already have. And a Terf—that pathetic made-up term. I’m not radical. And only feminist as far as equal pay. The right to vote. To have a bank account and a credit card. You know, basic civil rights. The same things gay and lesbian people wanted—and received. But now… Pride is… Pride is corporations and children and paraphilias and corruption…
And in the basement of my once harmonious home, my seventeen-year-old daughter is decorating her jean jacket with patches and little paintings, so she can wear it to the parade in our city tomorrow. It has rainbows and that awful pedophilic trans flag. It showcases her pronouns: “HE/THEY” and basically screams: I am a straight white girl who bought the bullshit that straight white girls are evil devil oppressors and I refuse to be that in the name of KINDNESS, y’all. So allow me into your glittery sanctum, your elite hole of horrors, tunnel of anti-love. Call me a gay man PLEASE.
So a movement that started out sane, got overrun by pervs and psychos, and billionaires gathered them all up in their sweaty bespoke suited arms and my little girl—my gorgeous, innocent, ignorant little girl got caught in their net. A dolphin snared with the tuna.
And I pray to a god I used to say didn’t exist and every day I say God show me you’re real. And I count my blessings as you are supposed to do, to stave off depression, despair, the urge to make it all STOP. Give thanks for my closeness with her still, even as she fades into obscurity before my weeping eyes.
And I say (expletive) you pride. Let my daughter go.
