Dear Listeners,
“I come to you winded and weary and full of wonder to say, I am about to do a new thing. Take the pilgrimage from boy to non binary and then keep going from judgment to love, from fear to faith, from I to we.” From a sermon by Alok Vaid-Menon.
As Pride Month continues, I’ve been reflecting on what Pride means to me as a transgender person. Too often, transgender people are treated as an afterthought in conversations about LGBTQ history, but there is no Pride without the T. Pride traces its roots to the Stonewall uprising, where transgender people, drag queens, and gender-nonconforming people helped spark a movement for liberation that rejected shame and demanded freedom.
In this episode, I explore what Pride means to me, touching on the history of Pride, the legacy of Gay Liberation, the importance of trans people to that story, and why transness continues to matter today. Trans people are not simply fighting for our own survival—we are witnesses to the possibility of transformation itself. As the prophet Isaiah writes, “I am about to do a new thing.” In a world determined to place people into rigid boxes, trans people remind us that another future is possible.
Happy Pride,
Max
🎧 Listen to the podcast here on Substack (where you can toggle between video with subtitles and just the audio file, and read a transcript by clicking the button on the top of the episode page on the web), Spotify (which has video and in-app transcripts), Apple Podcasts (which has in-app transcripts), and YouTube.
2 Likes
