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something struck me while i was scrolling through entirely too many homophobic instance timelines last night: they just don't get what the queer community means by pride. they think that we're saying that we're superior. that we're celebrating how different we are from everyone and, therefore, how much more value we must have compared to everyone. that we think that we are better than them. they don't get that this pride is our response to generations of institutionalized shame and persecution. our pride is a deliberate act of protest, giving the finger to the society that has tarnished us for who we are. the same kind of shame responsible for suicides. the same kind of shame that’s been taught to us by others through lessons punctuated by physical violence, emotional trauma and, most of all, fear. this is us standing up to the kind of shame that has caused so many of us to deny who we are, forcing us to love in secret, languish in loneliness, and hide in the dark, terrified that someone might discover the filth that we were made to believe we were. our celebrating who we are is not a proclamation of superiority. it is a declaration of how we are worth celebrating and this after so many years of being told that we should be hidden away as a shameful aberrance. we're not saying we are better than you. we're saying that we are not less than you. and we are saying that your assignment of shame to us is bullshit and its time is over. our pride is an act of defiance.